Growing vegetables underground require patience. A willingness to be surprised. Months of waiting result in something or nothing, satisfaction or want. As soon as I lifted the first bunch out of the ground, before I took a moment to really look or smell, I wanted to take a picture. So I left the sunny yard, cleaned the dirt from my fingernails at the kitchen sink, and grabbed the camera. I now have a picture of those bright orange carrots covered in dark earth, leafy green stems hanging over the edge of my grandmother's old stainless steel mixing bowl.
And what will I do with that picture, besides store the file somewhere and then forget it exists? I've been thinking about photography a lot lately, and the impulse to capture a moment rather than experience it. A colleague recently passed on a New York Times article about tourists doing the same at the Louvre. While traveling, I try to be a deliberate and choosy photographer, though I've also taken countless pictures of European cathedrals I knew nothing about, other than the way light hits their stained glass windows.
This summer, I spent a month taking a picture a day of whatever struck my imagination, then I linked the image to text of some sort. What began as a way to learn how to use my camera turned into an exercise in keeping my associative brain in practice. I only posted thirty photos as part of One June, but wound up taking nearly 400. It was an experiment, a way to harness the constant documentation our lives now seem to require. That came to mind earlier today, digging in the dirt and pulling up carrots, filling a bowl with basil leaves to turn into pesto, a light breeze keeping the mosquitoes briefly at bay. The summer's-end moment was fulfilling. But somehow we're trained to think a moment becomes more so when it's captured. Doubly so when shared.
