When things get random

After having been steeped for weeks in Keats, Yeats, et al in my freshman English course, I wrote a dreadfully lush and lurid poem about a death in a graveyard. When I got it back, my teacher had written, "This is either very good or very bad. A+" on the paper.

That's pretty much how I feel about this photograph: it's either very good or very bad. I remember being terribly disappointed when I took it, because it was dark (we were on Burano at the time, heading for dinner) and by the time the camera had adjusted to the lack of light the action had shifted away from the center of the frame. So when I found it yesterday I seriously considered tossing it, as it breaks most of the rules of photography.

But there was something about that ball suspended in the middle of the picture that made me decide to keep it. And this morning I realized I wanted to write about it, because... well, most of life doesn't seem to "follow the rules" either.

I remember when I took my weeklong photo workshop back in 1998 the instructor's first lesson was all about the fact that "A good photographer doesn't TAKE a photograph; he MAKES a photograph." And the fact is that the photos I make tend to reflect, in a lot of ways, what I read: they feel complete, there are happy endings and smiles and beauty and optimism. They are completely different from the sort of gritty realism my daughters like to portray (and that is so much more fashionable. I still remember the gallery owner who pooh-poohed my work at a review, saying, "These are just Getty images" -- i.e., feel-good commercial work.)

What I think now, looking at this photo, so unlike my usual work, is that I like the mystery of it. What is the cat looking at? Where did the ball come from? Where is the boy running to? Will he be hit by the ball, or will he turn around in time to catch it? And what are the two people in the background looking at so intently?

I think, to be honest, this photo is much more lifelike and realistic than much of what I shoot. Because the fact is, none of us is the center of the universe, and the action around us, more often than not, really is focused elsewhere. Things don't always turn out or even work the way we expect them to, and often the ball that lands in our court is unexpected.

For those of us who like to be in control (which is certainly true of most of the folks I know) this kind of randomness can be pretty threatening, and we spend much of our lives trying to cushion and protect ourselves against the unexpected, painful, and terrifying stuff that at heart we know is inevitable. So the Buddhist in me wants to stand and look at this photo and accept it -- just to remind myself that the world will never be as safe -- or as me-centered -- as I'd like it to be.

And as I sit with this photo, the child in me suddenly cries out, remembering those endless games of kickball and dodgeball that we played on the third grade playground; the pain of being picked last, the fear of being hit... No wonder I didn't like this picture! But it's good to stand with it, to face into it, to open myself to the randomness, boundary-lessness and pointlessness of it; actually it's a good break, I think, from the safety of all those beautifully painted comforting madonnas I've been photographing.

Okay. Enough of that. I think I'll crawl back into my comfy shell again. But it was a good exercise.