A friend and I had a conversation about the genre of realism; we were talking about painting, but really what we said applies to photography and writing, I think. Our debate: What is the value of realism in art, and how do you achieve it?
Her first reaction was that realism in painting these days doesn’t have much value, seeing as how you can just take a photo to show what you see. I countered that what you see is influenced by so much more than the electrical impulses that your eyeballs send to your brain.
The flip side of that argument popped up when another friend was objecting to me doing a color-adjustment to photos of wildlife he was submitting for identification. I argued that the human eye sees so much more than the raw photo a camera spits out, so in manipulating the photo, you’re trying to closer match reality.
These two arguments are different sides to the same coin, I think. When your eyes see something, your brain and heart and selfhood influence the resulting image, and when you take a photo, you can try to capture what your eyes see—but you’ve got to be a skilled artist to capture that well, and you have to be a special kind of artist to relay what your heart and self see, on top of that.
I’ve been struggling with this as I try to write that book. How to depict a scene that is infused with feelings without saying, “I felt […].” When you’re seeing something, you’re not identifying the view or your feelings, you’re just taking in the scene. Relaying all that information in one glimpse is artistry at its trickiest.
From where we were previously in Colorado (Mesa Verde), I could show you a photo of a diamondback rattlesnake. But what would that photo really show you? Was I surprised to see it? Was my heart racing? Or had Tracy and Banjo been surprised to see it, and only after they came back and told me about it did I go find it and take this photo? A snake you’re looking for is a very different snake than one you weren’t looking for. Believe me, this is the second rattler I’ve seen recently, and this is not the one that surprised me.
I could tell you about where we are now, 9,000 feet above Durango in the San Juan National Forest. About wandering in a high meadow and stumbling upon a large piece of bone. I could show you a photo of the bone, and you could tell me, “That’s a pelvic [something or other].” But that would not capture my surprise at finding this hard animal part in the grass, of thinking at first that it was a skull, of wondering what happened to the animal, and or looking around idiotically as if I could spy a wolf licking its paws right at the edge of the woods. I can show you the photo and say all those things, but nothing is the same as what that moment was like for me.
I could tell you about the coyote I saw hunting exactly like Banjo hunts, but what would that mean to you? You would have to have Banjo in your mind like I do, and only I have Banjo in my mind that exact way.
I could try to take a photo of the creek here flowing rowdily off the snowy mountain tops, making so much noise that it drowns out the bird calls I’m trying to identify with my phone’s birding app. It’s flowing so quickly that I have to search for a spot to cross it, not where it’s broad, not where it’s narrow, maybe where it’s rocky.
Banjo scares up a trout in it one morning; she’s happy to cross where it’s deep. She is happy in this cold cold water. How do I show you that?
I could tell you about walking through the woods for an hour, thinking I was about to come out right by the trailer. Instead I’m at the top of a cliff, shocked to look down on the stream I left behind me at my feet just a while back.
I could describe stands of old aspen here with trunks as big around as I can reach. If you see them with the sun behind them, they glow. I can’t even begin to figure out how to take that photo.
I could tell you about being so absorbed in looking at the variety of tiny wildflowers that grow in small patches of sunlight below the dark fir trees that I suddenly remember that I had been walking out in the wide open meadows so I could see the animals before they see me. And that there are bear in these woods. Plus, my feeling of gentle panic that I am walking in the woods without bear spray is mixed with a wistfulness that I don’t want to leave the woods. How do I think about those feelings, much less describe them so you can think about them?
I could tell you about evenings here where we’re boondocking with no one in sight. As we’re sitting in the tent at 8 pm, just thinking that we’ve sadly scared away the deer, they bound out of the aspen stands, snorting and stotting (which is leaping with all four feet at once and hitting the ground hard). Even in describing this I’ve fallen far from the mark. They have been racing around the trailer, running downhill from the trees, up across the field into the other stand of trees, to reappear by the stream where we watch them cross, then reappear again to run the same way behind the trailer. Even if I had my camera with me at the time to videotape them, I couldn’t show you the feeling of being surrounded by those deer, of knowing they were alerting others (and you) that you are in their evening grazing territory.
I could say that it feels like being the people in Western movies, those trapped in the middle of Indians riding their horses in a circle, but that wouldn’t capture the thrill I feel of being the target as those deer run around us.
So, showing you the Colorado that I am seeing is difficult. But I’m going to show you what I can.
I think you’re doing a wonderful job sharing your experiences and stunning scenery. No, we won’t all see it the same way as you, but that would be true even if we were walking alongside you.
Such a gorgeous area. I’m not sure I’d want to leave…
Shelly’s heart hitched in her chest as she waded through the meadow – not from exertion (though the elevation certainly raised her pulse), but rather, the sudden appearance of weathered ivory half hidden in the tall grass. Bone, she realized, and for one brief moment worried she’d stumbled upon a serial killer’s dumping ground. Approaching cautiously, she parted the grass with a trembling hand and breathed a sigh of relief. What she had assumed at first was a skull was actually a pelvic bone…and more importantly, not human. It was much too large to belong to anything smaller than an elk or moose, both of which roamed this very alpine landscape. “Too much Dateline,” she chided herself, suddenly feeling like an intruder who had stumbled upon a mystical, almost sacred, ground. She snapped the cap back over the Nikon’s lens, knowing a photograph would never do the scene justice, content merely to bear witness to the power of nature.