“You’re out here gathering your image assets, you have a good eye, get back there!”
Good case in point right here. I had been walking the Rio Tesuque for a while and was starting to work my way back towards Santa Fe. I drove past something that caught my attention and went probably a quarter of a mile before convincing myself to go back and look. I scanned the road ahead, identified a good spot to make a u-turn, I paused to check for traffic in the rear view mirror after the turn and happened to look to my right and saw this beautifully lit little dirt lane leading off into the unknown. I immediately knew that I had to stop and explore this one.
This image takes me back to the simpler times in life. I call them simpler because they seem so with our world today being so fast paced and full of technology. But in reality life was more labor intensive and demanding in many respects than it is today. We like to think the times were simpler and easier, but I’m afraid we would find it just as demanding if we were able to teleport ourselves back to then. That’s okay though, because the real point of an image conjuring up those thoughts is to provide an avenue to escape from some of today’s demands, take a breath and smile and relax in thoughts of those ‘simpler times’.
After getting my shots here I got back in the car and drove on down to what had originally caught my attention. I truly don’t even remember what it was now, but it ended up not being anything of interest. And I am completely convinced that if I had not heeded that spark of intuition I would never have even seen this scene. It would have passed unnoticed.
“Photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… it has little to do with things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” — Elliot Erwitt
(Originally published July 28, 2016)