it's not a "shot" .......... it's a picture

"menemsha memory"

martha's vineyard

100407

I gave a copy of my 2012 calendar to my therapist yesterday, with this image on the cover.  She started to say "nice shot"....but I have said that I don't like the language of aggression -- "shot", "capture" -- for photographs, and she changed her wording to say "nice picture".  We went on to talk a little about how the word "picture" is better, and her line of thought opened up many new possibilities for me which I have only begun to think about and see, but I want to say something about it now because it is fresh, exciting and encouraging.

Actually the key word IS "possibility".  It is much more exciting and encouraging to think about what lies between the four edges of the above image as a world to be explored -- a physical world of seas, skies, efforts and journeys, and a metaphorical world of those same things -- than it is to think about this image as a "shot", a "capture" of those fishing boats and piers, which contains, lists, controls,  enumerates, documents and fixes them.

We all know that those boats are not fixed.  We all know that they venture forth on seas known and unknown, in conditions safe and dangerous, so why not let this picture suggest all those possibilities in our minds and to our sight?  

I hope it does, and I wish you all the best of possibilities in your pictures.

~ robert