One bright morning
when my work is over
man will fly away home
-Rastaman Chant

Be Thou Light issuing forth out of Darkness,
I am Darkness issuing forth out of Light,
Yea, Issuing Forth from Thee...
-Ahab, addressing the Whale.

These days it seems like I’m spending a lot of time waiting for the next interesting photo to come along. I don’t think its because I’m a worser photographer than before. Its more that my standards and expectations have risen. The exciting images come less frequently, simply because they are harder to attain.

An they come from unexpected quarters as well. I’m really pretty happy with “One Bright Morning” shown here. I just snapped it with a new junk camera sometime in the last few weeks, while roaring down the highway through a patch of fog.

Some folks might argue that its more of a graphic than a photograph. Granted – after scanning the film I subject the curves to some mighty manipulation in Photoshop. But I still shot this on film, spooled it onto developing rolls, dropped it into the tank, mixed up the developer, and took it through all the steps.

I don’t think the digital manipulation is any more profound than what a good darkroom expert could achieve. Man Ray could create this effect blindfolded (though being blindfolded in the darkroom is a bit redundant.) But I basically slapped the curves around to simulate a solarization effect, one that I believe would be achievable using a combination of film solarization and print solarization. But then, what do I know about the darkroom?

At any rate – the big beef real artists have about photographers is that it is a ‘mechanical art.’ Inherently representational, in photography you take what you get (er... maybe that’s ‘you get what you take.’) Well – either way, you are not creating it from scratch, its more about recording. So in a sense digital manipulation opens the doors to more creative, less mechanical and representative work.

Nonetheless, I like this shot. I added the red border around the black and white photo, just because black, white, and red are a pleasing color combination. Red is outside the photo’s frame, because the Work is incomplete.

I was thinking of the Wailers’ song when I took this shot, but after looking that the print, and the darkenss around the sun, the quote from Moby Dick came to mind, and both resonate with my feelings on the shot.

Ah – one bright morning...