Author: David Jenkins

It is a truism, I suppose that we all need space.  One marketing group I used to work for had a motto of, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” Worked for them. Mind, as a group, they have now gone the way of the dodo.

We’ve been overwhelmed by the term, “Social Distancing”, and as a physician I read the other day said, “It should be called Physical Distancing, we need to keep the social interaction”  But, again, such are the ways of marketing.

And just as we have personal connections, even if it only be through “Zoom”, so in the natural world.
Everything in the natural world is connected to everything else.  Ripples on the water make wonderful poetry from the reflections of the trees. Watching a cat soak up and enjoy the warming sunshine. The final journey of an orange-red leaf, as its work over, it falls, for its next connection as it replenishes the earth.

As a nature photographer, with a commercial photography background, I can’t help but sometimes make connections not only to the creature, but also to its habitat, habits, community connections, and how it links into the wider world around. For commercial, (product) photographers, the subject needs to have a connection to its surrounds. It’s not just a laundry basket, but a basket to carry clothes, useful in its setting by the washing machine.

We have, EE and I, and David Nice, been following a pair of local Black-shouldered Kites in their nesting process. And it has all come to fruition in three healthy, active and overly-enthusiastic young fledglings.

Now about 10 days on the wing, their training will change to learning to hunt for themselves. Life outside the nest, is for them a matter of innumerable connections, from the weather, the availability of food, through to finding a mate and beginning their own opportunities to add to the species.

Currently Dad-he is the main provider-is beginning to encourage them to recognise potential food opportunities

And so it was.

I was sitting in the long grass on a small hillock, watching the young fly out and back waiting for Dad to turn up with a meal.

And the time dragged on.

After much waiting, calling and wing-flapping, first one, then another landed on a tree just in front of me. A bit above eyelevel.

There they sat. Crying occasionally, preening, and watching for Dad.

After a time, a real change occurred in their behaviour as they began to take more than a passing interest in the grassy area just to my left. Literally.  Head bobbing, peering and stepping left and right.  It was obvious that something had happened that made a hungry young kite aware.

One dropped.

Off the branch, into the grass and just on my left. Maybe 6-7 metres.  Now whatever had been there was well gone to safety, but our young kite was not one to give up, and proceeded to check around the grass. It completely ignored my presence and EE who was a bit further around on the other side of the tree.
I’ve said it before, but there is something deeply touching about being so close to a raptor that you can see its feathers rise and fall as it breaths.

The light was late afternoon, we, the bird and I,  were in the shade of the hillock, and that soft melded light seemed to suit the mood of a powerful raptor engaged in an experimental life moment.

Satisfied that it had missed a food opportunity, it lifted off, and flew over me, the wing noise was discernible.  A loop around the tree and it went over EE at a little over head-height, and she smiled enjoying the moment.

Connected.

“Daring to Look”, is a book of the some of the work of an American 1930s photographer named Dorothea Lange.

Many no doubt will have never heard of Dorothea, but chances are extremely high that you will have seen at least one, or two of her stunning photos. They are stunning not because of their gifted photographic skill and design, but rather of the compelling story that in encased (almost wrote enshrined) in the study.

One of them was used eventually as the image on a USP stamp.

Here is a link to see, “Migrant Mother,
Oh, you’ll say, I’ve seen that before.
And another to “White Angel Breadline“

A quick Google will of course find many more, but here is a good selection.
Which also has a quick potted history of her work during the great depression and among Japanese internees during WWII.
The one thing the site doesn’t describe is her slowmoving train wreck family life, nor does it really emphasise the struggles she made to have her work recognised. But those details are well documented elesewhere.

She once said, “Every image you make, ever photograph you see, becomes in a sense a self-portrait. The portrait is made more meaningful by intimacy—an intimacy shared not only by the photographer with the subject, but by the audience.”

I’ve told the tale before, when as a little tacker with a library card I managed to get invited from the ‘junior’ section of the country library, into the mystic “adult section’. I have no idea who or why, but the photographic shelves had quite a number of portfolio size books, and I could pour over the works of the greats.
One of which was Dorothea Lange.

At the time, I had no idea of the ‘great’ depression, or the dust-bowl refugees, nor, can I say with some confidence did I register the social significance of Dorothea’s work. All I knew was that these photos said something imporant, and they had been placed in a folio selection, so, they must be good.

Better than my shots of ‘Blackie’ the cat on the verandah in the sunshine.

And somewhere in those musings on lazy weekend afternoons at the library, the concept of being able to use photography for more than just a record or a mindless selfie began to crystalise. What would emerge, a squishy blob (blog?) or a wonderful butterfly?

Later on I would learn that Dorothea also said, “It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer, any more, than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.”

She was once described as a “Photographic Witneses”. Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field, contains not only photographs from her work, but also previously unpublished field notes of her work for each photo.

Perhaps those folios in the library did not just get there by accident. How wonderful is the workings of the universe sometimes.

It’s interesting how as photographers we keep striving to make improvements to our vision or style. Finding a better way to approach a subject, explore new lighting options, wrestle with buying that ‘new’ lens that will give us a ‘better’ pictures or that new piece of software that will ‘uncover the hidden photograph in your collection’.

Many lightyears ago, in the days of filum, I was a member of a group of working photographers that would get together on an ad-hoc basis every other month or so, and generally we’d meet in a cafe in Lygon Street Fitzroy for a late Friday lunch, well it was a lunch that went late. Sometimes we’d bring along prints or tear-sheets for discussion. The last few times I remember taking the old iPad with a few pictures of recent making.

One of the house rules was it was a discussion on all things photography, from technique, to style, to equipment, processes, other people’s work, and future opportunities. Sometimes it was a bit like a parliamentary debate, other times more like a inspirational speakers session. Just depended on how much ‘red-ned’ was consumed during the course of the afternoon.

But one question, we all had to have an answer to was “Whatchabeendoin” What new image, vision, exploration or direction we had each been travelling in.

One of the group was oft to quote a verse from St. Matthew 6  “Behold, the birds of the air…. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin”
Gotta love that 1611 King Jimmie English.  “Behold”.  Not just make a glancing look or a peek, but drum roll, Behold!

He’d almost always bring it up when someone was lamenting the slow down of business, the ungratefulness of clients, or the problems of marketing a new product. His point was always the same, well, at least as I remember.
Bird’s don’t go to another lecture, another seminar on how to find clients for their song, they just sing. No bird has ever had to attend a month long session with a personal trainer on the benefits of correct nest building. No bird looks at its current situation and laments not having this or that opportunity to expand its business. They just do bird things.

No flower sits worrying about should it move overseas for a better market, change its colour or its style to match the ‘current trend’, nor does a flower seek out a self-help guru to improve its image.  They just continue to make the world a brighter place to live.

It is as Mike Johnson over on TOPS says, “Viewing an expressive photograph has the potential to be an occasion”
Most people see art as a static event. You go to a gallery, the sculpture is the same week in week out, the painting remains inert, the basket-weaving or quilted piece in unchanging. Ready to be reviewed, but never “Beheld”.

Yet as Mike goes on to explain, “It can also be an encounter. The potential to be an event in the viewer’s life”
We are so bombarded these days with visuals, sometimes very graphic visuals, that it all becomes a bit old hat.
Yet for someone who works behind the camera, takes the time to work through post-processing and ponders over the variations on a theme from a photoshot, the occasion of showing a finished piece is a gifting and the viewer’s response is part of that. It is an Encounter.