ON MY WAY HOME

When you have to get on a little cruiser and float across a wide gluey dirty moody lagoon as your only way to reach your home and you happen to be a photographer, you can do so while enjoying the fast windy ride you control with your accelerator and let loose or you can slow down a little bit just enough for your photographic eye to catch scenes and moods which you find enthralling for reasons only you may actually know. Or you can do both. Especially if you don’t have to worry about the wellbeing of your high-end camera because you don’t have that high-end camera with you but, instead, you have that little pesky thingy into your pocket called a smartphone. Yep, that thing.

So this is what I choose to do with my non-pro regular base model iPhone 15. I pull it when my eyes lock into some kind of a view and the feeling of that lock pushes my hand to slowly pull the wheel back and slow the cruiser down to a crawl. And then, I just click. I shoot whatever feels good, for the feeling of it, with no pressure to examine shutter speeds and focal lengths and ISOs, with just enough basic composition know-how and composure to transfer my experience onto 2D rectangles I’m glad to let the boys at LA process as they please.

Well, not quite, because I eventually check and select and delete and retain and improve and export. But still. I do what the moment calls for on my way back and forth across the lagoon, building memories of my solo boat trips one click at a time.

And the results I happen to love.