Everyone Sees Differently

I had an interesting interaction about a week ago when I was out photographing at Bandon Beach in Oregon. As a caveat for those who are not familiar with Oregon Coast beaches - they are not like the beaches in Southern California or Florida - by which I mean they are cold and windy and the water this time of year requires a wet suit to go into for any significant length of time. All of which equates to the fact that social distancing is not an issue. Nobody puts down blankets and sunbathes; in fact I was wearing long pants and a sweatshirt. There were people taking walks along the beach and walking their dogs, but it is quite easy to maintain your distance. At any rate, back to my train of thought.

I was photographing near sunset…..shooting between two huge sea stacks which I was using to frame the view out to the ocean. A very pleasant and certainly well meaning woman came up to me and said something along the lines of ‘when you are done here, walk over there (pointing just a few feet from where I was)…..the light there is magical and there are some good shots to be had’. Though she didn’t have a camera with her, she was almost certainly a photographer and she was seeing the light very well. She was right. The spot she had pointed to had beautiful golden light falling on it. My plan was to move to that location to work with the light there after I took the shot I had framed up.

I quickly took my photograph and brought my camera and tripod over to the location she had pointed out, excited to see what I could do with that light. And the answer was…..nothing. Though the light was beautiful, I couldn’t compose anything that I felt made for a nice photograph. “I” couldn’t. I’m 100% sure she could. And I don’t mean that in a facetious or sarcastic way. It brought home to me the point that part of the beauty of photography is that we all see differently. And how boring it would be if we all saw the same way. I wish she could have had her camera with her and taken the photo of what she saw so that I could see it too. To me that is a big portion of what photography is about….the sharing of vision.

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