My father
once told me that to take good pictures of snow-covered landscapes, one needs shadows.
A field of snow in
bright mid day sun, or even in dull even light of an overcast sky, is unremarkable.
A lot of white and nothing else.
To take pictures of snow, my father waits until evening; when the sun is low, and shadows leap from the feet of trees and zip across the landscape in a race to the opposite horizon.
Shadows give character to snow. They break up what otherwise is
merely an expanse of white. They roll up and down the rise and fall of the land. They intersect with
other shadows; fence posts, stalks of uncut wheat, and grain silos. Shadows allow the photographer to blend the vertical with the horizontal.
Wow. How like life.
Don't we all tend, on one level or another, to organize our lives into parallel and
uninterrupted patterns? Into the vertical or the horizontal?
Columns of date planner schedules. Columns of data in spreadsheets at work. Lists of things to do pinned on the refrigerator. Or
you live in rows. Long queues, waiting for morning Starbucks. Car behind car behind car in multi-lane freeways. Schedules that emphasize
'do this then do this then do this then....'
But how often do we verticals pause and look for the horizontal? How often do we horizontals stop and search the vertical? While scanning our lists or changing
lanes of traffic, do we ever stop to smile at our co-worker, or pause
and stare at the sky? During our day do we ever glance down at the ground and
study the grass, or look sideways to that faded photo of our child at age nine, all dressed up for pioneer
day at school?
My father taught me that a good picture of snow is actually a picture
of shadows. The trees are real. The snow is real. The shadows add dimension.
And in life, the fast lanes of traffic or the long columns of data are real. But a bird flying overhead or an unexpected handshake and hello from a neighbor
add dimension.
Don't be featureless. Find your shadows. Add dimension.