a trip to Joshua Tree in spring 2009, part 1: tether unfurling

This post is the first in a series. To see more photos of Joshua Tree, click here.

In 2008 going to Yosemite I felt like taking pictures every waking second of the day, and I wasn’t selective about what I shot- everything was fascinating. I found infinite variety in the forest. The act of composing was pure intoxication.

The next year, as we drove to the desert, my perspective was different. Wedding photography had changed me. The act of shooting was only exhilarating now, not intoxicating. I wasn’t drunk on photography and clicking madly. I could wait for the right moment to get a shot.

Not that I took fewer photos this trip. But this time, I knew what I was after. I thought about my shots in advance­– planning them upon arrival on the scene, and executing them in a machinelike fashion, all in a row. Ten from this position, ten from a slightly different one. Move twenty feet and repeat. These habits were acquired while using shot lists and constantly searching for the best angles on the bride. My job had turned me into a robot operating a camera.

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a trip to Yosemite in spring 2008

To see more Yosemite National Park photos, click here.

My first journey to Yosemite happened in some parallel universe, some magical span of time outside the normal course of my life. It was a week of dedicated playtime, the longest vacation from work I’d had since starting Red Bat Photography, a week with no purpose in mind but the having of fun. To make this good thing even better, I had my camera with me. Never before had I been on a trip to a beautiful place while in possession of my own camera equipment. Always before I'd borrowed from others, always I'd had to return the goods. I couldn't properly bond with those previous cameras, couldn't feel at one with them. 

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Pictured below: some of the smallest rooms in the world.

Welcome to my own personal Rebecca-only photography site! For those of you who followed me here from Red Bat Photography, thank you for joining me in this new adventure.

I’ve created this space to share with you my experience of taking pictures and looking at them. I’m examining the ways this camera/operator unit partners with the world, through the viewfinder and in snapshots on the screen later. How does shooting interact with living for me? Let’s align the imagined with the recorded and find the gaps, which are interesting and have their own shapes. Though these gaps only exist in my mind, photos help me feel their contours, examine their contents. True reality, not just the stuff we think of as reality, is floating in those crevices. At least, I think it is. If it's floating anywhere, it's got to be there.

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