Through the viewfinder: Seeing with photos 🗣️

I love taking photos, especially pictures that help me see or make me think. Here's a story about a favorite photo that helped me see and think, and 3 reasons why it's a favorite. (Audio; 2:58)

My love of photography began as a preteen when I was gifted my first camera, a simple little Kodak “Hawkeye Instamatic II”:

Photo of my old Kodak Hawkeye Instamatic II camera, by Etsy seller retroEra

I quickly began squirreling away my birthday and holiday gift monies to buy it 126 film and cube flash bulbs. From using it, I learned early that photography helps me see and think, just like writing helps me learn and think, and I’ve kept at least one camera in my life ever since.

Here’s an example ‘seeing and thinking’ photo, the story behind how I took it, and some thoughts it prompted. My next post will be on how this photo also helped me to think about software development and changing the world. Subscribe to automatically get my future posts in your inbox (it’s free):

‘Seeing’ More Through The Viewfinder

When I took this fall pond photo in 2008, it quickly joined my favorites for three reasons.

Reason 1: Like many of my favorite pictures, this one was a serendipitous snap. My daily commute from 2001-2008+ took me past this pond every morning and night. From the street that morning, the mist and foliage colors on the water caught my eye. I pulled into the lot to enjoy the pretty scene for a few minutes before going to my office. Then I remembered that the small Nikon Coolpix I’d bought while living in China in 2007 was in my purse, and I could photograph the scene!

Original photo by Karen Smiley, fall 2008, Lake Raleigh, NC, taken with Nikon Coolpix L10; licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Reason 2: Taking this photo reconfirmed that early lesson about how taking pictures helps me see. After going down to the water’s edge, I spotted the big group of geese on the right. I started to compose a photo of them with the mist and reflected fall foliage. Then, through my camera lens, I noticed the trail in the water in front of the flock. I visually followed the trail to see the solo goose way out in front, and quickly recomposed to get them all in one photo before they sped out of view.

Reason 3: As an adult, the experience of belatedly seeing the lone goose way out front, and then taking this photo, gave me a new lesson. It made me wonder how often I might miss noticing a 'water trail', and thus remain unaware of the 'goose' that caused it (in real life, not just in scenes I’m photographing).

Nowadays, I keep this photo in rotation as a laptop background, to remind me of both lessons. And I’ve gifted starter cameras to my grandkids 😊

If you’re a photographer like me, does taking pictures helps you see & think, too? Or do you ‘see’ the process differently? Please share your thoughts & examples!

Credits and References

Thank you to

Arman Anwar

and

Lakshmi Veeramani

for their kind feedback on drafts of this post 😊

Camera info links:

• Kodak Hawkeye Instamatic II Camera (brochure in a museum in Australia)

• Nikon Coolpix L10 camera (manufacturer info page)