doug

I was thinking of it as 2 snaps only, though admittedly they'd have to be elastic

I was on a bus yesterday or the day before; and there was a man who seemed to be in the area for only a day or so; and he was swinging around trying to snap everything, changing lenses at the same time; and I wondered how much he would actually get with all his exposures

One sees a much wider expanse than the camera sees; and one carries a memory movie of context along with the visible; and what the camera samples not only misses that but transforms what it doesn't. The landscape photographer who has learned well somehow compensates for that, as the painter does; whereas for so many of us one is left with what is visible through the frame without the compensation for what is lost

For the record this was the north coast of Cornwall from the west into St Ives. He was on a trip whereas, fundamentally, I was going home; and that changes things considerably. I do go there for pleasure, I have gone there primarily for pleasure, and there was a time when i took to crossing the peninsula from north to south from the point when I became aware that this chap was exposing a whole roll of film. It is beautiful and I wanted more.

Someone who declined to share my then enthusiasm for going up and over what they took to be rough terrain, asked me to take pictures to show them what it was, visually, that I gained from the journey. I took the photos and they showed nothing of the kind. The drop to the road and then far beyond the next drop to the sea, looked like a park slope. The relative immensity of the Irish Sea showed as a few square centimetres of blur. The blaze of Cornish heath was homogenised. The lonliness of the abandoned buldings was nowhere suggested.

It could be done better. A better photographer, a better camera. A snap doesn't do it.

I had to look away from him, the tourist on the bus, eventually. It was my first trip out that way for a long time, and I wasnt sure when I would be again, and I was trying to get all I could from it. The anxiety of a sense of loss was made more intense by being on a bus. It is so much better, I know, to walk through a landscape, without glass in the way and with the ability to stand still and walk back and, best of all, to stand still a long time.

I felt *that loss intensely, having missed the place I am talking about for some time for a number of personal reasons; and just being there was enough, without wanting to try to preserve it.

I used when I travelled to take lots of pictures. Now I may take none, finding I remember the better if I do not *try to preserve the experience. I have been thinking of how much I enjoyed an internal airflight I took in the USA a few years ago, low down and able to really see the countryside; and I have been wondering how much of it I would remember if I had taken a handful of photographs

When I saw Porthmeor Beach this week, at first I wondered if I hadn't made a mistake; and it was only by spending some time there that I began to grasp how i might make something of it. I walked along close to the sands and then took myself further back, into the cemetery for the initial writing, where I was able to fill in what was not necessarily visible. Having the pose of a persona looking helped me, I think - while what is really visible is an unwelcome limitation, the range of what one could say is a problem, and one needs a way of bringing both into a kind of balance. Porthminster, and the harbour, is becoming my own Mr Victoire, if I have the name of Cezanne's mountain right; and I always seem to find something to do with that scene - the completion of a loft extension from just below my vantage point has denied me some useful material! I think that in that case it is the hetergeneity of what is visible which makes it productive. There's always a new set of details to be extracted

Thanks for the kind comment

L


-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, June 30, 2005 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: snaps 29th june


  whether seen quite as you imagined or not, Lawrence, it's a nifty
  string of photosnaps; practically a museum in itself.