A fabulous clicking in my skull

I am absurdly pleased with this photo. I spent a good ten minutes taking photos of the row of trees of which it is a part, and scrolling through them I knew this was the one. Like yesterday, I was torn between the colour and black and white versions. Until the last minute I was going to post the mono one , since I posted yesterday's in colour, but I love the colour version too much. It was one of those rare (for me) occasions when the photo on the screen matches what you had in your head when you took it.

The other day, Arachne described visiting a well-known viewpoint where visitors were so occupied with taking photos of each other that they failed to notice the view. Something that's struck me in the past at well-known tourist spots is that many people take the obvious photo and then move on, without actually looking at their surroundings and deciding what appeals to them. Taj Mahal. Click. Buckingham Palace. Click. I was there. Click. And so on. All this reminded me of an essay by Paul Theroux, which I dug out after a brief search of the bookshelves -- it's in Sunrise with Sea Monsters. It's called The Cerebral Snapshot, and it opens:

"It is my good fortune that I've never owned a camera. Once, when I was in Italy, I saw about three dozen doves spill out of the eaves of an old cathedral. It was lovely, the sort of thing that makes people say if only I had a camera! I didn't have a camera with me and have spent the last two and a half years trying to find the words to express that sudden deluge of white doves ... When I'm able to express it I'll know I've made the grade as a writer."

Later he recounts driving in Kenya with a friend at sunset and seeing a group of running giraffes.  His friend fires away taking photos and after the giraffes have gone and they are driving on, his friend says that they should have stayed longer with the giraffes. Why? "If you take pictures of things you don't really see them".

I can see his point, especially in a situation like that, a fleeting, never-to-be-repeated moment which you are desperate to capture -- I've felt like that myself. Sometimes it's better not to have a camera, or to put it aside and just look, storing away the visual memory:

"I have often sat staring at something wide-eyed, feeling a fabulous clicking in my skull, snapping everything in sight ... when you see a sunset or a giraffe or a child eating a melting ice cream cone there is a chemical reaction inside you. If you really stand as innocent as you can, something of the movement, entering through your eyes, gets into your body where it continues to rearrange your senses."

I think he's a bit unfair on photography though. I could have attempted to describe these trees in words, but I think there's as much value in carefully studying them and considering exactly what angle, what framing, what processing will convey what I feel is essential about them -- the shape against the sky, the contrast of the dark, twisted trunk with the pale, flimsy reeds, the shadows, the track leading the eye to the village beyond. It's a trivial, everyday scene, not a famous monument, but I've made it mine.

If you look in large, you can just see the top of the village clock tower on the left. I like the way that our village hides from view until you are very close to it.

PS Backblipped due to 24 hours and counting of no Internet. Merci Orange.