Two of my favorite photographs do not exist, and they never have. This is not so much a paradox as it is a statement of philosophy. Occasionally in my travels, there have been moments that have transpired so quickly it was impossible to experience them as a participant and also capture them in a photograph. Such serendipitous moments are rare, but they function as a touchstone for my beliefs as a traveller and force me to decide whether I want to live an event firsthand or simply record it as an outsider.
Whenever I travel, I walk around with a camera slung over my hip, so this may sound hypocritical, but to me the camera is an impediment—it stands between me and the authentic experience. To be honest, I kind of hate it. I have a difficult time being in the moment when I have to record the moment. Capturing an experience with a photograph necessitates sacrificing some aspect of that experience. How can one savor life looking through a viewfinder?
When you take a picture, the scope of an event is narrowed to the image allowed by the lens—everything else becomes secondary, yet memory is so much more than a singular image; the entire spectrum of our sensory perceptions may be embedded in a recollection. As with a photograph, we “see” a memory, but we also feel, hear, smell, and sometimes taste it.
Consider a photograph of something as ubiquitous as the sun. The frozen image will tell us where it was positioned in the sky, even how intensely it shone, but our other senses are left dumb. The varied riches of experience are missing. Did that sun bore down on you, baking your skin while the desert wind whispered and pressed small granules of sand into your eyes? If it was the beleaguered sun of a prairie winter, we could see it frozen in its low orbit, caught in a ring of crystal air and mocking imitations, but we do not hear the muffled crunch of boots on snow and feel the air so cold it bites our lungs. Imagine the furtive sun of a jungle setting, so obscure as to not exist in the image. Yet it did move above you, flitting beyond the canopy and stealing glances between the leaves. In the speckled shadows, you drew in the fetid air and clutched at slick roots as you struggled up a muddy hillside.
To illustrate this point, let me describe two of my favorite photographs that do not fill empty spaces in any of my albums.
The setting for the first is Banderos Bay on the eastern coast of Mexico. We are in a small boat that for the last hour has been chasing whale sightings. The humpbacks are playing all over the bay, and we have seen dozens of them, but we’ve also experienced the baking Mexican sun, the arching blue sky, and the salt spray that leaves the salt tingle on your lips and a dry film on your skin. All of my photographs have come at the tail end of a sighting—literally. I have twenty pictures of flukes arching out of the water. We have seen quite a few whales breach; two even came up side by side, but they have all been at a distance—not really worthy of a photograph.
The afternoon is stretching out. We’ve seen more than our fair share, and it’s time to turn back to shore. I feel that the travel gods have been generous, and I am more than willing to call it a day. Then there comes a sudden, massive eruption of water scarcely fifty feet from our boat. A whale is breaching right beside us. My SLR is in hand, trigger finger poised, but some part of me refuses to place the lens finder between my eye and this tremendous spectacle.
The humpback soars twenty feet into the air with droplets of water cascading from it fins. As it nears the apex, it spins a graceful half-turn, exposing its belly to the sun, and the corduroy skin glistens. There is a pause, a moment of held breath and expectant silence, then it crashes back into the ocean. There is a deep whoosh, and its huge fins slap down in dual thunderclaps. Jets of water spray in horizontal fountains.
Stunned silence, but before the surge arrives to nudge our boat, a chorus thrills. I share a look of exultation with my companion, and she asks, “Did you get that?”
I glance down at the camera, all but forgotten in my hand, and do not suffer even a flash of regret.
Did I get that?
Absolutely.
Change the frame.
The setting is now the Canadian Rockies on the summit of Mount Saint Piran. Let me clarify: in this case, summit refers to the rounded cap of a small mountain, and it is only a four-hour hike from Lake Louise. It’s probably the easiest scramble in the Rockies, but it offers absolutely stunning views. And appreciating the view is what I was doing when I failed to capture the second of my favorite non-existent photographs.
Approaching the summit of Piran, it is necessary to navigate a chaos of boulders ranging from the size of a chair to a half-ton truck. At the top, however, the rocks are mostly fist-size and flat, so your footing is very secure. I have lucked out with a perfect day. There is no threat of rain, and the clouds are hardly a sprinkle. It feels as though I can see forever. The sun is warm on my shoulders, and there is just enough of a wind to begin cooling my sweat from the last hundred meters of jumping boulders. The air is so pure, it tastes like spring water.
Then I hear thunder, but it isn’t thunder. A massive ledge of snow and ice has broken loose from the face of Mount Lefroy. I am almost level with this frozen cascade, and I have a front row seat. Because of the distance, it seems to happen in slow motion. There is a slight disconnect between the avalanche I see and the one I hear, and it makes the event somewhat surreal.
My camera is at my feet, on top of my backpack, and as soon as I realize what is happening, my first instinct is to reach down and grab it. I begin the motion, but as soon as my eyes pull away from the distant mountainside, I realize my mistake. A voice inside me tells me to let it go. I straighten up and simply experience the show. I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but it was such a sense of relief—this realization that I do not have to record everything.
I watch the snow and ice crash down and then spread in a white plume, and I am completely satisfied.
There is a Buddhist form of art in which intricate mosaics are created with colored rice. The grains of rice are not fixed to any surface, so the image may last no longer than a day, according to the vagaries of the weather, and this transitory nature adds beauty to the art. Sometimes I think travel should be like that. Experience it, let the moment pass, treasure the memory forever.
So, here are two images I would love to share, but I can’t. They exist only in memory. When I relive them, the memory is as much tactile as it is visual. My memory is not HD—it’s exponentially better. The experience of memory is woven into the sequential tapestry of my lifetime; its impact cannot be lost, nor can it be duplicated in binary code.
I love photography. I love to capture an image, and I enjoy sharing these moments of beauty. But it is very clear in my mind that the image is secondary to the experience. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it is no substitute for one second of experience.
Kenneth D. Reimer lives on the Canadian Great Plains with his wife, Lisa, and a cat named Nazca who likes to bite him on the leg. He has a Master’s in English and spent decades working as an educator. Whenever possible, he travels the world and attempts to record its wonders. His favorite art form is the short story, but he also enjoys nonfiction and poetry. Occasionally, he takes on the challenge of longer fiction, ranging from novellas to novels, including Zero Time. Samples of his other writing can be viewed at KennethDReimer.com.