I took today’s photograph in 2014, as I stood atop Bald Rock Mountain at Bald Rock Heritage Preserve in SC. That blue mountain you see is Paris Mountain. That mountain-sized fluffy cloud you see does not have a name, as far as I know. But it is certainly impressive, looking bluish gray in this photo, partly because what you see is the shadow side of the cloud, and partly because I probably increased the saturation a bit to get the colors to pop, and the natural blue in the cloud became more pronounced.
The yellow and orange sky is pretty close to what I saw that morning. I can only imagine that interesting color transition was somehow caused by the low position of the sun, and possibly distant clouds or atmospheric particles low in the sky and unseen by the camera (not an atmospheric expert; I’m just guessing).
I spent several minutes looking at this photograph trying to understand why it is so interesting to me. The colorful sky, the giant cloud, and the blue mountain are playing the part but something else speaks to me, and for a while I wasn’t sure what.
It was certainly a beautiful morning. And I was standing on a mountaintop. That’s quite a compelling combination: standing on a mountaintop, looking out on a beautiful morning. But this photograph represents one additional thing, beyond the situation and the scenery and my punching up of the colors. This photo represents something that the naked eye cannot see. You might think that the blue mountain is fairly close to where I stood. But it’s not.
And that’s the thing that makes the photo special.
Bald Rock and Paris Mountain are almost 25 miles apart. Standing on top of one mountain and looking out does not give you a close-up view of the other mountain. It looks small in the distance. It took two things to get what you see in the photo: a camera with a long lens to pull it in closer and editing software to crop in even further. With those technical advancements, it’s possible to make it look as though the viewer is not on the mountaintop, but somewhere in the air over 20 miles away.
The impetus for my photography was to capture memories. I quickly realized that I could make those memories more beautiful than they were in person. And now I’ve realized that I can ostensibly project myself across a non-traversable scene or out into the air and create a perspective that would not be otherwise available to me. That image will bring forth a memory, different and better. And so, I stood on a mountaintop with a camera and a long lens on a beautiful morning and took the first step in creating a memory of a perspective that did not and could not have happened.
If you are wondering about the veracity of editing a photo of reality, already affected by a zoomed in lens, then I will remind you of what a memory is: in most cases, especially if time has passed, it is not a truth; it is a recollection of a past event that has been softened or hardened or blurred or otherwise affected by what the mind needs to do in order to accept that memory. I am not a journalist. I am not looking for objective truth in my photos. My photos capture pleasant memories, memories at least as accurate as the ones that come to us in our minds.
And so far, my photos have served me well.