Shutterbugs
Featuring Catherine Ryan Hyde
I like the fact that this feature is called Shutterbugs, because I can embrace that label more easily than "photographer." I figure I spend enough time behind the lens of a camera to qualify as a shutterbug. I guess I could use the same logic to call myself a photographer, too, but I'm careful to note I'm not a professional one. I write fiction as a profession, and take photos just as a way of sharing observations. This is not false modesty. It's a kind of realism. I look at the work of professional photographers, and I know they're doing something I'm not. They are adding something to the moment. I'm documenting it, without much embellishment.
Tunisia
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I use a decent (but nothing like a professional) digital camera, almost always on automatic settings. The only thing somewhat unusual about my camera is that it has a strong zoom (24x) to enable me to take shots of otters offshore or birds from hundreds of feet away. (I don't change lenses, because my primary goal is the experience of being outdoors, and I want to take pictures in a way that doesn't infringe.) The other thing unusual about my camera: it was a holiday gift from a big group of Facebook friends, most of whom I have never met face-to-face. One of many happy events that help me feel a lot of gratitude. More about gratitude as I go on.
Santorini
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The photos I have taken, which number easily into the tens of thousands, fall into three rough categories: travel in exotic locales, nature shots from my hiking (the third in my trio of life loves), and observations from closer to home.
Oddly (or it may seem odd at first), the third category has a close tie-in with gratitude. Every day on my social networking accounts, I post a reference to something I appreciate, tagging it with the hashtag #DailyGratitude. Not because I'm a person who naturally flows over with gratitude, but because I've learned that such appreciation needs to be cultivated. So my Daily Gratitude is my daily practice. If I'm grateful for something that can be physically observed, such as my dog curled peacefully in her bed by the fire, or hummingbirds feeding outside my kitchen window, I post a photo to accompany the observation. It doesn't sound like much, but it's brought some changes to my life.
I'll offer an example.
One day I was walking my dog, Ella, on the boardwalk of Moonstone Beach Drive. I looked up at the clouds, and they looked for all the world as though they'd been painted on. I felt I could see the brush marks. And of course I didn't have my camera. Clouds are changeable. By the time you get home on foot and grab the camera, they'll be something else entirely.
I had very recently started doing my Daily Gratitude on Twitter and Facebook (and even more recently Google+).
The Andes from Machu Picchu
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India
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In case you're wondering why online, it's so someone would notice if I stopped. As soon as people started saying, "I love your Daily Gratitudes," I knew I was locked in. Which is exactly where I wanted to be. It's an accountability system.
I posted, as a Daily Gratitude, that the clouds looked as though they'd been brushed on by a painter. Even though I didn't have a photo to prove my point. And, since then, I've started carrying my camera on walks if it's any kind of dramatic cloud day. And a small percentage of my Daily Gratitude posts are now reports on "The Painter of the Clouds," with photos of the canvas in question.
Which brings me to my point about gratitude. It shifts our focus, and what we focus on expands. There's no magic to it, in my view. When I'm driving my car, if I shift my gaze, my tendency — if I don't correct it — will be to steer the direction of my attention. So it is in other areas of my life.
Bryce Canyon
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Now I look up. Often. And I see the most amazing tableaus. It's artwork. It really is. Sometimes feathery and light, sometimes heavy and dramatic enough to send a chill of respect for nature's power through me. Sometimes there's an odd combination of styles, laid right against one another. Some would be impossible to describe in words anyway. And then at dawn and dusk, the painter breaks out the colors. It never gets old, because it's never the same twice.
Before I was doing my Daily Gratitude, I never noticed the clouds. Well, rarely. I just forgot to look up.
So, two things I get from my photography. First, communication. Just the way that, as an author, I write down stories and ideas so that others can share what I'm thinking, I share the world I see through photos. And the pull to communicate in this manner is very strong. Second, it changes me by changing my attention. It causes me to move through the world looking for beauty, which shifts my focus entirely.
So, for what it's worth, included on this page are a few I've chosen from my travels, my hikes, and my cloud gazing. There are many (really, *many*) more photos on my website.
Mt. Witney Through Natural Arch
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The Wave
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