I Walk the Line

There’s a certain thrill in clenching a fist at a poker table, before opening it to reveal one chip, two chips, or an empty hand.

Are you betting against the high hands or the low hands? Or are you betting it all on winning both by extracting five of seven cards for the high and a different group of five for the lowest low?

Will you take the whole pot, or nothing?

The possible highs and lows are limited by face-down cards you have not seen, and there’s no reward for anything in-between.

Wherever I’ve found myself in the world, my camera has been poised for the landscape shot. Extended into a panorama, my phone camera actively protests if I do not continuously anchor my shot at the exact midline of whatever’s before me.

The line where there is no up and no down, but just a steady line from West to East.

Unlike a photographic ouvre as a whole, the highs and lows are in strict, symmetrical equipoise.

I frequently focus on the horizon, the great midpoint of the view from a pint-sized human’s inconsequential height.

But sometimes I change it up. I climb a bridge or a mountain. A Hellcat tower or an Icelandic cliff. I fling myself underneath a giant spider sculpture and look up at various angles. I wade into the ocean or across a muddy bog.

I point up at installation art, architecture, and intra-species imbroglios. I shoot high or down at the earth below my feet, excising external cues so viewers may have no idea what they are seeing, or how it fits into its surroundings. I shoot at reflected images which will never reappear in exactly the same light, color, or form.

The context is gone, so imagination can take over.

I’ve learned that sometimes, when the surf is so high it drowns out other sounds, and one is poised to click a shutter on another plebian midline Golden Ratio shot, I should pause. Look up and down.

I might find something only fleetingly present, and irreplaceable.

You never know what may flash across the heavens, or have settled quietly at your feet.