unsent draft no 5

i get this feeling when i take photos that i don't get by looking at photos taken by others. it makes me feel self centered, or disconnected in a way. as though i can only produce images that please me? and isn't the act of looking at my own photos with a dopey smile a bit narcissistic?

also, the photos are of mundane pretties - like flowers or a ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds above a spring landscape. maybe it isn't just the object in it, but the moment that comes together when the shutter opens. from all these different places, here and there like lighting and composition and focus and action and object and it all comes together to make this small little ball of happiness because i made a moment. some moments are better than others. it's not something you see when you look at the photo, it's something i feel during the act of taking it. then all my photos, all 1988 items uploaded for the world to see.

they do something in my mind but i feel that experience doesn't deliver to the audience. appreciation is different from the pride of creation. understanding the process and capturing that chance to show at another time to another being doesn't fully translate. would the butterfly in a glass jar be an appropriate metaphor here? you can see the pretty thing within the constrained and refined environment of the jar, but you will never know what it felt like to chase that particular butterfly, to feel that adrenaline, to swing that catching net and to put it into the cage without harming it physically. yet you do, harm it - by looking at it so much

sometimes i want to tear up the photograph. stop looking, stop recording. put the camera down and interact with others around me. let moments come and go, let memories fade. let it be a unique gift