Intro by Skip Cohen
I found this post in Suzette Allen’s archives, but she shared it just a couple of months back. After spending time with Suzette and her husband Jonny just a few weeks ago, it’s so appropriate. Most of us go from day to day and every so often look back and think, “Where did the time go?”
Well, not Suzette – she walks the talk. She’s in tune with the joy around her all the time. She’s in tune with the importance of her friends, her husband Jonny, her art, spirituality, and appreciation for her life. I wish we could bottle her passion for life and when we felt down, or just a little off a beat, one teaspoon and our focus on the pure joy of living would be back, tack sharp!
The photography technique tip she shares here makes a point about capturing a little joy, even at the speed of life!
By Suzette Allen
Life goes so fast, that sometimes the details of life are not clear in the process of rushing by to accomplish all we need. On the one hand that can feel sad, and one can mourn the loss of experiencing everything fully.
Like on your wedding day—there’s just no way to see it all or remember it all, and that’s why you have a professional photographer to be sure the beautiful details and moments are captured and recorded for you! On the other hand, it can be beautiful, emotional, impossibly complex- quite intriguing!
There’s a dynamic to the energy of movement, too. An alteration of how things are seen and felt. The image is not wrong, not imperfect, not shortchanged- perhaps more exciting!
One of the ways I love to photograph the beautiful scenes we are flying by at 60mph on our journeys is to drag the shutter and pan out the window of a moving car! It’s a very fun technique I learned from Julianne Kost and it renders the most amazing and impossible images.
Many of them are horrible– (most, in fact) — but the ones that shine are like a gift! The energy they possess is uncanny, the movement they display is literally impossible and the elements that come together to make these images are fleeting! It’s a pure risk. You have a split second and many times you can’t even see what you are shooting!
So, you ask WHY? Why would I want to toy with a gamble with such bad odds against my success? Well, there is nothing else like it and no other way to capture this energy and this fleeting scene that cannot be seen with the naked eye. I like to think of it as the beautiful side of the blur of life. This is one of my very favorite blurs and just represents pure Joy to me. **Capturing Joy at the Speed of Life!**
Don’t be sad about what you may be missing, seize the moment and joyfully capture the feeling of what is happening. See the world in a beautiful light.
