Right Here and Right Now

So our next photo prompt is about embracing and recognizing how each moment is a new one. It's a place we've never been, it's something we've never tried ... it's about attempting ~ beginning ~ savoring the right here and now.

from 52 Photos Project

Yesterday I took myself to a loose interpretation of "a place I've never been", which was the other side of the wetlands at The Morris Arboretum.  I can't say there was too much on that other side that worked out photographically speaking, especially since it was Noon by the time I arrived.

But the sun was warming, and I meandered over to the more interesting side after a spell.  While walking, I pushed myself to ask if I would want to make this a place for a year-long project.

I'm hovering over a "no" to that idea as what I realized is that for me recording a place through the seasons may be too scientific.  I dug down to the core of what sparks the thrill for me, and I came up with adventure and discovery.  

The unknown is what drives me; the combination of possibility and probability.  Knowing each time I set off with my camera around my neck, I will probably return with something pleasing or at least acceptable, even though I have no idea what it will be. Yet there is the possibility I will come home disappointed with nothing to show for my time and exertion. 

Since December, I have been looking for a project.  I've made a list of ideas, starting on some and crossing out others. I seem to want to be part of a story, and recording a tree through the seasons, well, I'm not sure, yet, if I can fit into that specific story.    

I've begun doing breakfast diptychs, a before and after sort of story, not every morning, but, when my meal is different than the day before and the light on the table is sufficient.  It serves a purpose some days of focusing me into my thoughts and feelings.

A couple days ago, I began an up/down diptych at sunset.  My feet and something beyond the horizon line.  If it doesn't stick, I'll let it go, but no harm in trying these ideas out.  I rather like capturing the near-beginning and end of daylight, knowing that a tale of a day unfolded in-between. 

I have one story, however, that I desperately want to tell.  It's the story of me and my pups.  I have been studying the map of hiking trails of our Wissahickon valley and considering trying to hike the main trails with my "boys" over the year and photograph our journey.  Really, it's the story of friendship: between them, between us, and the sharing of an activity and place that if I had a tail, I'd be wagging, too.

So, the place I have never been turns out to be the unknown story within.  The leaning towards telling it free-form yet toying with controls and variables.

The right here and right now is simply nothing more than a moment's new idea.