Patricia M Osborne

Patricia’s Pen has great pleasure to welcome its first photography feature with Michael Q Powell. I became acquainted with Michael’s work via Twitter when I immediately followed his blog to ensure I didn’t miss out on a single shot. His photographs have inspired me to write many poems. Below Michael shares his journey through photography.

My Journey through Photography

Michael Q Powell

I’m a photographer, so what am I doing on a blog about writing? As I started to contemplate this conundrum, I realized that I am a writer. The Latin root words for photography literally mean “light writing.” While poets write with words, I write with light, a light that can be broken up into many colors and can illuminate or hide, a light that at times can be controlled, but is often untamable.

I’m an amateur wildlife and nature photographer. My primary motivation is love, not monetary gains or even personal fame. It sounds a little selfish, but I take pictures primarily for myself, though I post the ones I like in a daily blog and in various social media channels.

Visible song

I’m convinced that beauty is everywhere, and my main goal is to increase my sensitivity to that beauty, to develop a mindfulness and heightened awareness of that beauty. Sometimes it seems that I discover beauty in unexpected places and surprising ways, but more often than not, I realize that I’m merely uncovering a beauty that was always there.

Dorothea Lang, a famous American photographer, is reported to have said, “A camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera.” Even when I don’t have a camera in my hand, I feel like I am experiencing the world in a different, deeper way.

Sometimes my friends will visit the same locations as I do and are astonished to see the variety of subjects that I’ve photographed. They ask me, “How is it that you see so much?” and I often respond to their queries with my own Zen-like question, “How is it that you do not see?”

What is the secret to my photography? Many people think that I have expensive gear. It frustrates me a bit when someone looks at one of my images and exclaims, “That’s a great photo—you must have a fancy camera.” I try to bite my tongue and not respond flippantly that it is a great photo because of me, not because of my camera.

fox on ice

I’m very patient and persistent—that is the simple secret. Most of us live our lives at a high speed and we miss so much because we’re unable to slow down.

Solitary silence is also a key component to my success and photography has become almost a meditative practice for me. Our lives are full of distractions and long walks with my camera help to still my soul and bring me closer to my subjects.

I’m an opportunistic photographer, which means that most of the time I walk about and react to a situation that presents itself. Knowledge and research have helped me decide when and where to walk and countless hours of practice have honed my reflexes so that I am ready to react quickly and accurately. Luck may provide an opportunity, but skill helps me to take advantage of it.

What about creativity? Some people think that photographers merely record and document “reality,” but is there actually an objective reality. Every time that I take a photograph, I make a series of creative choices. I choose camera settings, the angle of view, and the actual framing of each shot to capture my personal perspective, i.e. the world as I see it.

bluefacemeadow hawk

Like other writers, I seek to share my unique perspective. Sometimes I will focus on the “big picture” or zoom in on tiny details. At other times I may try to capture the mood of a moment or a particular emotion. It is a bit of a cliché that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but sometimes I use my photos for storytelling.

When possible, I try to capture key moments of action, what French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment.” As he said in the interview with the Washington Post in 1957, “Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative.”

Visible sound

Creativity is still a new, largely unexplored world for me. I used to look at “creative” and “analytical” as being polar opposites, but increasingly have to come to realize that this two traits can actually be complementary, particularly if used in a constant internal dialogue as I try to cultivate a greater consciousness of what I’m thinking and feeling.

About Michael Q Powell

Mike Powell is a former U.S. Army military officer and government foreign policy analyst who rediscovered his passion for photography twelve years. He focuses much of his energy on capturing the beauty that he encounters, primarily in wildlife refuges and nature preserves in the Washington D.C. area. He features his photos, observations, and musings in a daily blog at michaelqpowell.com. Two of his images were included in the inaugural edition of The Storms, a journal of poetry, prose, and visual arts and his photograph of a Migrant Hawker dragonfly was the cover image for Take Flight 2023, A Selection of Poems published in FLIGHTS e-journal issues five to eight.

Find out more about Michael Q Powell

Website

Twitter