Saguaro Wanderings: Seeing 2012 (#41)

For your consideration: a departing view as I ended my visit to Santa Barbara, last weekend.

Beyond the obvious irony inherent in the role reversals of form and function in this tableau is an unknowable added paradox: the vital element necessary in order for this playful arrangement to exist was acutely transitory . . .

I spotted this surprisingly complex and subtle arrangement (note the many symmetries rhyming across the geometry) as I sat in my car at a red light, just a few blocks from the freeway on-ramps to which I was headed at the of my day's explorations. The sun shown suddenly, brilliantly, illuminating and informing this composition . . . I hustled to change lenses (from the macro to the telephoto zoom); I was in a race against the dual restrictions of the traffic signal's duration (for once I prayed for a long red!) and the sun's peek-a-boo dynamics in thickening fog and clouds . . .

Quickly now: check aperture, frame, focus — too late: the signal radiated an emphatic green, and drivers behind me undoubtedly failed to appreciate my vision at this particular moment. Yet the arrangement in the viewfinder had been ever so briefly intensely compelling . . . so I decided to make a several block circuit for a return drive-by shooting (as it were) . . . praying the sun would hold out in its battle to be seen . . . no sun, no scene, after all.

No fewer than four (perhaps five) go-arounds were necessary, due to combinations of turning down wrong streets and/or and passing the needed vantage point only to find the sun absent, or having my rear view mirrored filled with the faces of philistines. Yet persistence did pay off, and the (hurried) result was this single frame.

The lesson here is this: if a potential image really calls to you, endure, and go to any length to realize your creative vision.