Life is More Than One Snapshot

"I am doing some amazing things with pinhole photography now."

• Rick
  

Life is More Than One Snapshot

Rick, Maryanne and I were walking down a gravel road talking about their horses. They have big draft horses.

"People ask me why we have them," Rick said. "We began to get them from a lab in Canada as part of a rescue program. But we never really appreciated them until we began to work with them. They're the smartest horses I've ever seen and they have embraced their new, happier life."

I listened intently. As he went on, I could feel my interest in his tale beginning to peak and then swirl around in a hurricane of related ideas.

These magnificent animals were used as a growth vessel for estrogen that would be given to human subjects whose lives were in transition. I couldn't help but see the parallels related to their own lives. Rick and Maryanne were now vessels helping these same beings to make a transition of their own.

"Some may say that these horses are all used up, not worth anything anymore. But that would be a simple-minded, myopic view to say the least. I call such a view a "pinhole shot" just like I use in my photography."

Rick is gallery photographer. He's what some might call an "experimental shooter." He's had shows dedicated to his work so when he was explaining his new pinhole process to me I couldn't help but relate it to our conversations regarding his horses.

"A photograph is a snap shot of something. A pinhole photo is an even more restrictive type of view that yields a sort of distorted picture of the whole. It tells a story, but it doesn't tell the whole story," Rick explained. "To tell more of the story one must take a series of photos taken at different times, angles and places."

I looked across the field at my own horses and thought of the hundreds of stories I could tell about each one of them. Then my eyes glanced off the silhouette of my house and I thought the same thing. This house, this land, these horses, this life is different moment by moment and each moment has a story of its own.

Later in the day I heard a different story. I listened as another friend of mine was talking about his health and financial issues. I could tell he was discouraged and challenged. He was feeling all used up just like the one snapshot view of Rick's rescued draft horses. As I looked through the pinhole photograph he was describing I quickly began to see an expanding view and said to him, "You know Steve, even pioneers pushing handcarts across the American west didn't live a whole life pushing their handcarts."

Life is more than just one pinhole snapshot. So, next time you're struggling look through the pinhole of pain and see a broader life; a life full of collected moments. Find encouragement by looking through your gallery of remembered happiness and know that with a little patience, vision, love and work that happiness will return again as this moment transitions into another.