Some time ago, I was chatting with a good friend who is a guide, but not a photographer. He’d just returned from leading a group that included a couple of serious amateur photographers on a trip across Alaska. Now, my friend is a great trip leader, by far one of the best in Alaska, he knows the state up and down, is downright charming, and his clients, photographers or not, LOVE him.

As we were chatting about his recent trip he expressed surprise at how the photographers in his group put so much pressure on themselves “to get the shot”. They were amateur photographers, he said with surprise, “What’s the big deal? The photos are just going to sit on a hard drive somewhere.”

I laughed at the story and replied, “Yeah, photographers are funny that way.”

As I’ve thought about that interaction, I’ve realized there is more to it than photographers simply being “funny”. Professional or amateur, we are a funny bunch, no question. But photographers also live within a very different mind-set. We experience the world in the highest detail, and the most intimately, when we see it through our camera’s view finders. There is more to our passion than “getting (or having) the shot”.

Yes, we want to capture the moment the lion springs after a passing impala (above), but for most of us, it has less to do with making that perfect photo than it does with memorizing every detail of the perfect moment. The sunsets, the rocking aurora displays, the bear fishing, the quiet moment beside the lake… these are not just photos to be made; they are memories to be engraved.

As I scroll through my Lightroom catalog, every image represents a memory of that moment in my life. 70,000 of them in my catalog, and I can remember every detail of the moment I made each.

Here are a few examples:

I made this image in 2004, 15 years ago. I’d headed out for a late-night cross-country ski with my camera. Here, the city lights from Fairbanks light up the horizon in an ethereal pink glow. It was cold that night, below zero, and the nearly full moon lit up the landscape so brightly that I didn’t even need a headlamp.
Leading a photo workshop in Denali Park a few years ago, my clients and I had been photographing Denali itself for most of the morning. When, with a surprising suddenness, clouds and fog rolled in from the north obscuring the mountain in moments. A half hour later it was raining.

 

As a wilderness photographer, the weather plays a huge roll not just in my images, but also in my experiences (and memories). This small outcrop of rock in the Utukok Uplands of northwest Alaska, stood out to me as I hiked down a remote ridge above the Kokolik River. Though June, it snowed the night before, and even when I made this images the wind still blew cold, carrying sleet and nearly-frozen rain. The stormy weather created drama though, and I’m not the least bit sorry I made this image, and this memory.
On assignment on the Anvik River in late September, I made this image. My brother was accompanying me on this trip, and the weather had been less than cooperative for much of our journey. Cold and wet, with frequently muddy campsites. But within a lot of struggle, there were a few sublime moments, like this one. It was a drizzly evening, and we’d retreated to our tents, when I noted the rain had stopped pattering overhead, and a strange glow appeared on the tent fabric. I unzipped the rain fly and looked outside to see the sky lit up in purple fire. I grabbed camera and started shooting.
In Botswana, I photographed these two male zebras fighting. But the power of the image for me is that when I look at it, I remember not just the dust flying and the teeth biting and hooves flailing, but I can also recall that over my shoulder, well out of view was a small herd of Impalas. When we arrived at this scene, two male Impalas were tearing around through this patch of woods, leaping fallen logs, and running so fast, it seemed unreal. Like a dog with a case of the “zoomies” they went round and round and round. I have no images of that scene, but through this image of the nearby zebras, I can recall every leap of the flying Impalas.
Early January, Joshua Tree National Park, pre-dawn. I woke early and walked a short distance from our campsite to create this photo of a cholla with the blue of Earth’s shadow in the background. There was a light air movement, and cool, almost frosty. I was wearing the same red fleece sweater I have on now (strange the things I can remember).

Some of the images in my catalog have been published in magazines, and books, and newspapers, and websites, but most have not. As my friend would say of the majority of my photos “they are just sitting on my hard drive”. But it’s not their publication potential that makes them important. It’s the memories they represent, and the memories that I can recall when I look at them.

That’s the power of photography. THAT’s why photographs matter to the photographer.

I’ve been under a bit of stress recently. While I realize that what I’m experiencing is just a blip, and the problems I’m dealing with have solutions, my mind has nonetheless been very preoccupied. Yes, it’s a blip, but in the moment of experience, a blip can sound more like an air-horn. Blown straight in your ear. Relentlessly.

Hard to ignore.

In times like that, I find I frequently retreat to my image catalog. Yesterday, I shared this image of a sow brown bear and her cubs on my Facebook feed.

In the caption, I noted that I was having a down day, and that I needed some bear cubs to cheer me up. And it worked!

No, looking at the three cubs in the water did not help me solve my problems, but it brought back the moment I made the photo, and helped me put the rest into perspective. It helped me realize that the air horn being blown in my ear, was more like an annoying mosquito. Not something to ignore entirely, but a problem that could eventually be swatted.

That’s why images matter more to photographers than they do to others. While my friend may shake his head and wonder what the big deal is about “getting the shot”, we photographers realize that images are far more than pixels, or dots of ink on paper. They are imbued with florid and riotous memories. Memories accessible at a glance at my computer screen, or the prints on my walls.

Images, to photographers, are far more than photographs.

 

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