Today marks five years since my wife and I moved away from New York and back to New Brunswick. When I wrote about this last time, I seemed unhappy. I guess things hadn't worked out the way that I had envisioned them when we moved home – even if I didn't have a really clear vision for how things would go. I have a more optimistic view now.
About a year ago, I started taking photos again. It started on my phone, but then I got out my old film cameras which still had film in them from New York. I finished the rolls and sent them off to be developed. When they came back, I found this:
This is a double exposuree, with half the frame being taken in New York and the other half being taken here in Fredericton. Five years apart! From what I can piece together, what happened is:
- I took a photo in New York.
- Five years pass.
- At some point, the "double exposure" lever on my camera was activated.
- I advanced only halfway to the next frame.
- I took another photo in Fredericton.
That's what I've pieced together, because this was not what I intended when I took either photo. One of the last photos I took in New York, and one of the first photos I took in Fredericton. This was not what I envisioned. (I also have no idea why one of the photos was taken upside down! What!?)
Something I love about film photography – and digital, too – is the unexpected. In photography, you see a scene and you pre-visualize the shot, and then you try to realize your photographic vision. But unexpected things happen. And I think good photographers are open to that spontaneity. You can't always faithfully execute on your vision, but you can choose to work with whatever happens.
In this case, I've edited the photo to look good. Without those edits, the original was kind of bleh:
This is not what I envisioned, but I love what I made of it. This is probably my favourite photo that I've ever taken ever, and it was an accident.
Things haven't gone the way I intended when I moved home, but that's okay. Part of being human is accepting the spontaneity of life and making something beautiful with it.