information, but then there are those spent in search of beauty, particularly the beauty of/in Nature. We are observers all, ultimately, often recording what we can, of either transitory or more permanent (as in this case) beauty. ‘Tis images that often move us deepest (c.f. Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” or “Tintern Abbey” poems. That and human beauty of varying kinds and manifestations thereof.)
What remains most important is creating, expressing, recording, and sharing various truths emerging from reflection and consciousness. The ‘outer’ external world we experience is meaningful unto itself, of course, but so too are the personal, created, shared insights, truths, understandings, and appreciations of/by individuals, be they artists or ordinary folks.
Ironically, beauty itself is simply one special type of information anyway that dazzles our senses and affects our spirits and souls. Optimally, we feel the truths of beauty on our pulses, in our hearts as well as mentally and spiritually. To truly perceive, understand, and appreciate beauty requires a deep inner response which goes far beyond mere technology–lens types, shutter speeds, and film stock. There is, in short, an absurdity and limitations to the attached photo. The deep/er response will always be the viewer-responder’s with his own limited sense organs. (And that also btw includes any subjective response to this photo.)
For that reason I consider better ‘pictures’ of this scene to be the ones I had simply looking at the scene, technologically ‘naked’ sans camera, and imagining what a photo of Lake Louise and these photographers might look like. (A Hitchcockian idea–better/purer the original thought than the resultant shoot, so to speak) There was more Aha pleasure in that than the finished pic.
But even better than this inner consciousness moment was the immediate moment before the decision to snap–while just looking at all, experiencing everything sensuously–which included what my modest limited lens could not show, as well as the scent of firs, the sounds of quietude by the water, and the sublime warmth of afternoon sun filling every single September pore of my physical self. That was truly the first and most real poem of this ephemeral episode. And that is also the one I most pleasurably recall.