“He tried to focus on her, but past and future were merging into the present, blurring her image. He saw her in countless ways and positions and settings.”
Not much to say about this one… I read that passage last night, dogeared the page, came home from work today and made this picture.
Does this capture the quote? I think it does, but maybe you feel otherwise. It’s ok either way.
And actually, I do have something to more to say…
When I first had the idea to try illustrating a novel, I started writing down important things—or things that I saw as important—or memorable scenery, and I planned to go back later and shoot, say, a stillsuit, or the pain box, or a desert storm, or folding space, or etc.
But now I see that there is another, more interesting way to approach this series of illustrations, and that is what I’ve done here: mark passages that appeal to something within me, and illustrate the feeling, rather than the thing.
Maybe that’s a key to photography itself: if we want to do more than make bad catalogue photos (not that there’s anything wrong with bad catalogue photos: the world is in constant need of such photos), we could strive to capture a feeling, perhaps an emotion or thought or intuition or whatever, but capture that which lies beyond the object itself.
I’m sure I heard this somewhere before, so it’s likely that this strikes you as banal.
If so, apologies, but perhaps it bears repeating for relative n00bs like me.
D7000. EL Nikkor 50mm f/2.8, extended by 100mm. ISO100, 1/250th, f/2.8. SB-700 at 1/128th fired from about 8″ away and triggered by a set of Cactus v5s. Heavy processing in Aperture, mostly to bring out all the variation in the big orange swath in the upper left.
^Herbert, Frank. Dune. (Radnor, Pennsylvania: Chilton Book Company, 1965; Berkley Medalion Edition, Sixth Printing, 1977), 361.
