Musing Correspondence - 12/3/2025

My Dear Friend,

I kept my previous correspondence short but as I mentioned, my latest encounter with a photographic hero inspired a few thoughts which I would like to unravel with you. Here I wish to unpack a rather lengthy instructive quote in which Minor is described as saying, “Venture into the landscape without expectations. Let your subject find you…Wait for your presence to be acknowledged. Don’t try to make a photograph, but let your intuition indicate the right moment to release the shutter.” 

Again this mention of intuition mirrors my lifelong approach to photography but where I would like to focus is on the engagement recommendation with the subject. This idea of waiting to be acknowledged felt like a fruit plucked from my thought tree of which I had yet to bite into. It gave me the impression of walking into a room full of people with the intent of waiting for the strangers to introduce themselves but instead of a room it’s a forest and instead of people it’s the trees, or the rocks, or the grasses. This essentially summarizes my approach in a way I had yet to arrange the words to describe. My initial immersion into the woods does typically feel very timid, as if both host and visitor are warming up to the encounter. It does take time but there is always something in the landscape that breaks the awkwardness with a whispered hello. Like a courageous squirrel inspecting a presented nut, the other animals of the forest slowly begin to emerge to study the foreign presence that has entered their world. 

In this way I am not a detective looking for clues as I have long considered. I am not discovering my compositions so much as they are revealing themselves to me. This is a major differentiation. I’ve long believed that creatives are a vessel and this only solidifies the structure of that idea. It also deepens our relationship to our subject matter in that it implies it is our subject that is actually the component controlling the composition. Photographers may understand the qualities that make a good composition but it is the outgoing nature of the subject revealing its character that increases the power of an image. There have been plenty of instances in which an object has issued a declaration for being photographed or an unexpected detail speaks to me with vulnerability. Minor understood this clearly and I am grateful to have his message resonate so powerfully. 

I feel myself changing and have believed to be in the middle of a creative metamorphosis but now I believe this is more of an emergence. While this idea was not known to me it felt as though it was already within me. I don’t know that I am so much a liquified larva as much as a storm churned pond. I am not becoming something new, I am settling into what I already am. Things are becoming clear and it is not so much by coincidence as it is intention. The key is to stay engaged with my purpose but the fear of becoming is the reason the waves continue to roll. 

Thank you for allowing me to unravel this thought with you. Please do not feel the need to respond, I am happy sending this into the either but will be just as happy should you choose to reply. Thank you my friend.

Sincerely,

Justin