2024 07 11
My attempt at real estate photography. Do I have what it takes? Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
The birds are telling me to make the damn picture!
Let me explain, before you call to get me sectioned (does the US have a term for this? mental institutions no longer exist here).
Even me, someone who makes an insane amount of photos, often struggles with not “getting the shot”. Lately, I’ve noticed an odd phenomenon where I’ll have a split second instinct to grab my camera from my pocket and make a specific image, but a slight moment of hesitancy or laziness happens. In this moment, appearing in “the frame” as my eye sees it, birds will suddenly appear perfectly positioned into what this image would have been had I picked up the camera and made the photo. I swear to you, this has happened an incredible amount of times in the last few weeks, to the point where I’m starting to wonder if the birds are trying to tell me something.
I love thinking about coincidence. At an early age, I would walk to school and so often, as I’d be passing a driveway, a car would be trying to pull into the driveway right as I crossed. For a while, I thought I was magnetic to cars or cursed or something, but being the smart kid I was, realized it was merely a coincidence. I’d walk past hundreds of driveways a week without a car approaching, it was just that the times when it did happen, those moments would stand out while all the others would be immediately forgotten. Okay, so I wasn’t cursed afterall.
Flash forward to today. Yes, I acknowledge birds are plentiful in my lived environment and there’s a high likelihood that these birds are just on their way to innocent bird business. But I’m not seeing it that way. I’m seeing this as a clear message from an entity I can’t begin to understand telling me I need to quit the over-thinking. Quit the hesitation. Cut the laziness, grab the damn camera, and make the photo your eyes are telling you to make, in the moment it happens.
If I don’t write back tomorrow, it’s likely because I’m in prison (America’s version of mental hospitals), where I’ll be making images of birds with my mind.
-Clayton
