Seeing What's Hidden

When hiking through the woods or across the meadows with camera/tripod on my shoulder, I try to tune in to any wildlife that might be nearby. Unfortunately for the photographer, but fortunately for the various animal citizens of our world, Nature has granted them the ability to blend in to their surroundings. So the photographer needs to move very slowly, in general, and to maintain a really close lookout--for baby elk blending into the dead fallen oak leaves, a turtle or frog covered with duckweed, a great blue heron disappearing into the shoreline reeds, or a nesting songbird. Can you see them all here?

Maybe some close-up views will help:

It's not easy, is it? Even with the aid of a zoom lens and some judicious cropping, it's sometimes tough to pick out the reality from the illusion.





Especially when the truth is hiding under a lot of muck!

But it sure is amazing once you actually discover it there! Once your eyes are actually opened to discern what's really there.

Spiritual seekers can certainly relate to this photographer's dilemma. Every moment of every day, we are bombarded with stimuli--things we see, hear, taste, feel. Messages that seek to reveal the truth and enlighten us, and messages that seek to hide it and fool us. We filter out a lot of these messages, just because there are way too many--but how do we know what we might be overlooking? And even when we do pay attention, are we able to discern Truth? Are we able to see the beautiful emerald frog hiding beneath the slime? As the great guru Jesus is reported to have said, "Hear, if you have ears!" Or if you have eyes, open them up and see!

Truth may not be pretty--it may be a plain brown toad sitting on a dead stick--or what we want it to be, or where we expect to find it, but it is always there somewhere, just waiting for us to discover it, like the tiny toad sitting quietly on the forest floor as we walk past and, if we're attentive or lucky, glance down for a moment of discovery.

Depicting a "Concept"

Nature photographers usually concern themselves with capturing what's in front of them, be that an ocean panorama, a trumpeting swan, or a bee gathering nectar from a tiny flower. The image is its own message--though one can use the picture to illustrate a particular idea, like beauty or conversation or industriousness, the application comes after the photo is made. And there will be as many "interpretations" of an image as there are viewers.

But how does one set about photographing a concept? One can take a picture of people who are loving one another, but can one take a photograph of love itself?

Once in the past I had an assignment to create an image of prayer. Not people praying, not actual prayers, but prayer itself--the actual communication of ideas with the Divine.

Realizing the impossibility of that specific task, the art director and I discussed images that might be able to symbolize prayer. What would people recognize and associate with the act of praying? We decided that we'd work from this passage from Psalm 141:

Treat my prayer as sweet incense rising;
my raised hands are my evening prayers.
(The Message traslation)

So we gathered some incense, looked for a suitable incense pot, set up the lights, and started "playing with fire" and smoke.

We made a number of images with which we were happy--they had the right atmosphere to suggest a sacred activity.

Which one would you choose? Or would you do something completely different?

The Difficult Way

How many photographers go out in subzero temperatures to capture snowscapes? Not many. Cold-weather photography is extremely difficult: you must wear warm snow gear, which is heavy and bulky; you must trudge through mountains of snow while gasping burning lungfuls of frigid air; and you must be extremely careful not to touch your own camera equipment with bare hands, lest your skin stick to the freezing metal. How can you take pictures if you can't readily handle your cameras or lenses or tripod? It's an excruciatingly slow process, and you must wear several layers of gloves, stripping down to the thinnest (but never to bare skin) only briefly and only when absolutely necessary.


A decade ago, after a heavy snowfall, I decided to take an early morning hike through Shaw Arboretum, outside of St. Louis. Of course, I arose early to take advantage of the dawn light, but it was beastly cold--so frigid that I used chemical hand-warmers to try to keep my feet from freezing. Even the effort of moving around in the heavy snow was not enough to keep me warm, so I spent only a short time outside. But the light was so brilliant and the air so clear that the scenery was truly spectacular. If only I had had enough stamina and patience to capture it as it was!

Sometimes it seems that Nature reserves its most splendid sights for those who are able to overcome the most difficult obstacles. Think of high mountain scenery, undersea vistas, or even desert panoramas--all of these are not easily accessible, but the view makes the effort so worthwhile. I hope I remember this the next time I'm tempted to sleep through dawn or avoid that rugged path.

Reading the Signs

A number of years ago, I spent many evenings along the shores where the Severn River meets the Chesapeake Bay. My intention was to photograph the evening sailboat races, which proceeded out into the bay and finished in Annapolis. I managed to capture a few decent shots of the sailing vessels, but the boats were generally too far offshore during the bulk of the races, and the light had generally failed by the time the sailboats returned to harbor.

One evening, the boats were particularly slow getting to the finish, for the wind had been very light and erratic. I was trying to be patient as the sun set and the light diminished, but after a time I realized there was no use waiting any longer. As I was beginning to pack up, I happened to look overhead--and there I saw a small wisp of a cloud, with a beautiful rainbow illuminated by the final rays of the sun. All of a sudden, I was snapping pictures of the most amazing cloud formations! The colors were brilliant, and the shapes were fascinating--nature was painting some of the most breathtaking abstracts I have ever seen that evening.

That experience taught me to be more flexible in my photographic endeavors, that it's important to remain open to the images that are present, even if they're not the ones I was hoping for or expecting, and to allow myself to see what's actually there in front of me. It's an ongoing lesson, and one that applies to my spiritual life as well. If my expectations or preconceptions limit what I might allow the Divine to reveal to me, what breathtaking revelations might I end up missing?

My First Solo Photo Show

Here is some information about my first solo photography show. For anyone who lives locally, I'd be happy to give you directions and additional information.

The LOFT Artist Guild presents

Intimate Views: Photography of Flowers & Nudes
by Anthony F. Chiffolo

December 2nd – January 13th

The LOFT Artist Gallery
@ The LOFT: LGBT Community Center
180 East Post Road, White Plains, NY 10601
914-948-2932 / www.loftgaycenter.org

The Ones That Got Away

If you ask any wildlife photographer to show you their best photographs, they won't be able to, because they'll tell you that the best photos are the ones they were never able to capture. Wildlife photographers get up before the crack of dawn, make their way through the dark mists to a blind in the marsh or woods, and then wait--often for hours--until the ducks or turkeys put in an appearance. The best photographers are always ready, with their fingers on the shutter, to capture that perfect, fleeting image. But the animals are just about always stealthier, quieter, faster, coming into view opposite from where the camera is pointing or moving faster than the photographer can focus. The photographer might be able to snap his/her head around to see what the elk or coyote is doing, but in such a situation, only rarely will the photographer end up with more than a memory of the moment.

Nowadays, we all walk around with digital cameras (or even cell phones) to record our memories, but how many times do we still say, "If only I had a camera with me..."? The best images are still the ones we carry around in our minds, not on film (or in digital files).

So the next time you're tempted to take out the photo album or load the slide show for your friends, take a couple of minutes to share as well those images that you can't actually display--those unforgettable moments that are burned so vividly in your memory--the ones that never really "got away" from you.

Intimate Views

To photograph nature is essentially to notice and "see" the world in new ways, in a manner that is different from my workaday glance at my surroundings and perhaps in a manner that is completely alien to most people's view of the universe. When I've gone hiking with companions, I'm always lagging behind--where they search for an elusive deer or bird or butterfly, I'm looking at perspectives, lines, and angles. "I see a photo here," I might call out to them, bending to examine a mushroom or fern, to which they might respond, "Just a jumble of rocks and logs to me." Or I might say, "See how the sunlight coming through the leaves turns this area into a crimson room with a red ribbon curling across it," while they're impatiently tossing rocks into the stream. For them, a path through the forest might be just a way to get to a pretty scenic overlook, but for me, it is a subject unto itself, never the same from moment to moment.

The contrast is even more extreme when I do "macro" photography--that is, when I'm taking pictures of very small things, such as tiny flowers. Once I find a suitable subject, I have to pay attention to so many factors: the angle of the light and the resultant shadows, the background "noise" or distracting elements, the "ideal" height of the camera and the perspective on the subject, the bits that I want to be in focus and the bits that I want to be blurred, the effect any slight wind or breath of air movement can have on the subject, and so forth. Taking a closeup photo of just one flower can sometimes take thirty minutes or more. Most hiking companions, unless they are also taking photographs, don't like to wait so long.

It's possible to think that looking at the world with a camera in front of my eye has its definite limitations, for it means I end up by myself an awful lot. It could also mean becoming an outsider, an observer, not a true participant. Were I a portrait photographer or a photojournalist, I would admit to some truth in this claim. Yet when photographing people, I pose myself in front of the camera as often as I put others there. But more than that, interacting with the world as a photographer really brings a calmness to my spirit. Not only do I slow down my usual headlong rush through life, but I also pay attention to the details that make the world so astonishing, so beautiful, and so sacred. I feel connected with the universe; I experience a sense of unity that is both intimately personal and infinitely beyond the personal. I have a strong suspicion that I would not have had these--dare I call them "spiritual"?--experiences had I not been looking through my camera lens.