NZ Visual Diary - entry 246

encounter: woman and bird

In an essay in which TS Eliot considers the substance of a masterpiece in creative writing, he posits that a masterpiece is a consummate blending of exacting technique and sublime idea. A person, he asserts, who has finely honed the technical and aesthetic elements of the writer’s craft but whose story arc is thin and trivial will not produce a masterpiece. Likewise, a soaring story line that is told without equal technical skill and poetic eloquence will fall short of literary brilliance.

And so it is with the pantheon of the most admired street photographers: the iconic photograph is a melding of art and science, of deeply studied and practiced work in the visual language of a photograph combined with an unerring mastery of camera optics and controls.

I do not suppose that I will ever produce a photographic masterpiece. Indeed, my prize is that someone will linger for more than a moment or two upon viewing one of my images. That said, today’s image, independent of its estimation in the mind’s eye of a viewer, was made possible by dint of careful attention to technique — for example, setting a faster shutter speed to minimise the blur of a bird in flight — and an exacting pre-visualisation of what might make for an engaging visual moment as bird and person converged.