Here is what I know about photography: For any photograph of substance, you make it now or you don't make it at all. Everything will be different, later, even if later is only 10 minutes or so. Sometimes part of the art of art is that it makes the creative act seem so easy. You see a fine photograph and think, "I could have done that. Anyone would have taken that shot." Many times, I've looked at one of my photos and thought that I could return and do better. But when I try, too much has changed. The sun is different, or the sky, or the season, or the subject itself. Sometimes, I realize that I cropped a photograph in a certain way because of an obstruction just outside the viewfinder. I had forgotten. The photograph had become reality, had become its own world. I had done all I could.

If you look at the photographs now,
everything seems so easy.
Who would not have grabbed camera
and framed it just so?
What could have been more obvious,
more simple?
Gone is the torment,
gone the doubt,
gone the feelings of unworthiness.
Even I, who held the camera,
can hardly make myself recall.
It must have been a magic day,
that day,
when all these people thought to stop by,
when all the women were lovely and strong,
the men weathered by character,
the light obedient and swift and wise.

Ron Erwin
                                                                            copyright 2019