Bonnie and Clyde Files 46

(Friends: this week marks the launch for the sale of my forthcoming book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Saved a Middle Aged Man. Only 300 copies will be sold and it won’t be available in book stores. For more information and how to order, got to nestuccaspitpress.com or order here from the blog. Half of the profits are earmarked for the Angels for Sara Sanctuary to continue their excellent work. Please support me in this new editorial endeavor as I get back in the game of life, literature and service. Below is an excerpt from the book.)

I was heading out to the sanctuary when my SLR camera and collection of lenses caught my eye. They were resting on a bookshelf, on display, gathering dust, museum pieces from my former life as a decent amateur photographer and enthusiastic and innovative teacher of high school photography.

Why not dust them off? Maybe some unique arresting images of Bonnie and Clyde would animate my writing and if disseminated, raise funds for the sanctuary. Good photography can move human hearts to action. Good photography of dogs can catapult human hearts to action.

Twenty minutes later, I was unpacking my camera kit and mounting a special lens constructed from bendable plastic tubing that produced close-up shots that overturned the traditional idea of focus.

Yes, more close-up shots that overturn the traditional ideas of focus on subjects such as clearcuts and the criminal justice system. Yes, less hard focus on headlines and obviousness. More soft focus on the hardened hearts many of us have developed and the terrible institutions they have built. They are all around us. One merely has to look.

The light was all wrong for photography along the river; thus, it was the perfect time. There is never the perfect light to tell an important story. Those who wait, will never tell it.

I prepped the models with treats and we headed out for the photo shoot. They gimped along with more than their usual bumbling grace.

Some 30 minutes later, I had taken hundreds of photographs of Bonnie and Clyde, the river, the clearcuts, leaves of grass, elk scat, beaver gnawings, all in permutations of fuzzy focus that rendered the subjects sharper to my attention because I could discern new contours in the familiar.

We took a treat break and I sat down on a driftwood log. I saw an osprey hovering high overhead. The red bra was still hung up in the willows across the river. No one was ever going to unsnap it.

I scrolled through some images on the camera.

Contours. Finding new contours on a subject. Is that what I’ve been doing at the river with the dogs?Am I learning to see anew? Am I learning to see for the first time?

It occurred to me: I am training my focus as a writer on subjects that are completely out of focus for a vast majority of Americans. I am also training my focus as a newly reanimated human being to focus on what had been previously out of focus to me in my personal life: friends and family, presence and patience.

The camera’s lens must be turned both ways by the photographer, if that photographer (human being) has the courage to do so.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)