Fripp Island Bridge, photos by Luke Frazier
I’m a certified nutjob when it comes to light. I obsess over slants of natural light through trees, on the water, around corners. Sunlight in all its permutations and splintery effects; our nearest star’s attempt at dazzling us into worshipful submission. In a related way I’m closely attuned to the variable light in other people’s eyes, the way it can pulse and fade during life’s serpentine journey.
On the natural sunlight side, my breath hitches when I encounter certain kinds of lit moments. I take photos and hope for the best. Most don’t come out like I want them too, but occasionally there is a breakthrough of magic, the aha instant, a flood of feeling that approaches a capture of a quality that defies technical description and instead presents a different kind of distinction.
It’s like that story from Robert Pirsig’s book Lila, when a Northern Cheyenne man answers a question about what “kind” of dog is passing by
Broad Street backyard
responding that it is “a good dog,” thus classifying it by quality (capital Q) and not breed.
The “breeds” of natural light are reduced to categories like daylight, twilight, cloudy, or similar, while qualities are often evocatively referenced—syrupy, liquid, golden-hour, stippled, even eerie. And when qualities are described it’s only an attempt to help the mind accept what the heart already knows—that something special this way comes.
The real specialness is in the bursts and refractions; the sunrays sliced in elegant ways and yielding bits of wonder. Light diffuses and coats; light infuses and glows. It can make crisp outlines or blow out part of a photo that is otherwise minding its own business.
I don’t consider myself an excellent photographer, but I do, at times, get excellent results from keeping my eyes open, spending time, and paying attention. It also helps if I manage a boost by the right framing and angles. This is produced by slightly turning the kaleidoscope (i.e. moving my feet) and crystallizing a new and delightful view.
In addition to all this sunlight stuff that creates captivating images, there is that light generated within each of us that is seen in our eyes. It comes via what some call a soul, others ascribe it to electrical energy, a beating heart, and neurological tap dancing.
Hunting Island
You can see this kind of light in human eyes as surely as rays breaking through drapes of Spanish moss captured in a photo. But you can also see deadened eyes and barely flickering light in some human eyes, think of refugee photos.
The seasons and circumstances of life are expressed in the radiant sparkle or furtive darkness in our eyes at any given moment. This is because with light comes shadows, in much the same way that supreme good begats powerful evil. One without the other makes little sense.
I’ve heard individuals who have struggled with addiction describe looking in the mirror and seeing
North Street Live Oak
only their own dead eyes. Knowing they’ve reached the end, many use that jumping off point to seek recovery. They are refugees from a dark distance. Then I get to see the light in their eyes start beaming again as they navigate the road back.
A friend once shared the horrific story of being a little girl and often having to grab her younger brother and hide in a closet when violence and chaos broke out in her home. She would wrap her arms around him and gently sing the song, “This little light of mine” as they waited for the end of the madness. She ended up struggling for years with drugs and alcohol before turning her life around. One time I asked her if that song triggered bad feelings and she said no. Instead it represented getting through despair and emerging in the light, where her eyes now provide testimony to the amazing life she enjoys.
Port Royal intersection
Transformation of eye-light takes time and attention, and repeated efforts, the same requirements for capturing a photo of brilliant sun moments. But turning the kaleidoscope in this case means shrinking the time to the present and the filter to gratitude.
I recently celebrated being sober for twenty-one years and shared with others how my own darkness returned to light. How those aha instants became mostly good days then contented months and then wonder-filled years. How when the darkness crept in, I had to search for the way out of the closets of my own making. How singing what I knew to be true resulted in a symphony that smoothed the way back to balance. How believing in the coming attractions filled the whole damn screen of life with a brilliant splendor of colors I never could have imagined.
Kind of like the way the sun’s spirit refracts through trees, glimmers across water, curves around corners, enters the heart, and lights the world aflame.
