My Second Set of Eyes

Photo by Jane Ward

The first photos I shot were stills of summer fruits and vegetables from a local farm using a very simple Canon Powershot point-and-shoot digital camera. I was blogging about food at the time as a sort of enhancement to the cooking instruction videos and recipes I churned out for MPN Online. I had fun with these photos, turning something like a humble celery root this way and that to get its good side – my vegetable glamour shots, I used to call them. 

But day after day, as the celery root made way for carrots, garlic, persimmons and so on, I began noticing things in the finished photos that my own eyes hadn’t seen. Hair-like capillary roots. A tiny clump of dried mud. Water droplets stubbornly clinging to a fruit’s glossy skin despite being wiped dry. Vexing micro-scratches on the formica countertop.

And then it hit me:

The camera was not just a blogging tool, a lark; it was a second set of eyes. 

Of course, professional photographers know this - it’s not exactly earth-shattering news. But when I uncovered this truth for myself, I was excited. One of the most helpful qualities a fiction writer can have is a compulsion for observation, and I do have that. I overhear, I watch, I notice. I take notes. In the camera, I realized I had a tool that would allow me to notice the things my eyes were missing, and the resulting photos could be a visual form of note taking. A more reliable form of note taking. I began taking my camera everywhere.

Ten years have gone by since then, and I usually have a camera with me everywhere I go. Either a Canon G9x (I still love a point-and-shoot) or the Google Pixel XL phone camera (much more convenient for dog walks). A camera is both the physical reminder for me to stop and pay attention to details, as well as a recorder of the details I might be missing no matter how acutely I observe.