Not What I’d Want

Most landscape photography is anonymous. A tree in the mist. A lonely country road. A sunset. But this portfolio is my Private Idaho. One of its jobs is to be truthful and descriptive of the area. If I could, I’d fictionalize this photograph and flip it on its horizontal axis. The trail in the lower right, currently leading out of the frame, would become a leading line into the image. More inviting. Better composition. But I can’t do that. The facts are the facts.

And those trees. I’d fill this hillside with lush ponderosas, full and green and alive. Instead I got fire snags. Bare, skeletal, scratchy against the sky. Beautiful in their own way, but not what I’d want.

That’s life, isn’t it. We want a thing. We wish and push and demand. But reality is indifferent to our preferences, apathetic to our desires. No amount of wanting makes it otherwise.

I took the photograph anyways.