No Manipulation

I take artistic breathers to give oxygen to my activism because I get so damn angry. To avoid burnout, I often turn to my photography or painting for release. As a women of color obsessed with color, here's my latest project.

If you wait long enough, a photographer once wrote, you will see brilliant colors everywhere. You just have to wait.

As a budding photographer, I debate the consequences of retouched images. There are times when the tools are useful to adjust the lighting or shadows. But the main obstacle I cannot hurdle is whether my images are, then, truthful, if I manipulate the image so it looks more dramatic or I fuzz something out so another angle looks sharper.

Over the past two weeks, I have brought Baby with me to numerous places and began shooting color, just color. A wedding, an independant coffee shop, downtown, a butterfly show, a Sunday afternoon in the park. Like the wise photographer said, as long as you wait, the color will come. The natural astonishment, natural lighting, natural majesty of nature, people, and the collision of the two worlds will surface.

What I found is that regular life is pretty spectacular. A broken wing, a blue alley wall, hands, girl dress straps, a hanging sash, a red purse, and stained glass windows are just a handful of the jewels I found on my escapade. No adjustments, no tools, no fix-ups. All these poetic encounters brought me to one joyful truth that I'd like to shout from the rooftops: the world is disarmingly beautiful, just as it is.