Selecting the photographs for my website refresh, I’ve been looking over images from the past several years. On a first round, the raspberries above joined another food photo of mine: sauteed onions which looked so inviting that I wanted to dip right in and take a forkful. (I happen to love onions!)  

As I reviewed the raspberry image, I thought, Well, nothing inventive or unusual about this. . .  Just raspberries. . .  red, juicy, attractive. . . nicely lighted, though. . . I’m so fond of this photo . . . yet is it worthy of being included in this “personal best” grouping? I’ve always liked this one because of how I got the picture . . .  

My husband and I were flying cross country to Boston, he in his favorite window position and I in the middle seat. Bleary-eyed from our 5 A.M. wake up, I expected nothing photographically from either the plane itself or the flight.  

About noon, however, as we were eating what I’ve learned to make for an easy-to-eat-on-a-plane lunch, the sun shone in sideways from the port hole window and the berries gleamed as though shouting, “Hey, look at us! We’re beautiful!” Trying not to spill anything, keeping my elbows in, I wrested the camera out from my purse and went to work before Andy and I gobbled them all up.  

But no one who visits my website is going to know this, however much the opportunity (and the berries) delighted me. And I’ve long felt that a good photograph needs no explanation, no defense, of any kind. The image should speak it for itself.  

So two questions framed themselves. Are these raspberries as delicious to the eye as they tasted? And again, is this image strong enough, is it good enough?  

 I feel such affection for that photo because it carries out my philosophy of “Always be ready! You never know what might be out there” Even in odd places like an airline seat, which is surely a pretty good definition of a sterile visual environment.  

Another “but.” Photographs always come with context, don’t they? How can I escape that? Almost no image I can think of is completely abstract or divorced from its subject or my thoughts while taking it—also what the viewer brings to it. You might even say, every image carries baggage. If I’ve done well, perhaps it will inspire reactions from my viewers, further thoughts and connotations.   

All right, how about this image?

Like so many images, Leaves on Cement came to me by chance; once again, an opportunity taken. The leaves presented themselves on the pavement one day as I walked toward my daughter’s front door, about to pick up my grandson.  

Another image from my selection: the frying pan handles, I found in a cookware shop. (They’re next to the raspberries) The drops of water on an agave blade presented themselves in my neighborhood. (See my Portfolio screen.) So often I walk nearby and take dozens of photos—yet some days, no images present themselves. Other images came to me on Cape Cod (the pond), or in the Anza Borrego desert, or at Balboa Park: all of them places I expect to take multiple images, travel record photographs.  

Whether or not you know that, or whether I expected the flung-out eucalyptus trunk taken on a get-out-of-the-house drive on a Covid-confined day—I take advantage of what I find. Very often, too, the image you see has been selected from many attempts or angles on the same thing.  

That “Don’t miss anything! Use what you find!” motivation furnishes the context for everything I do; perhaps it also stands in as a symbol of the inevitable, even desirable, baggage that every photograph carries on, and a message to you, the viewer.  

Onions, anyone?