New ethic

I seem to be developing a photography ethic, rules which I use right now to determine what I take pictures of. One of those is that it has to be a found object that I haven't manipulated at all. I'm sure that rule might be bent as my techniques improve and my "eye" grows. I've seen sticks on the ground that I wanted to take a picture of and decided that I couldn't because they were in the wrong light--I didn't move them into better light because I felt like that would be against my rules. Once I even kicked it, hoping that it might find better light, but it landed wrong.

Today I was taking pictures of a piece of a house and could see two or three people stop and try to puzzle out what was worth taking a picture of. In that experience is the kernel of what I'm searching for in my photographs, I think. I saw an Ansel Adams photograph of a part of a picket fence today which I also identified with. It was taken with the lens a few inches below the top horizontal post, and encompassed the jagged tops of about six of the pickets, and treated very much with the majesty of stark mountains. He could have taken the picture anywhere. But he found in that fence the magnificent splendour of a mountain range and captured it. Anyone who walked by him would have been asking themselves, "Why's he taking a picture of that fence?" Because there is awe-inspiring grandeur everywhere, we just have to pause and frame it right.