Frozen X-ray

Always look more closely
London, ON
March 2023
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Please accept my apologies for my recent random-ice-in-the-gutter habit. Sometimes I get into these moods, and I keep returning to the photographic places that bring me joy.

I guess street ice brings me joy. Or maybe it’s dirty gutters. Or both. Whatever.

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of photo-worthy ice in the Great White North. As you probably didn’t imagine, I almost walked right on past this particular stretch of flash-frozen water.

Because it was cracked, messy, imperfect, weird-looking. Not exactly photo-worthy in the conventional sense.

But the longer I looked at it, the more it dawned on me that that was entirely the point. Because if we take pictures only of things (and scenes, and people, and…) that are perfectly formed, perfectly neat, and perfectly conventional-looking, then we miss never seeing the full spectrum of all that surrounds us.

Beauty, as I’ve said so many times, and continue to passionately believe, takes on so many forms. And it shouldn’t be up to others to decide what those forms are.

It should be up to us.

So if you continue to see cracked, imperfect ice (and other scenes, and people, and…) in my feed, I hope you’ll understand why.

They may not be everyone’s definition of photo-worthy. But they are very much my definition of it.

And they bring me joy, in all its cracked, messy, and weird-looking glory.

I hope they bring you joy, too.

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