“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
Dorothea Lange
August 13, 1978
After many years of photographing, I’ve come to appreciate that what I’m really expressing in my photographs is the quality of illuminating light; the subject is really secondary. I’ve seen roses sit lackluster in dull light while beer cans clamor for expression along the highway under a radiant late afternoon sky.
Light travels through space, but can’t be seen while it’s doing so. We can see it’s luminescence reflected, but not the path it takes. There is a mystery to it. In this way, photography mimics the unseen world of spirit: we have evidence that it exists but can’t actually see it. As with many things with depth, light’s quality and value isn’t initially obvious at a quick glance. It’s only by slowing down from our usual busy routine that things take on a new expression. It’s not that they have changed, but we have changed by shifting our perspective and point of view. Perhaps photography’s greatest gift is not the photos rendered, but the mindset of gratitude and calm that comes just by observing and involving our whole selves into the simple acting of noticing the world around us.
Reid’s Bio
I began photographing my dog when I was 9 with a Kodak Brownie camera. From there, I graduated, with my dad’s instruction, to a Kodak Retina I (c. 1939), a light meter, and a darkroom. My experience is varied from shooting portraits, exploring the intimate world of macro photography, to teaching pinhole camera construction at a camp for the blind.
My photographs have either won or placed in almost every photographic competition I’ve entered including most winning “Best of Show” at the Marin County Fair. My work has been utilized by colleges, a literary magazine, non-profit service organizations, corporations. Images from my travels to to Africa were the basis of an interactive multi-media CD-ROM used to promote an African vacation for an employee sales incentive reward program. And I still like taking pictures of my dog.