By: Jennifer Richardson Holt
I enjoy good photography. I like to think I can take a decent picture when given worthy subject matter. I may well be wrong about that, but that’s neither here nor there. I love to linger over a beautiful scene, imagining what it might look like in a frame. I do take these pictures often, and sometimes they even turn out well.
But a few days ago, as I was snapping away, it occurred to me that the images on my phone aren’t really what I’m after. It’s the image itself that I love—the reality of some quietly moving moment I wish I could hold onto. And if I’m honest, I may do a better job capturing it with words than with a camera.
Lately, the road I normally take to work is being repaved. And of course, the powers that be have decided the ideal time to make it impassable is during the morning commute, when a large portion of the tri-county area is trying to get to work. If you’re familiar with their thinking, you know that sounds about right—but I digress.
Because I drop my daughter off at school, I don’t have the luxury of waiting in a long line of equally disgruntled drivers, creeping behind a pilot car while observing the remarkable lack of paving being accomplished. So I’ve had to find another route.
Truth be told, I’m not entirely upset about it.
This new drive offers different scenery, and along the way there’s one particular spot I’ve come to treasure—no matter how many times I pass it. Now I get to see it in the golden light of morning, and it is magnificent.
At the corner of a small intersection sits a tiny white clapboard church, tucked into a stand of tall pines. As I pass in the early hours, the sun rises behind it, and the small stained glass windows begin to glow as if lit from within. On especially hazy mornings, golden beams break through the trees in long shafts, like glimpses into something just beyond this world—as though angels themselves are raising pillars of light.
I always hope there’s no traffic behind me when I reach that place, because I want to linger. In ordinary daylight, it’s a charming, almost postcard-perfect scene. But at daybreak, it is something else entirely. I find myself drawn in, studying every detail. When my mind becomes the camera, it tends toward a long exposure.
And while that is the most striking image lately, it isn’t the only one.
The pecan orchards near my home have filled with bright chartreuse leaves, and neon grasses rise all around them. These lush fields are scattered with countless yellow flowers, and the dappled sunlight filtering through the trees makes them glow like earthbound fireflies. The rows stretch on like endless, enchanted hallways—places where it feels entirely possible that something magical might be hiding just out of sight.
Every time I pass, I feel the urge to fix it in my memory before the flowers fade and the shadows deepen with the passing of spring.
But I don’t think I’ll ever truly capture the majesty of these moments—not with a camera, not even with the finest equipment. To live them—to stand in the real sunlight, to smell the blossoms, to feel the breeze—that is the truest form of keeping them.
A photograph could never quite hold the glow of sunlight through magnolia petals, nor could it carry the quiet peace of water slipping over stones in a stream.
And maybe that’s the point.
Though I enjoy them, photographs pale in comparison to real life. The truth—the real thing—is always richer than any substitute. And that’s all a photograph is, in the end: a substitute.
Perhaps the best way to preserve a moment isn’t to capture it at all, but to fully inhabit it while it’s here.
Prose and Possibilities 