Contrast

Light Vs. Dark

Photo: Ty Beaver

This is Reading Photographs, a newsletter for those interested in remarkably mundane photographs and why the details, ideas, emotions, memories, connections and beliefs they arouse make them meaningful.

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I love the lines in this photo. Planes of shadow and light bisecting a mountain meadow in southern Oregon in the peak of a scrub steppe summer during early evening.

This was a time of light. A respite in a cabin just a week before a best friend’s wedding. I would propose to my now-wife only months later. And my Brittany, Bugsy, at the height of his frenetic self; ears always perked, nose sniffing, stub tail wagging. This was the first time I had let him off leash, free to roam. Perhaps this was a stupid thing to do given that bears and cougars were not uncommon in the area but he so desperately wanted to just explore everything and yet I knew that he would never get out of earshot of me.

He became attached to me pretty quickly after we adopted him only about a year prior. The one time he got out I chased after him frantically down the street as he got out of sight. I had tears in my eyes as I backtracked to my house to grab my car and search the neighborhood. That’s when he came running up to me from the opposite direction, that stub tail wagging.

Maybe he wasn’t the only one who got attached quickly.

He never ran in this meadow again. We moved out of state at the end of the year, and to two more houses after that. He co-existed with five cats through all of this. And two children. He endured a minor surgical procedure to keep a tumor from destroying one of his eyes and I endured watching him deal with his first bout of old dog vestibular disease, convinced he’d had a stroke. Then there were the various vet visits caused by his ravenous appetite for edible and inedible things.

The shadows deepened about two years ago. He was already struggling before our last move and his decline steepened. When he began to refuse to go on walks, I would just stand out in the yard with him so he could relieve himself and get some fresh air, and when he couldn’t go down or up the porch steps I carried him. I got up in the middle of the night and stayed with him when he started barking, scared and lonely as he couldn’t see or hear anything. Cleaned up after him, put down area rugs so he could stand and walk as best he could. It was right after Thanksgiving last year that I scheduled an appointment where I sat on the cold linoleum in a veterinarian’s exam room and slowly stroked his head and ears as the drugs killed him painlessly.

I wept for two days.

I told myself, “never again.”

I was convinced no amount of bright light was worth the inevitable darkness.

But we’re addicted to light, aren’t we? Photographers certainly are; without light, there can’t be photography, literally and figuratively. We’re always looking for interesting light, golden light, cold light, piercing light. Light that defines the darkness surrounding it, gives it something to contrast itself with. It’s a fool’s errand; we’re never completely satisfied by any one picture, no matter how excited we were taking it in the moment. No matter how much we later look back on it fondly and cherish it, we know we can’t stop. So long as the sun rises, there will be a need to take pictures.

And there will be a need for companions along the way.

Meet Bandit.