Capturing clouds
Over the past week, while preparing for Lake Clark, I became fixated on my phone. Not its contents but instead, what it lacks. The battery is weak. It’s four years old. It only has one camera lens instead of the two or three lenses the newer phones all seem to have. What if I want to become a vlogger during my time in the woods? What if I need a new camera, in the form of a new phone, to properly document this important-to-me experience?
The Apple store in the downtown Anchorage mall hovers beyond time and space. As the mall crumbles, revealing another empty storefront each time I visit, the Apple store beams its cool white LEDs onto employees and shoppers who appear themselves beamed in from a major metropolitan area. The other day, I palmed the store’s latest offerings, cool and soft like polished stones a bit too big for my hand. I had already looked up the prices: each one costs nearly a grand.
Luckily no sales reps were available, so I was left to linger. On my walk to the mall I had seen a man who spends time on the streets near the office. I had also seen a fight break out in the park while the evangelical recruiters stood next to their JESUS SAVES placard. I took out my phone, an impressive machine that still works and which I had bought at that store four years earlier. I put it back in my pocket, a relic of when things were a reasonable size, and walked out before anyone could intercept me.
On the way home, I wondered whether I was foolish for not moving forward with the times. If I should just get a new phone whose cameras would produce photos and videos as sharp and crisp as ever. Whose screen would engulf me even more than the brick I stare at for hours each day already does.
Beyond downtown, a cloud hovered over the inlet, pillowy in a way that signaled spring’s conclusive arrival. A cloud with dimensions and depth that asks to be stared at until it settles within my chest.
I thought of long-forgotten watercolors. Of visible brush strokes to denote height and heft. Of sketches while sitting on the shores of the lake as similar clouds move with the wind.
What I want to capture would not be better conveyed through a sharper and more precise image. A new phone could not depict this cloud any more clearly than the cameras I already have.
I thought of a story I wrote this spring and the difficulty I’m having with placing it. I thought about how much more precise I have become with my language compared to the first story I published, over four years ago, whose sentences are fearful and strewn with commas that signal a lack of knowing when to end.
Staring at the cloud, I realized what the first story has that the current one lacks: an invocation of feeling, like the image that rests in one’s chest. My language has become more confident, even photorealistic, over years of practice and use. But like a camera, language is a tool whose precision can’t replace an alchemic effect. If the feeling isn’t there, it won’t land.
The Impressionists knew this when they revolted against the painting establishment, and perhaps we will learn our lesson again. I’m unable to care too much about AI-in-the-arts discourse because I still don’t see how AI could replace the essential creative act. Even if an AI can replicate what one might think is a human hand’s brushstroke, it’s the hand, with all its hopes and imperfections, that renders the mark meaningful. One person’s attempt to express what seeing the cloud made them feel to allow someone else to share it.
A clever but soulless story, like the countless photos I’ve taken on a phone, likely won’t achieve the same goal. This comforts me as I occasionally wonder why people, myself included, are returning to zines, film cameras, and other analog pursuits.
Of course, having sharper tools can help achieve the goal of emotional resonance. The expertise I’ve gained will help me write better stories than before. But the tool is not the content; it’s a vehicle. The act of expressing is what bestows meaning. A perfect camera won’t necessarily take a frame-worthy shot.
As I was combing my photo library for clouds, I came across a picture I had taken of a page from The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward.
“What turns a milk sky pink? Is it the sins of the world, bleeding up into the atmosphere reddening the clouds up above or is it love.”
I’ll leave you with the full page. Have a great weekend, and see you on the other side of the woods.
With release of iPhone 17 Pro, we’ve gave our son our Canon 5D and lots of pro L-series lenses, including a 400mm f4 DO. We’ve found our iPhone to be the 99% solution. When focused on image collection, we use the DJI OSMO Mobile 6. We are not turning back. As Chase Jarvis said “The best camera is the one you have with you.” Wishing you lovely images and videos ahead.
My phone is more than 3 years old and I’ve been wondering if I should get a shiny new toy too. But I dislike how crisp the photos are and rarely take photos with my phone. I will say, however, the iPhone’s stabilization feature is really good for handheld walking videos. In the end, like you, I talked myself out of it. I made all my vlogs from three years ago shot on an iPhone. A new toy can wait.