Day
The Call: Mid-day Dinosaur — Cheryl
Nearly every photographic discussion on light that I’ve been privy to has included an admonishment about shooting in harsh mid-day sunlight. I understand the reasoning behind this, but the artist needs to listen to the rules that apply to a specific work, not generalizations about good and bad art. I’ll never forget the discussion of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in my Major American Writers course at St. Anselm College. Another student rejected the book, because the narrator, Ishmael, told us things he couldn’t possibly know. I argued vehemently that it didn’t matter. Moby Dick would not have been the masterpiece it is with an impersonal, omniscient narrator, and the information Ishmael was not supposed to know was crucial to the story. No, Ishmael’s “clairvoyance” — if you will — doesn’t fit with the rules of literature, but it works perfectly in the world of Moby Dick created by Melville, a remarkable writer.