An Ode to Imperfection

 

“…and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.”

            Somewhere out there is a roll of film and some prints from an early stage in my growing passion for photography. Among those frames is a less than bush league photograph of my favorite waterfowl species, the Wood Duck.

I remember snapping that photograph like it was from an outing this morning. Not far from where I shot my first duck, which was also a Wood Duck, this drake flushed from a tree near a spot on the river I would frequent with anyone who wanted to join.

For those who don’t know, Wood Ducks are often classified as “tree ducks.” Tree ducks nest in tree cavities and are often found perched in them as well; somewhat of an oddity among all the waterfowl species. Nonetheless, I’d never seen one fly out of a tree before this moment, and even the ones that would often be on this bend in the river had always been on the water in the wild rice when I caused them to flush.

As I approached the wild rice beds looking for my desired subjects on the water, I saw a flicker of flight out of the corner of my eye. Looking left, I saw a drake Wood Duck flying away, and fast, from my stunted zoom. He flushed out of a white pine, another keystone species of my photographic upbringing, simply because they represent the rich history of home. It was only fitting that an imperfect photograph of my Wood Duck, shot in film, came from an almost perfectly gnarled white pine, towering over the turns of the Flambeau River.

When this Wood Duck reached the center of the river, he banked to the right to tunnel against the current…perhaps to a spot more well known by the tricky tree ducks. Thankfully he chose the upriver direction, for a bank to turn him downriver would have provided nothing but a rump—another common imperfection in photographing fast moving subjects like waterfowl—and I may have never even pressed the shutter.

As he ripped through the air, I raised my camera while simultaneously jump-stopping to set my feet like I was about to shoot a basketball. Just as he down flapped, I felt it. Click. I knew I had captured him in my short tree duck timeline. But of course, being no more than a speck on my image sensor, a seemingly perfect scenario to a young photographer left me with nothing but a blurry duck in front of a clear and crisp tree line that reminded me of a seismograph etching erroneously on a sheet of paper.

Fast forward a number of years and I’m photographing another bird: the Red Knot. This time I held in my hands a much more complex and expensive camera, perfectly capable of tweaking imperfections into oblivion. Not only was the camera more experienced,but so was I. I was starting to get an idea of what it took to get meaningful photographs of those little red birds. Yet somehow, imperfection persists. It always will.

My Red Knot excursion wasn’t just a hobby either. Unlike those days walking down to the Flambeau River, photographing Red Knots in Controller Bay was my job, and survey success was almost entirely dependent on me (and many others) being able to capture a little alphanumeric code no more than the size of my thumbnail that was clinging to a bird’s leg.

Not only that, Coastal Alaska is also an inconvenient place for electronics. Rain and wind, sand and mud, the potential problems seem to well outweigh the ideal scenarios.

Miraculously, as rain eased and overcast clouds were just starting to break, I found myself standing in front of three flagged Red Knots—an occurrence that happened only this once in my three springs in Controller Bay. To my dismay, I was able to photograph, in focus, two flagged Knots the survey year before, but three never really occurred to me. Yet only one of those three were used as data, because I failed to get a readable image of the other two. Two ghost cats that I can only hope were recorded before, though that may be a longer shot than ever seeing three flags in a photo again.

If you were to ask me now if I wanted all those flags in focus or for that Wood Duck to be 30 yards closer, the answer would always be an emphatic yes. But I guess that’s never really what it’s been about. Even if “perfection” was achieved, I couldn’t see myself brushing my hands off like I just achieved my goal and will now pursue something else.  

No matter what photographs come and go, I’ll now always remember that imperfect Wood Duck and realize it’s never been about the perfect shot, but about the pursuit of a photograph—any photograph. Because an imperfect photograph, a memory, is the purest form of life.