Though it was raining heavily when I wrote yesterday’s post, by 10AM the rain had become light enough to get out for a Satruday fotoprowl. Fotoprowl®. I coined that word yesterday on Google+ in describing my adventure. Or I think I did 🙂 Someone may well have come up with it before me. Fotoprowl: an exploratory walk or ramble with camera in hand, intentionally hunting for images. I think it describes what many of us do. There comes a moment when the hunger for an image overtakes us, and we pick up the camera and head out the door…only thinking of destinations as we go…as likely places for pics…not setting out to see any particular thing or place, but going in search of whatever might make an image.

Yesterday I was headed for our back marsh and my pocket sanctuary along the Kennebunk Bridle Path, but it took me a half hour to get from the front door of the house to the car door. Now that the Japanese Beetles are gone, we are getting our first really good roses of the season. This giant pink was just begging for a pic.

And this yellow was growing right next to it, head hung over and still dripping from several days of rain, but still striking.

Then, only a few steps away, the tiny massed flowers of the Sedum caught my eye and the camera’s lens. The rain water still sitting in the flowers and the subtle light of an overcast day deepened the pinks toward red.

Then on the way to the car I looked up to see the first touches of fall color, literally touches, across the street. The flow of cooler air along the pavement touches the exposed leaves of Maples earlier than the season. And I have always suspected that the higher levels of carbon monoxide above the road have something to do with it too. Later in my fotoprowl, I found trees more fully touched, but I like the way the partial color here is framed against the pine needles.

And finally, reaching the car, I found that fall had gotten there before me.

I eventually did get in the car and get on with my fotoprowl behind the beach and along the Bridle Path…but that is a story for another day.

So what is the Sunday point? Those of us who have chosen photography as a way of celebrating the world around us…as our creative medium for sharing our vision…are driven by the creative urge to our occasional or habitual fotoprowls. That fact, simple as it is, never ceases to fill me with joy, and with a deep and abiding quiet satisfaction that is indistinguishable from deep gratitude. Not every fotoprowl results in a great image…in a image that takes on a life of its own…a true creative capture…but that does not diminish the satisfaction, or the gratitude. The satisfaction is in the prowl itself. We do not hunger so much for the image as for the hunt…for the state of mind…for the intentional openness and heightened awareness that is the essence of the prowl. In the fotoprowl, the photographer is fully alive. And that is why we do it…and what we are thankful for.