© Armando Bellmas

There are two things I really like about this photograph.

The first one is the bright light beaming in from behind her, the glow so close to the outline of her face and hair as if emanating from inside of her. The second one is that I trusted my creative instincts enough to put her back to the light in the first place.

The second reason jives with Alec Soth’s post about an essay he read by poet C.K. Williams. Williams referring to poets, and taking it a bit more broadly myself, artists:

“Another, related, right, is to be wrong, about anything and everything, and to know that even when your line of reflection or imagining might be viewed as absurdly illogical, you should be able to go on to its however provisional conclusion.”

The logical view might be to have the light illuminating her from the front and not from behind. More from Williams:

We should be able to entertain anything the mind casts up as potentially useful for a poem, while at the same time forgiving ourselves for such after all private matters, and this should be a forgiveness that arrives in a short enough time so that any shame or guilt arising from such scary glimpses within will be productive rather than debilitating for the germination of poems.

Yes, photographers should be as free as poets to, as Williams writes, “vacillate, to wobble, to shillyshally, be indecisive in one’s labors, and still not suffer from a sense of being irresponsible, indolent, or weak.”

There are also times when a photographer must be firm, decisive, and structured while still following his or her instincts. The ability to know when to be one or the other, or when to mix one with bits of the other, makes all the difference when you’re an artist and a commercial photographer.