Essential
The Call: Still Life with Chocolate — Cheryl
What is essential to life? Looking at the question academically turns up some obvious, but mundane, answers: water, proteins, air, shelter, food. My list of essentials goes beyond the basics. The books were the first items I collected for this still life, as I can’t imagine life without them, and frankly, get rather depressed when I enter a house and find fewer than two dozen or so volumes. I could live without the coffee and the tea and the chocolate, but I don’t want to. Those particular items are important to me more for what they represent than for what they are: a little time to myself, often spent writing. The flowers symbolize beauty; the bib, the ones I love; and the Rosary speaks of God and faith.
“… Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this; / I want the one rapture of an inspiration. / O then if in my lagging lines you miss …”
— Gerard Manley Hopkins, “To R.B.”
The Response: Sunset Over the Loundoun Valley or the Road Home from Camp — Jessica
When I began teaching, many years ago, Texas had just passed a curriculum reform package that required teachers to tie all lesson plans to a detailed list of “essential elements” developed by educational experts. These many years later, when I hear the word “essential,” I still immediately think of “elements.”
But then what a good question: What are the essential elements of photography? Light, of course. But also shadow, without which the light would have no dimension. And vision. Without which you cannot tell a story.
Light, shadow and vision. The rest is all details.