I missed focus on this picture and back home at my computer my finger was hovering over the delete key while I mourned the lost shot. But then I started to feel like the image still had a story in it.
The man had been sitting alone on the steps of the closed beach house before two people and their dogs came walking up the beach. I was setting up to photograph the walkers when the dogs bolted up the beach toward the man. His downward gaze lifted and he reached out his arms toward them. He rubbed their heads and scratched their backs and then they all three shared a kiss.
I was frantically pressing the shutter button of my camera trying to get the picture. The dogs ran back to their owners and the man watched them leave and then he stared out across the water and then back at the sand in front of his feet.
What’s the story? Who was he? Why was he at the beach on this evening? I don’t know the answers because I don’t know the man, but I can wonder. Was he there to contemplate something that happened in his life? Was it something sad or something happy? Was he there just to feel the ocean and the warmth of the fading light of another day and to marvel at the very idea of being alive? Was he reflecting on decades of living and feeling just a little bit beat-up and in need of something comforting?
His countenance seemed sad to me until the dogs showed up and he brightened with their embrace.
In this photograph the man and the dogs are captured sharing love with each other - something all sentient creatures want to do. That’s easy to forget from inside the emptiness I feel after being assaulted by the hate and anger filling the daily news.
In this out-of-focus picture I see a story about something good in us, something worth holding on to.
Monte