Nature Through a Lens

In Dag Hammarskjöld’s essay for the radio program This I Believe, he discussed choosing the beliefs with which he was brought up as his own and by his own choice. Meaning that, as an adult, he’d considered his childhood faith and concluded he still believed in accordance with them.

Later, in an essay titled “The Camera Taught Me To See,” Dag wrote:

Looking back at the results of my always equally intense interest in photography—be it my own or others—it is much less the pictures I have taken, during periods when I have really been able to pursue this interest of mine, than what I have learned to “see” that means something to me.

Dag photographed a variety of subjects, not the least of which included the natural world.

Dag Taught Me To See

The camera taught Dag to see. Dag taught me to see. And then he taught me, in his own way, how to appreciate nature through a lens.

I’ve come to enjoy it very much. My curiosity about nature hikes and photography came from Dag. “He liked it; maybe I will, too.” That sort of thing.

But I can say I find it rewarding in my own ways, like Dag saying the beliefs given to him in childhood were his own as an adult.

He never ceases to surprise and dazzle me.

Work On Your Own Craft

There’s something else he mentions in that essay that bears repeating:

And it is better to teach oneself to see than to have one’s way of seeing determined by others; however inferior the results of one’s own work may appear compared with what others can achieve, we still in the end learn more from a study of our own pictures than we can learn from any number of pictures by the real artists of photography and whatever the debt of gratitude we owe to them for their guidance.

Amen. Be yourself. Work on your craft. Retain your own perspectives and notions instead of having them brainwashed out of you by others, even so-called experts. People get wrapped up in, “Well, ______ has already been done, so why should I try?” Why shouldn’t you! Others have written about Dag, though no one so intimately and tenderly. I don’t find it brash to say such a thing because it’s true. Other people have drawn unicorns. Others have started podcasts. Others have taken photographs of flowers. On and on we can go in the comparison trap.

I love that Dag is saying, “Even if there’s some great master who you feel has done it better, you’ll still learn more from your own work than by hiding in the corner, refusing to try.” 💙