The photographer-photograph-viewer divergence

For a few weeks I have been looking at the same mountains. Clouds, contrast, fog, lighting, all attribute perpetual changes of the same mountains to the eye.

In April, it rains daily. It shines, daily. It is foggy, daily. The forecast can interrupt itself any minute, many times, daily. It is the rainy season, though in constant change. Within a single day, it may be too hot, too cold, too wet, too cloudy, too bright.

Hence, daily, at times by the minute, I will be attracted to forms, perspectives, colors, and/or dynamics on the horizon which compel me to immediate action by taking a picture from this rooftop in the city of Quito. I still do not know why freezing those moments is such a compulsive tendency, and I am not looking to understand its reasoning here.

What I do need to address at this moment is the discrepancy between what initially attracts me to shoot, what a photographic system actually turns into a photograph, and what a random viewer will see/read.

A number of impressions may instigate taking a camera to aim while some thoughts may be the result of having taken the shot:

• a texture of the clouds spreading across the sky — a resemblance to cotton, patterns, movement
• lighting accents
• brightness of the firmament
• dramatic playfulness in one section, or across the whole panoramic view
• the myriad of habitats for individuals and families
• the infrastructure of the city
• the ancient lineage of planning on a specific plane while being a miniscule part of a vast planet
• the momentary visibility of the horizon versus the large hidden parts which will become invisible on any given second
• the vicinity the eye perceives to the object (mountain), in contrast to the hours or days one would need to reach it
• the different greens that often give notice to the way in which farmers might be using the land
• the magnitude of life that vibrates within a forestal congregation of trees, the same that seems to be a single object of gathered green hues

Just a few possibilities of looking at the very same photograph in different ways, with different references, different knowledge, different distances, all in the same pictured fraction of a second. Or the possibilities of looking in one direction, daily, always under varied circumstances.