Photography, Life, and the Opposites

My approach to photography these many years is based on this landmark principle of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism stated by its founder, the great American poet and critic, Eli Siegel:

“All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

It is a wonderful fact that photographers, whatever our subject matter or approach, are trying to put together opposites in our work. There are, for example, dark and light, spontaneity and plan, motion and rest, which are not only in every aspect of photography; they are the permanent opposites in reality itself; and we are trying to make sense of them in our lives.

Studying this, I've seen there is no limit to how much beauty we can find with our cameras!