Seeing- Annie Dillard

“The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.”

Here Annie Dillard goes into more detail about what seeing really is. Its not just looking at something. Like throw a camera lens or a picture itself, but actually observing your surroundings. You have to be aware at all moments and focused on the now and not the future. She says that when she has her camera she focuses to much on that and not on what is really happening. But without her camera she acts like the camera and she is taking mental pictures of everything, not specific shots here and there.

“Darkness appalls and light dazzles; the scrap of visible light that doesn’t hurt my eyes hurts my brain. What I see sets me swaying.”

Annie Dillard spends a lot of time talking about darkness and lightness. Its not just what you see but what you don’t see. There are things in darkness as well as light. Here, even thought she spend time talking about nature and being outside, she seems to dislike the light in her eyes al the time. She enjoys the darkness as well and the emptiness of that isn’t so, in your face.