“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!” – Ted Grant

I am skipping Photo Friday this week as I plan to share “January in 31 images” in the next couple of days.

What’s on my mind instead is this black-and-white photograph of the amaryllis (above). It really is quite alluring, and I am trying to figure out exactly why.

Maybe it’s because the image is stripped down to its essential structure? Or maybe it’s like the Ted Grant quote suggests, that what I am actually photographing is the soul of the flower?

So I tried black & white with two or three more images and I love the effect, especially where the contrast between light and dark is accentuated.

I wonder if that is what happens to our souls in eternity? If they become – in what we call death – stripped down to the essentials… until a kind of architecture of self is revealed?

The shape of our souls:

It makes me think about the “Personality Theory” psychology class I took, where we learned about how people like Freud and Jung and Adler and Watson and Skinner and Erikson and Maslow and Ellis and Rogers and Pearls understood and sketched out their analysis of what makes a person their unique self.

Maybe my theory would be to understand that the self is revealed in the millions of binary choices we make in the course of a lifetime? Pinpoints of black and white that become a hundred thousand shades of gray that take on the shape of our souls.

In my memoir I theorize a person who lives more than eighty years makes approximately one million consequential decisions. These decisions create shade and definition and give shape to our essential selves.

Maybe who we are is shaped by the cumulative weight of our moment-by-moment choices? Maybe.

Decisions for kindness – or not; for truth – or falsehood; for the moment – or for the future; for good – or ill; for self – or another; for grievance – or grace; for reconciliation – or retribution; for greed – or generosity; for excess – or enough; for short-term pleasure – or long-term meaning; for humility – or arrogance; for sharing – or hoarding; for better – or for worse….

Regardless, I do love the story these photographs tell. And I love the idea that we are empowered to make the decisions that shade the shape of our souls.

One decision at a time and in response to grace upon grace, I choose gratitude and I choose light and I choose love – DEREK