Meta-photography

Today a professional photographer took a picture of me taking a picture of her. You can't see me. I'm kneeling in the mud by the creek--but then, so is she. She's shooting me shooting her, but why?

The college magazine is running an article on the experiment in cross-disciplinary creativity in which I am involved, the project that inspired me to take a Scientific Imaging class to spark new ideas for teaching nature writing. The article talks about taking the plunge into unknown territory, using the example of my adventure stomping in cold creek water to get a photograph (read it here), and the photographer wanted to get a photo of me stomping in creek water to get a photograph. So I taught this morning in my creek-stomping clothes and then changed into my creek-stomping shoes and went out to stomp in a campus creek.

"Pretend you're taking a picture of something interesting," said the photographer, but this creek offers little of interest besides a deflated St. Patrick's Day balloon and a lot of mud. So I shot the photographer. It was a totally meta-photographic moment--well, except for the mud. There was nothing meta about the mud.