detective that he can apply to the inexorable
rules of logic three catalyzers:
an abnormal observation of events,
knowledge of the human mind and
an insight into the human heart.
...
It is your task to cohere confusion,
to bring order out of chaos.
...
...the pattern must exist.
It’s the same story in detection:
recognize the pattern and you’re within
shooting distance of the ultimate truth."
- Ellery Queen
a.k.a., Frederic Dannay (1905–1982)
and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971)
Note. I have written before about the meta-pattern that describes the pattern of how I search-for/discover photographic compositions while on travel (e.g., see my short essay, Fox-like Hedgehogian Photography, that describes my experience in Iceland). The first few days in any new place (or old place, newly revisited) are inevitably filled with excitement, awe, and an Ansel-Adams-esque drive to capture Wagnerian-epic landscapes in all their glory. My wife's and my recent trip to New Zealand certainly matched this pattern; and how could it not with truly otherworldly vistas such as Milford Sound! But, predictably, after a relatively few days of rapid-fire "Ooooh" and "Aaahhh!" shots, my eye/I reverted back to its typically quieter less dramatically Wagnerian reflective state to find the sorts of images I love best - i.e., those that are obviously grounded in places I visit, but which may have been taken anywhere - intimate patterns that catch my attention not because they scream "Capture me to show others before the light goes bad!", but because they mirror something looking through the lens, a thought, a memory, a feeling, whatever. My favorite images (however humble and possibly "uninteresting" they may be to others) are those that lift the veil between inner and outer realities. The very best are fragments of mystical experiences. To be sure, the image above is certainly not in that last category. But it is a typically Andy-esque post-first-travel-week intimate composition grounded on "seeing" an inner pattern depicted externally. In this case, a self-organized "Q" that remined me of Ellery Queen's signature letter that adorned the covers of his early mystery books. I wonder, would I have even "seen" this intimate landscape (captured in New Zealand, but not an image of New Zealand, per se) had I not spent the better part of my teen years devouring early Ellery Queen mystery novels?