Advocate photographer Danny Fulgencio took these photos for the August 2010 issue. He says archery was one of those things he’d always wanted to photograph but never had the chance.
Unfortunately the shot he envisioned — a horizontal shot, the camera slightly ahead and left of the archer, extreme concentration flashing in her eyes, the arrowhead suspended in stunning detail with a glint of light snapping off its tip, the arrow sleek and deliberate, frozen mid-air — was not the shot he ended up with (apparently that shot is even more elaborate than it sounds).
After hours or fruitless and frustrating labor, he had an ah-ha moment that he says “was perhaps more a concession than an epiphany.”
“Once released, the arrow follows its own path, meaning archery is less about the arrow’s destiny than the archer’s graceful release,” he says. “And if the success of a photograph, like that of an arrow’s flight, is measured by its impact, the result is ultimately born from the practitioner’s ability to let go. And, conceptually, maybe there comes a point when it’s best to let an immature idea miss its mark, accept the reality and simply let it go.”
All that said, these photos of Robyn Pope and Chris Dion speak for themselves.
