Collective memory

My friend Terry’s comments about our childhood photographic exploits really made me wonder how often we share a memory, without even knowing it.  When I first read this post, I was immediately taken back to the autumn of my youth when the birds would descend on the fields after harvest; great masses of black winged thieves, scavenging the land for crumbs of sustenance.  Like synchronized performers swooping and diving, an almost rhythmic order rises from what seems like utter chaos. 

Images, the captivating ones of our times; the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, the World Trade Center crumbling in the center of Manhattan, planting of the flag on the moon.  (insert your favorite here)   Collectively we remember, we feel, we can assimilate a moment in time with a single image.  Forever frozen in our consciousness, we recall those times when the visual catalyst is thrust on us; it’s our own unique experiences that make us rejoice for the reminder, or curse it’s refusal to leave us be. 

My last visit home, I took the above picture of a very dilapidated hen house on our family farm.  Its significance is highly personal.  My grandfather and I built this modest roost, I can recall being on the hot tin roof, driving nails in time with him.  He had given me my own tiny little hammer, and how I cherished the gesture I deserved my own device to build something with my own hands, that he trusted me to be part of the creation of such a thing.   While taking images can be highly personal and we think we’ve only captured something that holds meaning for ourselves, in the end, we may well touch someone else.  To me, that is the unexpected gift of photography.

Winter chill

There is a stiff wind blowing today, downright frigid at times.  I’m not a big fan of cold or the winter season in general.  It’s a funny thing, having a hobby such as photography can change our perspective on things.  Winter is perhaps the best time of year for photography, in terms of quality of light.  The sun hangs low in the sky most of the day, casting elongated shadows on the landscape and bathing the Earth in a warm, inviting glow.  I never fully appreciated the transformation this natural occurrence had on the world around me until I seriously started to pursue photography.  I know all my photography buddies are shaking their heads in agreement.

Studying light is a serious quest, pursuing the perfect light of the “golden hours” can become quite an obsession for some of us.  My dear friend, Kathleen Stein is perhaps the most astute person at observing light, studying its properties, and learning to manipulate it to her photographic advantage.  She can do things with flash that completely and utterly amaze me.  I’m not a fan of flash, at all, but she can render an artificially lit scene with the look of soft natural light.

Knowing how an image can go from ordinary to extraordinary with the slightest angle, color, and quantity of light, I’ve had to abandon my belief that winter is only good for hibernating bears!  Begrudgingly on the coldest of days, I see treks in the cold holding a metal tripod freezing my bejeebers off, as opportunities to capture images that perhaps transcend the banal.  Photography, in its simplest terms, is a trick of the light.

I humbly submit an image I stumbled across while out for a drive.  I found an abandoned junkyard in Lugoff, SC.  Traipsing through the woods I came across a rusted Studebaker Lark a beautiful sculpture of rust and chrome bathed in the glow of the morning winter light.  The rust lit as though painted by a master painter, the texture subtly heightened by the angle of the light.  The real lark, as I saw it, was my sheer delight at being there to capture the fleeting moment on film.

Let there be light

Or better yet, just leave me in the dark!  I love the process of watching images appear in trays of chemicals, the darkroom is such a fascinating and sometimes frustrating process.  I spent several hours playing with my fingers in the light this weekend.  I only printed two images, and thought I would just get a couple of quick and dirty prints, nothing overly time consuming and I could be happy with “good enough”.  The longer I stare at a particular print, the more unsatisfied I become. 

Who am I kidding; I’m way too anal and slightly obsessive to allow “good enough” to be “good enough”.  So I will have to shut myself off in the bathroom again and do some more tweaking.  All this means I’ll have to remake my masking prints, and that’s really a pain!  Not to mention with an improperly ventilated setup, it’s quite hazardous.  Thankfully my throat has stopped hurting from breathing the fixer fumes.  And I suck at spotting!  I did say I loved this, didn’t I?

In the beginning….

It may seem illogical to start a blog titled in the middle of things at a beginning, but I have too many proverbial irons in the fire and I am anxious to get this started.  A residual side effect is it may well serve as motivation to stop all my procrastinating and get my personal projects started, and what a concept, perhaps even finish one!  However, does one ever really finish projects deemed personal journeys or reflection?  I’ll give it my best shot at any rate.

With every passing year, seems I get misty eyed about my past, and increasingly neurotic about what the future may hold.  Do you remember lying on your back as a child, gazing at the millions of stars and wondering how on Earth did all this come to exist and where do I belong in the midst of such things?  I guess that’s what I am attempting to answer; where am I and how did I get here.  Some questions I have found the answers and I can spout off my conjecture without even blinking.  Photography, or more accurately, my love of, is one of those things I can recall the moment in which I started an affair which I knew would last a lifetime. 

I will fast forward past the childhood ventures with my mother’s little Kodak 110 camera.  The bicycle rides around the neighborhood snapping the shutter at things I found intriguing or beautiful.  I wish I had the tangible artifacts of those exploits, but alas, we never developed any of the film.  So now all that remains of my attempt to capture my environment or whatever fleeting thing my youthful mind tried to hold onto are my memories.

I obtained my first SLR in 1993, a gift from a friend who acquired it from a government surplus sale.  A serious chunk of metal, Nikon F3, issued to some unknown US Marine photojournalist.  I was so fascinated, and miserably lost!  I checked out a copy of John Hedgecoe’s Book of Photography from the local library and read voraciously, trying desperately to grasp all the technical and aesthetic rules and processes.  For the record, I’m still trying to grasp it all!  My next mission was to buy a lens for the camera and learn how to turn the camera on and use it.

Once I received an owner’s manual and a 28mm lens, I couldn’t wait to start an exciting new journey.  I lived and worked in Georgia at the time, a night job delivering newspapers to rural towns in the SW region of the state.  I would finish my route, drive to locations that caught my attention, and sleep by the side of the road, waiting for the sun to come up.  There was a strange exhilaration in being so bold and adventurous, sometimes a little scary.  Armed with a cheap tripod and a roll of Kodachrome, I was unstoppable.  Life and adult responsibilities have a way of changing such things, so my Nikon was relegated to an empty shoebox in the corner of a closet, gathering dust.

Everything changed when my youngest daughter signed up for photography in her freshman year of high school.  Having to be an active participant in her earlier photographic forays, my love for the art was rekindled.  She taught me how to make b&w prints in the darkroom and develop my own film.  (More on this later)  I’ve been, in her words, a photo nerd ever since.

Without further ado, these are the very first images I took with my Nikon.   Welcome to my nonsensical ramblings!