Category Archives: confessional crap

a photograph i won’t post

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I posted this photograph on Bluesky a couple of days ago. I almost didn’t take it.

I was noodling around the edges of a demonstration and saw this guy, overcome with emotion (and maybe the heat), turn away and sit down. He was a big guy, bald, looked strong; not gym-strong, but work-strong. The anguish on his face was hard to look at but strangely beautiful. It was probably a moment he’d rather not have in public…but he did.

Overcome.

Okay, let me just get this out of the way: in the US you have no right to privacy when you’re in a public space. That’s the law. If you’re in public, other people have the right to take your photograph. The question is never whether it’s legal to take another person’s photo; the question is always whether it’s ethical or appropriate. Those are individual decisions and only the photographer gets to make them.

I wanted to take that guy’s photo. But I didn’t. It seemed too private, too personal. Then he put his hand up and covered his face. The depth of his emotion was still clear from his body language, but by covering his face the image became less about him as a person and more about the emotion itself. So I took one shot and moved on.

I don’t shoot a lot of photographs of people. When I do, it’s most often during a public event. A farmer’s market, a street fair, a protest march, a sporting event, that sort of thing. Sometimes I’ll shoot people in more generic public venues–at a fruit stand, in a pub, on a bicycle ride. I may or may not ask permission to take their photo; it depends on the situation and the moment. I’m very open about carrying my camera in circumstances like this; I’m not trying to conceal what I’m doing, but at the same time I don’t try to draw attention to myself.

“Oh? You want a photo?”

Occasionally I’ll see somebody who, for one reason or another, interests me and I’ll stop them and ask if I can take their photo. Occasionally, they’ll say no; sometimes because they’re in a hurry, sometimes because they’re shy, sometimes for reasons they don’t articulate. If they say no, I just thank them and go on my way.

But most people say yes. Like this guy, John, who was waiting for a bus. Most people are friendly. They may ask, “Why do you want to take my picture?” and if they do, I tell them. I told John I liked his mustache and his hat. I don’t always ask their name, but I always thank them and show them the photo. Nobody has ever asked me to delete their photo.

John, waiting for the bus.

I DO NOT take photos of marginalized people in states of distress. I confess, I’m occasionally tempted to shoot those sorts of photos. Suffering is part of the human condition, after all, and I think if it’s done with compassion, such photos can have merit. But they can also just be cheap exploitation. And frankly, the viewer can’t know the photographer’s purpose by looking at the photo. The photo is what it is.

Having just said that I don’t take photos of folks experiencing hardship, I’m now going to admit I actually DID take one a couple of weeks ago. I was walking down a city street and came across a man who was stumbling along, leaning against a containment wall of a landscaped office building. As I got closer it became clear he was extremely intoxicated. I asked him if he was okay. He kind of wobbled his head; I couldn’t tell if he was shaking his head ‘no’ or if he was nodding. He said, “I just need to lay down for a bit, I just need to rest, to sleep.” He said that two or three times.

And he did just that. He climbed up on the containment wall, laid his head on his arm, and closed his eyes. I don’t know if he went to sleep or if he just passed out. I stood there for a very long moment, uncomfortable about leaving him and equally uncomfortable about staying with him. The look of misery and exhaustion never left his face. But there was something almost delicate about his relaxed hands.

I very much wanted to photograph him. And I was ashamed of wanting that. In the end, after a minute or so, I took the photo and left. Was it an ethical violation of his privacy in moment of vulnerability? Yes, without a doubt. But I did it anyway.

It’s a good photograph. Not a great one, but good. t’s an honest one. I like it and I hate it. I haven’t shown it to anybody. I discussed the entire incident with my partner and told her about the photo; she was rightly troubled by my behavior. So am I.

But I can’t entirely regret it.

murderbot

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I held off on watching Murderbot on AppleTV until last night. Why? For reasons.

I don’t recall what prompted me to buy All Systems Red, the first of the Murderbot diaries. It might have been a recommendation from a friend, maybe I read a review, I really don’t remember. I recall being skeptical, though. The name Murderbot seemed silly, offputting.

But I bought it and damn. Then I had to wait a few months to buy the next one. The first four installments came pretty quickly, as I recall, and each one solidified my feeling for the character. Now, of course, I’ve read (and loved) every Murderbot story that’s been published. And I’ve read them more than once.

And that’s exactly why I avoided the television series. I figured there was at least a 90% chance the series would screw it up. How could it not? I mean, I know what SecUnit looks like. I know the sound of its voice. Any actor chosen to portray SecUnit would almost certainly be wrong. Alexander Skarsgård is an excellent actor, but he’s NOT SecUnit (at least not in my head). Kate Box (from Deadloch) could probably do it. Maybe Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones). But Alexander Skarsgård?

So my expectations of the show were low. I fully expected to dislike it.

Reader, I was wrong.

As I said, last night I decided to watch the first episode. Well, I decided to watch the first ten minutes. And I’ll say this: the first five minutes of Murderbot was somewhat painful. SecUnit’s voice was wrong. Its attitude was SO wrong. In the stories, when SecUnit refers to humans as ‘assholes’ it’s simply making an observation; in Skarsgård’s voice, it sounded judgmental. Early in the series, SecUnit doesn’t care enough about humans to judge them.

But then…damn it, the show began to seduce me. It’s not MY Murderbot, but…I don’t know, that first episode was…good? Good enough that I watched the second episode. Which was better. And yes, now I’m hooked.

Skarsgård is very, very good at evoking SecUnit’s discomfort at being forced to associate with humans. I still think his voice is wrong, but goddamnit he’s SO good at looking at a wall like it’s a comfort blanket. He may not be MY SecUnit, but he’s really effective as A SecUnit.

None of the other characters were quite right (in my head). Except Mensah (played by Noma Dumezweni), who was perfect. Her ability to depict patient compassion without being annoying is wonderful to watch. And, again, the more I watched, the more I enjoyed the crew. They’re not MY PreservationAux survey team, but they’re a damned good and engaging PreservationAux survey team. Allowances must be made when translating the written word to the screen.

By the end of the first episode, I realized I needed to divorce MY SecUnit from AppleTV’s SecUnit and MY PreservationAux survey team from the show’s team to more fully enjoy the series. My SecUnit is still (and always will be) the best, but their version is really watchable and very entertaining.

I’m still a wee bit skeptical. I’m prepared to be disappointed, because so much of SecUnit’s development takes place INSIDE its head–what it’s thinking, what it’s feeling (it is seriously uncomfortable with emotion), and how its behavior is shaped by its thinking and feeling (and yes, it’s an ‘it’ rather than a gendered being).

But it looks like Skarsgård might have the acting chops to pull off SecUnit’s internal struggle to adamantly deny its humanity while still insisting on its personhood. To me, that’s the heart of the Murderbot Diaries. So far, Skarsgård’s ability to mute his facial expressions while still depicting unwelcome emotions has been spot on. It’s just a fraction of an emotion away from deadpan (and yes, I think Kate Box would have done it better).

So tonight I’ll watch another episode. Maybe two (I suck at binge-watching). I can say without any hesitation that it’s the second-best Murderbot ever.

i’ve got one hand in my pocket; a year with the ricoh gr3x

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Okay, it’s been one whole year (plus a day or two) since I unboxed my Ricoh GR3X. One year, and I’m still infatuated with it. Here’s what I wrote about the camera a month or so after I bought it:

[T]his camera seems to have been designed almost specifically for the way I shoot photographs. I’m not a street photographer, although I enjoy shooting street. I’m not a landscape photographer, or a fine arts photographer, or a portrait photographer; I don’t really belong to any of the more common photographic traditions. I belong to what I like to call the flâneur school of photography.

Then I wrote some pretentious shit about the term flâneur. Basically my style of photography is to sort of noodle around places, noticing things, chatting with strangers, sticking my nose where it probably doesn’t belong, and shooting photos. That sounds pretty casual. It probably looks pretty casual to other folks—and it kinda is. But I’m not really a casual photographer. I almost never photograph anything without pre-visualizing it. Happily, I’ve been shooting long enough that the pre-visualization process (composition and exposure decisions) usually only takes a moment.

The Ricoh GR3 makes the process between pre-visualization and shooting easy. It’s designed to let you change the exposure settings with one hand. In fact, the video reviews I watched before digging into my pocket to buy the Ricoh often showed people shooting photographs with one hand. My first response to that was ‘What kind of fucking amateur is shooting photos with one hand?’ I mean, one of the first and most valuable lessons I learned in photography was how to hold a camera to eliminate camera-shake, to give yourself a stable platform. I sure as hell was NOT going to be shooting any photos with one hand.

You guys, guess what. I now routinely shoot photographs with one hand. Every photo in this post was shot with one hand. I have to say, at first that felt…irresponsible. But the camera weighs almost nothing (really, it’s about nine ounces) and the image stabilization system is incredibly forgiving. The photo above? I shot that in a low-light situation. We’re talking a half second exposure at F11. With one hand. Ginger is blurry because she’s walking, but everything else is clear and in focus. That ought to be impossible with one hand. But here we are.

Now, shooting with one hand seems sorta kinda…natural? For example, I’m at the local farmers market, I’m toting a bag with pastries and fresh veggies, and I see a woman with a pug in a baby carriage. I pull the camera out of my pocket (did I mention it fits in my pants pocket? Not like a cargo pants pocket, but a regular blue jeans pocket…astonishing), ask the woman if I can photograph her dog, and a moment after she says ‘sure,’ I’ve got the photo. One hand.

And that’s another thing. For most of my long and randomly wicked life, I’ve been reluctant to shoot photos in portrait aspect. Even with my cell phone, I turn it sideways and shoot in landscape. But with the Ricoh, I seem to be shooting a LOT more vertically. I don’t know if it’s the camera (it’s probably the camera) or a change in the way I see the world, but there it is.

Over this last year I’ve shot 3335 photographs on the Ricoh. For some photographers, that’s probably just a busy couple of weeks, but it’s a lot of photos for me. I’m a rather parsimonious photographer (which I’m sure is a result of having learned to shoot pre-digital, when film and processing cost money I didn’t have).

So am I shooting differently with the Ricoh? Yes and no. I’m still shooting the same sorts of photos, but I’m doing it more quickly, more fluidly, and more vertically. And I’m doing it with one hand in my pocket.

in which I look at an old photo (part 6)

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As I’ve explained elsewhere, about a year ago I came across an article on some photo website that suggested looking at and analyzing your old photos as if they were made by a different person. The idea seemed a wee bit silly to me, but I was just coming out of a photographic slump…so what the hell, I thought I’d try it.

That slump is long dead now, though I suspect it had more to do with buying a camera that fits my approach to photography than with this practice of looking at old photos. That said, I’ve found some unexpected value in looking at my old photographs. I’m not learning anything new about photography (as I recall, the article was about evaluating or improving your compositional skills or something), but I’ve been surprised to find a weird sense of formality in my photos.

I don’t think of myself as being a formal photographer. I tend to shoot sparingly (I learned photography in the film era, which meant every shot cost money and I was rather poor), but quickly. I’ve been doing this photo stuff long enough that I don’t really think much when it comes to composition. I just put myself or my subject in a position that feels right, then take the photo. While I don’t believe there are any rules that MUST BE OBEYED, I do think there are some very strong photographic suggestions that ought to be considered. For example, if you’re making an informal portrait, you should be reluctant to have your subject strike a pose and you should avoid putting your subject in the center of the frame.

10;29 AM, Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Like this. This is Sakim. I’ll tell you about Sakim in a moment. First, the photo. It’s everything you don’t want in an informal portrait–stiff pose, center of the frame. But (to me, at any rate) it works as a photograph. Why? Partly because of the composition; all the lines direct your eye to him and the angle of his arms matches the angle of the light on the sidewalk. It also works partly because this genuinely represents this particular person at this particular moment.

I was noodling along the riverwalk when I saw Sakim approaching. He was wearing a black baseball cap with smiley faces on it, drinking juice from a soft packet, and walking in a sort of marching gait that I associate with psychiatric patients. I’ve worked with a lot of psychiatric patients, mostly in a prison setting. I’m comfortable encountering them in unscripted public settings. I’ve found folks with emotional issues are often eager to visit with people IF those people are relaxed around them. Of course, the opposite is also true; some folks just want to be left alone. You can’t always tell until you start visiting with them.

I don’t recall how we struck up a conversation, but based on past experience I suspect I initiated it. I do recall he had a soft, gentle, deeply accented voice. We spoke about the weather (it was warm for October, but Sakim said it was chillier than where he was from) and his juice (he didn’t mind that his juice was warm). He wasn’t entirely comfortable having a conversation, but I had the feeling he didn’t really want the conversation to end. My sense was that he didn’t quite know how to have a casual conversation and was always concerned that he wasn’t doing it right.

After a few moments I asked if I could take his photo and he agreed. He took his cap off and stuck it down the front of his pants (which was disappointing–I really wanted him to leave it on, but I didn’t want him to feel like he’d made a mistake by taking it off). Then he struck this awkward pose. He had the sun to his back, which left his face in shadow, so I asked if we could trade places. He struck the same pose again. I told him he could relax. He said he was relaxed. Without lifting the camera to my eye, I recall asking him to take a couple steps this way and that way until it felt like he was in the right position, then I raised the camera and took a single shot. I showed him the photo and thanked him; he said “Okay” or something, then he turned around and went marching off.

Sakim never smiled the entire time we talked. Never showed any emotional affect at all. The entire encounter couldn’t have taken more than 3-5 minutes. I left feeling like I’d sort of failed him somehow.

When I got home and looked at the day’s photos, I almost deleted this one. I was only looking at Sakim and thinking about his awkward attempt to engage with a stranger. It’s NOT a good photo of him. He looks a little sad and distant. But even though it violated my sense of informal portraiture, and even though it’s not a good photo of Sakim, I felt it still worked as a photograph. Despite that, I’m not sure I ever posted it on social media.

If nothing else, this practice of looking at old photographs has reminded me of my 3-5 minutes with Sakim. It’s been almost 13 years. I hope he’s okay.

hands off, the fringes

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Like a million other concerned people, I attended the local Hands Off! protest yesterday. I wasn’t sure how many people would show up, considering it was a cold, blustery day (about 42F with steady 14mph winds and gusts about twice that). I thought we might still get a thousand people. Maybe.

The local news estimated the attendance to be around 7,500, and they tend to be conservative in their estimates. It was an eclectic crowd with a variety of concerns. Climate change, veteran’s benefits, social security, health care, education, trans rights, social justice, the court system, immigrant’s rights, Ukraine, and more. But there was absolutely universal condemnation of Comrade Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE.

The protest began, as all protests do, with speeches. I confess, I paid little attention to the actual speeches, though I was pleased to hear the crowd cheering and applauding. During the speeches, I left the main crowd and moved around the fringes. Why? Because there are folks who want to protest and make their voices heard BUT for any of a thousand reasons may be uncomfortable with crowds.

The folks on the fringe of the protest were pretty much the same people who made up the rest of the crowd. They were mostly white (this IS Iowa, after all) but beyond that they seemed to be a fairly representative sample of the protesters. There were young kids (some in strollers), and working class folks, and church-goers, and goths, and office workers, and trans folk, and wine moms, and college students, and old folks (some using walkers), and union members, and passers-by who just wanted to know what the hell was going on.

One of the things I found most interesting about the event was that everybody was 1) happy and 2) pissed off. They were pissed off enough to give up their Saturday to carry signs and listen to speeches and shout for Elon Musk to be deported and for Donald Trump to be impeached and to take over one of the main city streets and march a mile or so in cold, blustery weather to the state capitol building, where they listened to still more speeches. But they were also happy and laughing and clearly delighted to be with others who agreed with them. There was a tremendous sense of relief, and a sense of urgency, and a sense of something approaching hope and optimism. That all seems contradictory, but it didn’t feel like it.

Nobody there thought this march–or any of the hundreds of other marches–was going to change anything. Nobody there was that innocent. But it felt like there was a shared commitment to changing the way we govern ourselves. There was a very clear feeling of joy at the chance to express themselves, to carry signs and chant slogans and shout out their frustration and rage and hope.

It was also clear that this was the first time a lot of these people had attended a protest. At the beginning, there was a tentativeness to the crowd. A lot of looking around to see if anybody was watching, if anybody was upset or offended by what they were doing. This was especially clear when the organizers asked them to take to the street and march up to the capitol, where we’d join up with a second protest. We are a car-brained culture, and these people were unsure about the propriety of taking over a street without permission.

But they did it. And when cars approached the head of the march, they had to stop and make a U-turn. At the back of the march, a lone police officer in a squad car followed to insure no drivers disrupted the march from behind. Within a few hundred yards, this crowd of normal Iowans were chanting, “Whose street? OUR STREET!” There was a palpable sense of released anger and resentment and liberation. It really was OUR street.

When the crowd took to the street, these two women with their “We the People” sign led the way. It seemed appropriate. Because it’s true. We, the people, are massively pissed off. And yesterday, we let those malignant fuckwits of the Trump administration know it.

I took a lot more photos of (and in) the crowd itself. But here I wanted to show the people who, at least at the beginning of the day, hovered around the fringe of the protest. The people who usually get overlooked. The people who don’t make the highlight reels or the news reports. As so many protest signs said, you know things are grim when even the introverts show up.

You’ll notice that most of these photographs are of women. You’ll notice they’re not drawing attention to themselves. They’re drawing attention to the signs they’re carrying. Signs they mostly made themselves. There’s a song from the 1950s resistance movement in South Africa that goes, “Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo.” This translates as:

When you strike the women, you strike stone.

We’ve been striking stone for decades. Centuries. Eventually, it’s going to spark a fire that will incinerate the patriarchy. It may still be a long time coming, but it’ll happen. And when it does, women like the ones in these photos–the ones quietly occupying space at the fringe–they’ll have helped light that spark.

in which i get annoyed at success

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I’m trying to find a balance here between honesty and modesty. Here’s the thing: I mostly write short detective fiction. I write with the intent of selling my stories to one or two magazines–Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine or Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Why those two? Because when I wrote my first short detective story, I checked to see who published the most prestigious mystery magazines, and the answer was AHMM and EQMM. I figure if you’re going to get rejected, you may as well get rejected by the best.

This is where the honesty and modesty business comes in. I’m a good writer. Not a prolific writer, but a careful, deliberate writer. I’ve sold every story I’ve submitted to those magazines, with one exception (which, of course, I think was an error on their part). When you consider the acceptance rate for those magazines is about 3-4%, that’s a pretty good record. I’ve had stories included in Best Of anthologies, I have a story in Alfred Hitchcock’s 50th Anniversary anthology, I’ve won an Edgar for Best Short Story.

So yeah, I think I’m a good writer, but I don’t have much attachment to the finished product. I’ve written about this before.

Once I finish writing a piece of fiction, I seem to lose all emotional attachment to it. I’ve done what I wanted to do with it, I’ve written the story, and now it’s done. I submit the story to a magazine; they either accept it (and send me a check) or reject it (and send me a rejection letter), but that’s their job. My job is over. Time to do something else. The finished story is old news; it just doesn’t seem very important anymore.

So it’s been a weird experience for me to get frustrated over a story that’s actually been accepted. Here’s what happened. I wrote a story, submitted it, didn’t think about it for a few months. I finished writing another story and was getting ready to submit it, which reminded me I hadn’t heard back about the other story (I submitted that story to the other magazine). This was last October. I wrote the editor, asking for an update.

The update? “We like your story and want to buy it.” BUT there was some corporate issues which prevented them from issuing contracts; I was asked if I could be patient for a few weeks while they got the issue settled? I said yes, of course. In mid-December I got an email saying I should get a contract “in the next 2-3 weeks.” I was fine with that. Then on 1/2/25, I was told “your story is at the top of the list for when we can request contracts again.” On 1/24/25, I got an email saying, “you can expect a contract in mid February.”

No, this old photo isn’t how I write; just how I feel at the moment.

Mid-February came; no contract. It was annoying, not just because the contract was taking so long, but because for the first time, I felt emotionally involved in the product. It pissed me off that I cared about the story as a product. I told myself, “It’s just a story. It’s just words in a row. It’s just something I made up. I should be happy that somebody somewhere wants to give me actual money for sitting in a room and making shit up.”

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that the company that publishes those two magazines (and also publishes two of the best known science fiction magazines) had been purchased by another company. That explained the long delay in the contract. But I was still frustrated and annoyed.

So this morning, five fucking months after I was told the magazine wanted to buy my story, I wrote a polite email to the editor saying how much I’ve appreciated working with the staff of the magazine, but that this long delay was a shabby way to treat writers. I said I wanted to withdraw the submission.

I didn’t send the email. Why? Because, as I said earlier, I’m a careful, deliberate writer; I wanted to re-read it and make sure it was correct before I sent it. And I went to the gym.

While I was at the gym, I got an email with the contract.

That should settle the issue, right? But I’m sitting here, still annoyed as fuck. Partly because the email came from a different editor (what happened to the woman I’m used to dealing with?), partly because of the long delay, partly because this contract pays half on acceptance and half on publication (all the previous contracts paid on acceptance), and partly because goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit, I don’t know I’m just pissed.

The rational part of me says, “Just sign the damned thing and take the coin.” It says, “Don’t fuck up a relationship with a magazine that’s been good to me.” It says, “Give the new people a chance to get their shit together.” The irrational part of me wants to reject the contract because goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit, I don’t know I’m just pissed.

I’m also aware that a LOT of my anger is displaced fury at what’s going on in the US right now. I’m not used to being angry. I hate it. But here we are.

And the thing is, I KNOW what I’m going to do. I’m not in this for the money (nobody who writes short fiction is in it for the money, but being offered an extra US$700+ for sitting in a room and making shit up…well, that’s nice and it’ll buy a few eggs.

But goddamnit anyway.

you have to be there

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The question came up again today. “Is there a relationship between the way you write and the way you shoot photographs?” Somebody asked me a similar question a couple of years ago, and this was my response:

My response was pretty simple: Never thought about it. And then, of course, I started thinking about it.

And, of course, since the question came up again, I started thinking about it again. The last time I was asked the question (yeah, I actually had to go back and find that blog post and re-read it to know how I responded last time), I focused on writing and photography as matters of craft. I said they were two very different crafts, and…

[W]hile writing and photography are both vehicles for self-expression, they’re completely different vehicles. Asking if me if I write the same way I shoot photos is like asking me if I drive a truck the same way I paddle a kayak.

That’s still true. But this morning it occurred to me that there’s another fundamental difference between the two crafts. It’s this:

Photography is the only medium of self expression that requires you to be physically present.

You can paint a picture of a house on the edge of a mountain meadow without being there. You can write a scene that takes place in 17th century Venice or on the planet Tralfamadore. You can dance the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy without being in an enchanted garden. But to shoot a photograph, you have to be there. (Yeah, sure, you can set up a tripod and rig some sort of timed or remotely triggered shutter release, but c’mon, you know what I mean.)

I can write anywhere. To shoot a photo, I have to be there. Right there, at that precise spot in that precise moment. Five seconds earlier, five seconds later, it’s a different moment. Five inches higher, five inches to the right, it’s a different photo. When you shoot a photo, you’re right there.

This isn’t to say photography is more real, or more powerful. I could write a scene…or, better yet, a poem…about the way light falls on a coffee cup that would be as emotional or more emotional than a photo. I could write a scene about a man crossing a street as the light is ten seconds away from turning green that would be full of tension.

A photograph is just now. That both limits its power AND gives it power. A photograph is a real moment as it’s happening.

I hear a lot of people saying stuff like, “This photo tells a story.” No, it doesn’t. A story has a beginning, an ending, and a middle. Again, a photograph is just right now. It might suggest a story, but it’s the viewer who supplies it. It’s not inherent in the photo. A story is what’s taking place outside the frame, what the guy is looking at, why he’s looking, what he’s NOT seeing. A story is what’s in his pockets, what he’s thinking, where he’s going, where’s he’s been, what he did when he was there.

The photo is just a guy with his hands in his pocket, crossing the street while the Don’t Walk warning is flashing.

Back to the question. “Is there a relationship between the way you write and the way you shoot photographs?” Sort of. They both require practice to be consistently good, they both require a certain degree of disciplined composition, they both require a weird merging of passion and control. And (for me, at least), both writing and photography require me to be open and welcoming to the moment. Sometimes a random thought will completely change what I’m writing.

The difference is I can edit and correct what I’ve written. Reality isn’t so easily revised.

EDITORIAL NOTE: This isn’t really relevant to what I’ve just written, but it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned how critical it is to burn the patriarchy to the ground. Burn it, gather the ashes, grind the ashes into dust. Wait for a high wind then scatter the dust so that no two particles exist within a mile of each other. Then bake some bread and eat it with butter and honey.

in which I look at an old photo (part 5)

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Right, quick recap: Back in the Spring of last year I was slowly emerging from a photographic funk. I hadn’t picked up an actual camera in…I don’t know, months, Several months. This had happened to me once before (see the endnote if you’re interested). Anyway, for whatever reason, I was coming out of that funk and starting to think about photography again.

That included reading about photography again. I came across an article on some photo website that suggested looking at and analyzing your old photos as if they were made by a different person. That seemed ridiculous to me. I’m not terribly interested in my old photos; I mean, I’ve already seen them, right? Why would I want to look at them again, especially when there are lots of photos by other people that I haven’t seen?

But I thought I’d give it a try now and then. This is my fifth time in nine months. I’m still not comfortable in doing this. But several years ago I wrote about Alfred Stieglitz and his notion of practicing in public. The idea, as I interpreted it at the time, is that if you’re serious about photography, you’ve got to be willing show your whole ass in public. So that’s sort of what I’m doing. So, here we go:

The metadata informs me I shot this photo on September 18, 2014 at 9:03 in the morning with my old Fujifilm X10 (ƒ/4.5, 1/450, ISO 200). It’s one of six photographs I shot that misty morning. I tend to be parsimonious when I shoot–a habit from the days when I couldn’t afford to piss away film.

I don’t remember anything about that day, but it’s clear to me why I stopped long enough to take this particular photo. It’s all about those angular lines. The railroad tracks, the dirt road, the rising line of poles, the telephone wires, and that terrifyingly flat horizon line (although I’m living in Iowa, I’m not a country boy, and I’m always a tad freaked out when I find myself in the flattest and most open parts of the Midwest countryside. There’s so much sky and so little to break up the horizon. It always reminds me that I’m on the surface of a planet, which makes me feel incredibly small and unimportant; that’s both humbling and sort of a nice reminder that everything is temporary when seen on a planetary scale).

I’m sort of surprised I didn’t shoot this photo in monochrome. If line and form are the predominant features inside the frame, I tend to opt for black-and-white (okay, yet another tangent, sorry. It’s silly, I know, but I deliberately choose to shoot in either color or in monochrome. I almost never turn a color photo into monochrome, though that process certainly gives the photographer a LOT more control over the final image). I have to assume that at the time I took the photo, I thought the mist-muted colors added something to composition. Maybe it does. I’m not curious enough to process the image in b&w to find out. I mean, this is the photo I chose to shoot, and there it is.

I like this photograph. I think I’d like it no matter who shot it. I like the simplicity of it. I like the balance. I like the emptiness.

So, is there any real value in this whole ‘looking at an old photo’ bullshit? I kind of hate to admit it, but I think there is. I may not be learning anything new, but the practice does reinforce the reality that I see and react to the world differently than regular people. That’s true of all photographers; it has to be. It validates the willingness to stop your car at some random spot, and get out in the chill mist, simply because you’re smitten by a series of visual lines that other folks wouldn’t notice.

So I’ll probably do this old photo business again in the not-too-distant future.

ENDNOTE: My first long-term photographic funk came at the end of my career as a criminal defense investigator. I used my cameras a LOT as a PI, but in a very technical forensic way. The photos I took for my work were all potential evidence to be used in court. The work was very object oriented. The photos were sometimes technically challenging (I once had to photograph the undercarriage of a wrecked car, which involved some tricky lighting and wide angle lenses while lying on a roller beneath the vehicle, which was claustrophobic as fuck). The problem was that there was no joy in that sort of forensic photography. Blood spatter patterns might be visually interesting, but it’s hard to appreciate when you’re shooting them. When I ended that career, I stuffed my cameras into my Sam Spade Conjurer’s Kit and stuck it in a closet, where it sat for about 3-4 years. I had no desire to hold a camera in my hand in all that time.