in which i look at an old photo (part7)

Posted on September 14, 2025 by greg

Back in May of 2024 I reluctantly began to occasionally look at my old photographs, because apparently that’s a thing. I’d never stopped shooting photos, but I’d stopped thinking about the praxis of photography–the many ways in which photography can be put into practice. Then I came across an article somewhere that suggested looking at your old photos as if they were made by a different person and seeing what you could learn from them.

I gave some thought to that idea and decided it was silly. But I did it anyway. And hey, whaddya know? It had some value. Maybe not the intended value (which was something to do with improving your photography maybe?), but value all the same. If nothing else, looking at a few old photographs has reminded me that I tend to be pretty deliberate when it comes to composition.

This is the seventh time I’ve looked at an old photo. And you’ll notice the composition is unusual. I’ll explain why in a moment. First, the photograph.

Yeah, you’re probably wondering what the hell, right? Allow me to ‘splain. A photography group I used to belong to (well, okay, a group I used to run) would engage in a variety of photo projects. This particular project involved shooting photographs as an homage to photographers we admired or respected. The idea was that by emulating these photographers, we could learn something about them and their approach to photography.

I chose to emulate the work of Uta Barth, a photographer I’d written about several years earlier. Barth is a conceptual fine arts photographer; her most important work is about the act of seeing rather than what is seen. She essentially decided to remove the subject of the photograph from the photograph. By focusing on where the subject would be and by overtly calling the viewer’s attention to the absence of the subject, she attempted to turn the viewer into the subject. When the viewer is the subject, the photograph is no longer about what is in the photograph; it’s about the act of looking at the photograph. Many critics of her early photographs complained that her images were blurry and out of focus. Barth explained the photos were “perfectly in focus, the camera just happens to be focused on an unoccupied point in space.”

I confess, at first this approach didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It was until I realized Barth was basically saying the world and everything in it exists independent of us and independent of anything to do with us. She was saying the world is NOT just our background. That concept hit me hard, partly because it should be so obvious.

The particular photo was my first attempt to emulate Barth, and it’s a failure as an homage. Why? Because, unconsciously, I included a subject. Barth very deliberately cleared away any sign of herself in her work. The inclusion of any personal item makes the photograph about the photographer. “Shoes on the floor, clothes, letters and objects on my desk immediately construct a narrative and identity of the person, and there you have it: I’m the subject.“

And hey, there’s me…the two single-use plastic bottles of water (it was 2013; I didn’t know any better back then) and an item of clothing slung over a screen divider. It doesn’t say much about me, but it suggests something—and that’s enough to create a subject of the photograph.

I guess there’s a lesson there. If you’re going to attempt conceptual photography, make sure you have a solid grasp on the concept. And I suppose this demonstrates the value of looking at your old photographs. If nothing else, they remind you of lessons learned.

agri-culture

Posted on September 4, 2025 by greg

The only thing I know about keeping livestock is…okay, I don’t know anything about keeping livestock. I mean, I know it’s hard work. I don’t know that from experience, since I’ve never kept livestock, but even sharing space with a pet (cats and dogs, certainly, and probably birds and lizards, what do I know?) means cleaning up after them. Even the tidiest of cats uses a litterbox and somebody has to deal with that.

Why am I talking about this? Because looking over the photographs I took at the recent Iowa State Fair, I noticed I have a lot of photos of farm people cleaning stuff. Cleaning their animals, cleaning the gear needed to take care of their animals, cleaning the things their animals pull, cleaning up massive amounts of animal shit. Everywhere I went, men and women and kids were busy cleaning.

And when I say ‘cleaning their animals,’ I don’t mean they were just washing them (although there’s an astonishing amount of animal-washing going on all the time). I mean they’re shampooing them, blow-drying them, combing them, trimming them, vacuuming them.

Seriously, people were vacuuming off…something, I don’t know what. Loose hair? Dandruff? Barn grit? No idea, but everywhere you go in the animal barns at the fair, there are men and women and kids vacuuming their livestock.

Women grooming sheep while men sit and chat.

These animals weren’t just being cleaned; they were being groomed. Meticulously groomed. (Okay, sorry, a slight tangent here. The term groom has a slightly hazy etymology. It’s probably(?) related to the Old English growan, meaning ‘to grow.’ At any rate, by the 14th century groom referred to a male servant who attended to officers (and their gear and horses) in a noble household. By the 19th century, the noun had been verbed, and groom referred to the process of tidying up or preparing for a purpose. So groom referred to both a person and what the person did. I don’t know why I thought you needed to know that, but there it is.)

A young girl vacuuming (or blow-drying) a cow.

As I was saying, these livestock animals (and I’m talking about cows, horses, pigs, goats, sheep, llamas, alpacas (is that the plural of ‘alpaca’?), rabbits, and chickens (do rabbits and chickens count as livestock? No idea.) are meticulously groomed. It’s clear that some of the grooming is done in the hope of winning a prize, but it was also clear that much of it was done out of pride and affection. That was especially true of the younger people.

Here’s a thing you probably need to understand. All this cleaning and grooming? It’s taking place in and around massive cooperative barns housing hundreds of animals. Animals are noisy, so these barns are a constant barrage of animal noises. Also? Animals shit and piss a lot. I mean, a LOT. And they’re not particular about where or when they do it. So even though there’s a constant stream (so to speak) of people shoveling, sweeping up, and carting of waste products (the logistics of livestock waste management must be staggering), the fact remains that these massive barns…well, they smell like you’d think they’d smell, but not as bad as you’d expect.

What I’m trying to say here is that there’s an astonishing amount of hard work done by the farm families who bring their livestock to the fair, and all that work makes the environment as pleasant as possible. One of my reasons for visiting the animal barns during the State Fair is to look at animals, of course, but it’s also to see this remarkable group of people cobble together a shared sense of community. There’s something very tribal about it. And as a sociologist by training, it’s fascinating.

But here’s the problem with being a sociologist: I know that the farming community I see at the State Fair is, largely, a myth. Around 40% of farms in Iowa are owned by corporations. Modern farming, even among non-corporate farms, is a business more than a self-sufficient way of life. The farming life we witness at the State Fair is something of a sentimental homage to an idea of rural living from the past. An homage grounded in nostalgia and an agrarian myth.

But so what? I’d argue there’s value in that. The fact is, it’s not corporations who are grooming their livestock at the State Fair. It’s not corporations who are hauling manure and polishing wagon wheels. It’s families doing that.

My visits to the State Fair animal barns always leave me impressed (and yes, a wee bit stunned by the smell and noise). I leave those barns profoundly grateful there are people–families–still willing to do the hard work of making sure the world gets fed. As myths go, this is a pretty damned good one, and I’m glad folks are keeping it alive.

not the weirdest thing i’ve done

Posted on August 24, 2025 by greg

A couple of days ago I wrote about a photograph I’d taken of some cracks and oil stains in a random patch of blacktop. It may seem a wee bit weird to photograph a patch of blacktop, but…well, just wait. In that post, I briefly referred to the fact that there’s a difference between blacktop and asphalt. That sparked a reply to the post, and that reply reminded me of an earlier crushed stone and bitumen-related photograph I’d taken fifteen years ago.

Now that was weird.

Back in November of 2010 I was noodling around a location where a local supermarket had been demolished. All that remained of the store was its foundational slab and what had once been a parking lot. That’s where I came across something odd.

Yep, that’s a chunk of asphalt curbing around which somebody had tied a strand of red PVC-coated wire. Why would somebody do that? I don’t know, but I assumed it was to make it easier to carry. Why would somebody want to carry a chunk of asphalt curbing? No idea. I located the spot from which the curbing had been removed about 20 yards away. There were several similar chunks of broken asphalt curbing. But somebody had selected that particular chunk, tied red PVC wire around it, and moved it.

Why? No fucking clue. But it was odd, and I do love things that are odd.

So I returned to that spot about six weeks later. The chunk of curbing was still there. It had snowed, but the snow had melted off the chunk. A heron had apparently been curious enough to check it out. Not sure if that meant the heron was as curious as I was, or if I was as stupid as a heron.

Anyway, I stood there in the snow for a while, trying to cobble together some semi-logical reason for somebody to tie some PVC wire around a chunk of curbing and carry it twenty yards before dropping it. I was sure there was a logical reason; not necessarily logical to me, but logical to the person who did it. But I’m damned if I could figure it out.

I found myself occasionally wondering about that chunk of curbing and the red PVC wire. Did the person just happen to have some red PVC wire in their pocket? Had they deliberately brought the wire with them, intending to move the chunk of curbing? And why why why would they want to move it in the first place? It made no sense, but I was intrigued by it.

So I went back again on a cold, wet, foggy day in February. And yep, it was still there.

It wasn’t just strange; it was also visually interesting. I was taken with that red PVC wire. I considered taking hold of the wire and lifting the chunk, just to see how heavy it was. But I was reluctant to disturb it. It wasn’t just an object of curiosity anymore. That’s when I began to think of the chunk of curbing as a possible photo project. Which meant it didn’t seem right to intentionally change anything about the subject matter.

I returned to visit the chunk of curbing about a month later and was shocked to see it had been moved. Somebody had apparently picked it up, carried it about twenty-five feet, at which point the red PVC wire had snapped.

I can’t imagine many people would find a reason to noodle around the detritus of a former supermarket. But IF somebody did, and IF that somebody happened upon the chunk of curbing, then surely they’d be tempted to pick it up. I mean, I’d been tempted to pick it up myself. The way the PVC wire was wrapped around the chunk of curbing–it was clearly intended for it to be picked up. Who could resist it?

Somebody didn’t resist it. Somebody had seen it, had picked it up, and toted the chunk of curbing twenty-five feet. Hell, that was the most understandable thing about the whole situation.

I didn’t get back to visit my pet chunk of asphalt curbing until late in the summer. As I approached, I saw two chunks. I thought maybe whomever had moved the curbing back in the spring must have returned and broken it.

But no. It was a second chunk of asphalt curbing. Somebody–maybe the same person who’d moved it earlier–had apparently gone to the spot where other chunks of curbing were scattered, picked up another chunk, carried it to the vicinity of my pet chunk, and dropped it.

This compounded the WTFedness of the situation. It reinforced the original weirdness. It made no sense at all. It was insane. It was…kind of wonderful. I was oddly pleased by the development.

I returned a month later. Not much had changed. Some orangish lichen had grown in a nearby crack and I spent some time trying to find a way to photograph the red PVC wire and the orange lichen, but nothing seemed to work. In the end, I just documented my chunk of asphalt curbing along with its companion.

I figured I’d just about come to the end of the chunk’s story. I was still curious about the whole thing, but the original aura weirdness was beginning to fade.

Still, I’d developed something of a perverse relationship with that chunk of curbing. I felt a need to check on it. So of course I went back.

The red PVC wire had moved. It had broken six months earlier, but a length of it had been trapped beneath the chunk of curbing. How did it get loose? Maybe a bird or animal had tugged on the wire and freed it? In any event, I took it as a sign (No, not that sort of sign; just an ordinary sign) that the project was at an end. Surely, the wire would soon get blown away. Without the red PVC wire, the chunk of curbing was just a chunk of curbing. As soon as it was gone, the photo project would be over.

I gave it a couple of months. I went back in December. Nothing had changed. As near as I could tell, the red PVC wire hadn’t even moved. That was…weird. You’d think that over the course of two months something would have moved the wire. But that was just minor league weird compared to the overall weirdness.

Still, I’d made the decision that I’d keep coming back until the red wire was gone. So I returned in the spring. The entire area was fenced off and construction equipment was tearing up the old parking lot.

There’s an apartment complex there now.

I no longer live in that area, but maybe once or twice a year there’ll be a reason for me to pass nearby. And when I do, I think about that chunk of asphalt curbing, and the bright red PVC-insulated wire, and the person who’d tied the wire into a parcel-carrier. And I wonder what in the hell they’d been doing, and why. And it pleases me that I’ll never know the answer.

blacktop

Posted on August 22, 2025 by greg

So I’m in a parking lot. No, wait, not a parking lot…a parking area. It’s not like a parking lot outside a big box store, with lines designating parking spaces. This is just an extra wide bit of blacktop on a winding blacktop road through some woods near the spillway of a dam. It’s a place where people who fish the area above the spillway can park their cars.

On a weekday, it’s usually empty except for the occasional Asian or Latino immigrant looking to put some fish on the table. It’s a quiet spot. Shaded by trees. My partner and I sometimes make the half hour drive to this spot with a couple of camp chairs, something cool to drink, and our books. We sit, we read, we look at the birds, we listen to the wind in the trees, we chat with the folks who come to fish. On the way home we usually stop for ice cream. It’s nice.

She can sit still longer than I can. My knees are wonky and I have to get up periodically and stretch them. There’s always something to look at, and I’ve always got a camera with me, so occasionally I’ll take a photo. Yesterday I took a photo of the blacktop.

I don’t know why this particular patch of blacktop caught my attention, but it did. There are some cracks with little weedy bits growing in them, and some oil stains–some new, some faded. But it’s just blacktop (which isn’t asphalt, by the way; both blacktop and asphalt are made of crushed stone and bitumen, but the ratio of stone to bitumen is higher in blacktop, which can give it a more sparkly appearance–and lawdy, this is way more information than you need or want).

I pulled my Ricoh GR3X out of my pocket and looked at that patch of blacktop from several different angles and directions. I raised the camera higher, I lowered it closer to the surface, looking for a different framing of the patch. I probably spent three or four minutes trying to get the framing just right. Then I took this single photo.

I looked up to see my partner was watching me. She said,

“Bug?”
“What?”
“Where you taking a picture of a bug or something?”
“Oh. No. Just the blacktop.”

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded and went back to her book. The sky is blue, the clouds are white and fluffy, the water ripples a wee bit with the wind. There are swallows hawking for insects just above the surface of the lake. A kettle of vultures is making lazy circles in the distance. And there’s Greg taking a photo of a patch of blacktop.

Just another day at the upper spillway.

state fair in…monochrome?

Posted on August 15, 2025 by greg

The Iowa State Fair…well, every fair, really…is a colorful event. Bright, garish colors. Not normally a venue I’d consider photographing in black-and-white. And, in fact, of the maybe 150 photos I shot during my five hours of noodling around the fairgrounds yesterday, only a few were shot in monochrome.

Why would I do that? Because there are some scenes that feel like they ought to be shot in monochrome. Color photography is my default approach, and sure, you can shoot scenes in color and convert them into black-and-white images (which is actually the best approach, since digital imagery is grounded in information rather than color). But if there’s something I want to shoot in black-and-white…well, I shoot it in black-and-white. I want to see it in black-and-white.

Obviously, we live in a world of color (well, most of us do) and yay for that. I love color. But sometimes it’s a distraction. The photograph above is all about the beard. But this guy’s clothing was a drab sort of khaki which made his beard almost disappear. Worse, the woman next to him was dressed in bright colors. In fact, most of the passers-by were dressed fairly colorfully. The only way this photo would work was if I removed the distractions of color.

That’s one of the many advantages of digital photography. Almost every modern digital camera allows you to quickly shift back and forth between color and monochrome. I have my Ricoh GR3X set up with two different color profiles and a high contrast monochrome profile. When I saw this guy demonstrating wood-turning on a small lathe, I knew his brown-green smock would interfere with the color of the wood. A turn of a dial, and problem solved.

But what do you do when there are scenes that work in monochrome AND color? For example, a blacksmith at work. You can’t ignore the bright color of flame, or the way fire casts a glow on the surroundings. Obviously, you have to shoot both. Each carries a different emotional weight.

The photograph above is, I think, a very human photo. It’s as much…or more…about the people in the photo as it is about blacksmithing. The light cast by the flame and the high windows softens everything. It gives the image an almost cozy feeling.

When you remove the distractions of color, the mood changes. It’s not just that the composition becomes more focused on tone and texture, on shadow and light, or line and form. Removing color also means abandoning the strictures of reality. Black-and-white photos are a wee bit divorced from reality, a step or two away from the real world, recognizable but still different. This can give an image an almost mythic quality.

This photo is less personal, more emotionally distant, more analytic. It’s not about the guy doing the work; it’s more about the mythos of blacksmithing–the narrative of the smithy, the cultural representation of blacksmithing. It has a more primitive vibe. Where the color photo is about warmth, this is about heat and fire.

Also? Black-and-white photography encourages a LOT more artsy-fartsy bullshit.

asking too much

Posted on August 9, 2025 by greg

Late last night I was noodling about on YouTube, looking for something about Japanese photographer Miyako Ishiuchi (who, by the way, is vastly underappreciated) and I came across a video by–I guess he’d be considered an ‘influencer’? I’m not going to mention names; he’s a good photographer, makes a LOT of videos about photography and photo gear, he’s got a large following. This particular video was focused on his feelings about being burnt out. He said:

“Lately I’ve been feeling like my photography hasn’t been saying what I want to say. I’ve been questioning if it’s even the right medium for me to communicate my thoughts and feelings.”

Okay, valid. And hey, he’s right. Still photography isn’t a very effective medium for expressing thoughts and feelings. Writing is a good medium for communicating thoughts and feelings. Cinematography–moving images–another good medium for communicating thoughts and feelings. A cohesive series of purposely related still images can be an effective medium for communicating thoughts and feelings.

But a single photograph? Nope.

A single photograph is useless for expressing thoughts and it’s unreliable as a tool for expressing something as complex as feelings. A single photo can certainly invoke a mood, and that mood might suggest something of what the photographer was feeling. But it might not. A happy photographer can shoot a grim, moody photo; a photographer in deep despair can still shoot a cheerful photograph. A single photo, regardless of how powerful it is, is just a moment isolated in time and limited by an artificial frame.

As to thoughts, you often hear people say stuff like, “This photo tells a story.” No. No, it doesn’t. A single photo doesn’t tell a story. It can’t tell a story. A story has a beginning, a middle, and an ending; you need at least three photographs to tell a story.

BUT a single photograph can hint at a story. It can imply a story. The viewer, looking at a single photo, can create a story based on that moment. But it’s the viewer’s story; it comes from the viewer. It’s only inspired by the photo. A single photo can be the beginning, the middle, or the ending of a story. But an entire story? Nope.

This is not a story. It could be part of a story, but it’s not, in itself, a story.

That said, still photography can be a powerful story-telling tool IF you string together a series of related photographs. Photo-stories can even be more powerful than video, because you can take your time looking at a still photo. You can examine every corner of the frame. You have time to blink and think and ponder what you’re seeing in each image, instead of simply responding to the images streaming in front of you.

The photographer in the video also said this:

“I feel like a good photograph is something that expresses what the creator wanted to say.”

I dunno, maybe? If you want to say something like “Ducks are cool” or “Tall buildings are impressive” or “Look at this guy cleaning up street trash on a cold, wet, foggy morning,” then yeah, a good photo can express what you want to say. But if you want to express anything more complex than a simple declarative sentence, then your hope that a photograph will express what you want to say is…well, misplaced.

The only thing I was trying to say was, ‘Seeing this guy at work makes me feel something.’

Another thing—at no point in his video did the guy ever articulate WHAT he wanted to say. Or why he wanted to say it. Or how his photography was falling short. In fact, he said,

“I sometimes feel like I don’t have anything to say…and that I’m just making photos.”

Dude, that’s fine. Ain’t nothing wrong with just making photos. But when you deliberately take a photograph, regardless of the subject, you ARE saying something. You’re saying, “This is what I see. This is how I see it. What’s happening in front of my camera is interesting to me. It makes me feel a certain way. Maybe it’ll have a similar effect on you.” The impulse to press the shutter release is, by itself, a valid reason to take a photo.

I found this guy’s video annoying. Annoying and ironic. The irony is that the guy who was complaining that still photography failed to communicate his thoughts and feelings was actually communicating his thoughts and feelings using a medium designed to communicate thoughts and feelings.

My point is this: any expressive medium–still photography, cinema, writing, dance, painting, acting, sculpture–is limited. Don’t ask more from any expressive medium than it can give you. And don’t whine about the limitations.

a photograph i won’t post

Posted on August 2, 2025 by greg

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Posted on June 20, 2025 by greg

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.

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