ghosts got left behind

Posted on October 9, 2026 by greg

What do you do on a bright sunny October day when you don’t want to do the stuff you really ought to be doing? You decide to drive 30 miles into the countryside to photograph an abandoned (and reportedly haunted) 1860s Italianate house for Wikipedia.

Well, that’s what I decided to do anyway. But some days just don’t turn out the way you expect them to.

The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has a Wikipedia page. Officially it’s called the J.G. and Regina Long house, but historically it was known as the Maple Grove Hill farm. Why? Because the house was set on a hill and Joseph Grayson (J.G.) Long planted a grove of maple trees which, in the mid 19th century, weren’t common in Iowa.

Three things on the Wikipedia page caught my attention. First:

According to local tradition, it was a stop on the Underground Railroad and features an underground tunnel connecting the house to a barn.

How cool is that? Very cool, is how cool. Who wouldn’t want to see a house with an underground tunnel (okay, ‘underground tunnel’ seems kind of redundant) to help escaped slaves? And then there was this:

a radio station in Iowa, has reported the house to be haunted by evil spirits due to its history.

Really, a house with a secret tunnel would have been enough. A house with a tunnel that was part of the Underground Railroad would have been enough. Dayenu, right? But on top of that we’ve got some evil spirits. It’s almost too much. According to the documentation to have the house listed on the National Registry,

A female wraith, projecting an image of haunting, albeit benign, sorrow, has appeared over the years to individuals in different rooms. The present owner, who has experienced the phenomenon, believes the figure to be Regina Hiskey Long, second wife of J. G. Long, because of its resemblance to a photograph of her.

So okay, maybe the spirits aren’t all that evil. Maybe Wikipedia got that part wrong. But even benign spirits are cool, right? And the third thing that caught my attention? There was no photograph of the house. We’re talking about a house that was part of an informal secret network to help slaves escape their bondage, a house haunted by a wraith (who may or may not have been evil, who knows?), and there was no photograph of it on the Wikipedia page? How was that possible? A house like that? It deserves a photo. The situation needed to be rectified. And I decided I was just the guy to do the rectifying.

So there’s me yesterday, camera in hand, ready to do right by Wikipedia…and what did I find? No maple trees. No underground tunnel leading to a barn. No barn, in fact. And absolutely no ghosts. Not even the slightest tingling feeling of ghostitude. I can’t say I felt cheated, because the house was still exceedingly cool (for an abandoned farmhouse), but it wasn’t quite what I expected.

There was a very good reason for that. It turns out the house has been moved. Back in 2012 the property was sold and the new owner apparently decided he didn’t want to own a historic haunted house. So another person bought it and had it shifted a couple of miles to this new location. The tunnel, the barn, the maple trees, and the ghost were left behind.

But here’s the thing: houses aren’t just buildings; rooms aren’t just areas enclosed by a ceiling, floor and walls. Inhabited spaces can be metaphors for the people who inhabit them. A lived-in room can inform you; it can answer questions. Who lived here? Who worked here? What were their lives like? How did their lives shape this structure, these rooms?

The J.G. and Regina Long house, even though it’s been moved and inhabited by many other people, can start to answer a lot of questions about who J.G. and Regina were. And the first question is this: how did they come to build a farmhouse in an Italianate style with Gothic arched windows in rural Iowa in the 1860s?

The U.S. Civil War had ended; ‘civilization’ was moving westward, driven by railroad expansion. The arrival of the Chicago & Rock Island railroad in Monroe, Iowa made it feasible for goods to be shipped from the east coast. Italianate style private homes had become popular on the east coast in the 1840s, largely because the development of cast-iron and press-metal technology made the production of decorative elements more affordable. Without the railroad, it’s highly unlikely an Italianate home could have been built in Iowa in the late 1860s.

An 1875 illustration of the Maple Grove Hill farm in its original location.

In the early 1860s, Joseph Grayson (J.G.) Long and his brother Jesse moved from to Iowa from Pennsylvania following the death of J.G.’s first wife. They’d been prosperous in Pennsylvania and farmland was cheap in Iowa. They both bought land, built similar Italianate houses, and became successful breeders of thorough-bred cattle. J.G. remarried (Regina Hiskey, a schoolteacher from Ohio) and had a family. Jesse became the president of a local bank. The future looked bright and promising for the Long brothers.

And yet, something was clearly wrong. In 1875, J.G.’s brother Jesse committed suicide by hanging. A few years later, J.G.’s son died from a self-inflicted gunshot. And according to the local newspaper, in 1899 J.G. himself “became insane, was adjudged a fit inmate for the asylum at Mt. Pleasant by the commissioners and has been taken thence.” He was institutionalized for a year; shortly after his release, he died in house he’d built. Jesse’s house was destroyed in a tornado.

Regina continued to live in the house her husband built; she died there in 1925. If ghosts actually exist, then I can see her as an “image of haunting, albeit benign, sorrow.”

The house and property passed through various hands until 2012, when it was relocated. It’s now completely abandoned. Sadly, but not very surprising, the house has been vandalized. Inevitably, at some point in the future, the house will be gone—either intentionally demolished or a victim of severe weather. It’s a shame for many reasons. There’s something poignant and tragic about any abandoned house, but especially one that held such promise when it was built.

As the documentation for its inclusion on the National Register of Historical Places says:

The Long house dramatically expresses the optimism and economic vitality, which [the region] experienced during its early years when its location on a major overland route from the southeast to Des Moines seemed to insure its future growth.

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary, defined the future as a “period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.” Obviously, that sort of future is often an illusion. J.G. Long surely didn’t anticipate his future. And hey, my day yesterday didn’t turn out as I’d expected. But spending time in the J.G. Long house, learning about his life and the odd history of the house he built, has been worthwhile. I do find myself thinking about Regina, alone in that large house out in the countryside.

Any actual ghosts may not have moved with the house, but house itself is in the gradual process of becoming a ghost. I’m glad I was able to witness and explore a part of that process.

unexpected romance

Posted on September 28, 2026 by greg

I live in Iowa, a farm state, but I don’t know dick about farms. Or farming or farm life or farm culture or farm technology. Crops—I can distinguish corn from soybeans. Livestock? I’m sort of familiar with basic farm animals—I’m okay with generic pigs and cows, but I couldn’t tell you about different breeds. I can identify some farm equipment, like a combine, though I don’t really understand what it does. I’m basically ignorant about almost everything farm-related.

That said, I’m sort of intrigued by farming in a sociological way. Periodically, I’ll make my way out into the countryside or I’ll visit a small town to shoot some photographs and maybe try to get a sense of what life is like for rural folks. In keeping with that, last week I went on a brief tour sponsored by the Iowa Barn Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving old barns. I expected to learn something about the history of barn architecture.

I did not expect romance.

Two sheds, a wheelbarrow of bricks, and a very red truck.

I’ll come back to the romance in a bit. First, the reason I wanted to take that tour and visit the Mitchell farm was to see their barn. Not the barn you see in the photograph below. Their other barn. The barn they bought in 2019, the barn a neighbor was about to demolish, the barn (built in 1915) they decided to jack up and move to their property. That’s right, the young couple you see in the photo bought a used barn for US$2000. Then they found some folks who’d put it on a massive trailer, and they had it hauled a couple of miles to their farm.

I was eager to see that barn. I figured any barn that could elicit that sort of response from folks must be one hell of a barn. But when we arrived at the Mitchell farm, I didn’t even notice the barn. In fact, I spent the entire morning on the farm and failed to shoot a single photograph of the exterior of that vagabond barn, that vaga-barn. Why? Because I was immediately distracted by…well, by everything else on the farm. Beginning with Matt and Libby Mitchell.

I noticed them even before I left the tour bus. They were sitting on the tailgate of a pickup, casually talking to each other. What struck me was how obviously comfortable they were with each other. Kicked back, patiently waiting for a bus to disgorge a small group of strangers who were there to nose around on their property. There was no sense of discomfort or unease or anxiety; there was, instead, a very palpable aura of quiet contentment. You could see that these two people liked and cared for each other, that they shared a casual, companionable intimacy. They were so obviously affectionate, so relaxed and comfortable, so contented. I wanted to photograph them…forget the barn.

Then, of course, there were all those tractors.

Some of the approximately 35 old tractors.

So many tractors. At one point I asked Matt how many he had. “Oh, about thirty-five or so.” Thirty-five or so. Like the actual number didn’t matter. What makes this even more weird is that the man doesn’t seem like a collector. At least not in the traditional sense. Not like people who collect coins or thimbles or comics. He doesn’t seem to be deliberately putting together a collection, he’s not out tractor-hunting. He just hears about old tractors nobody wants…and brings them home.

Those tractors? They’re all operational. They work. He hasn’t restored them; he apparently doesn’t care that they look like old tractors. He just wants them to work. To be working tractors. I don’t know, maybe he wants them to fulfill their tractor destiny or something, and tractors are supposed to work. That’s the purpose of their existence.

It was the same with almost everything on the farm. Matt Mitchell is something of an agri-tech otaku. He has a deep, obsessive passion for old farm equipment. He finds it, buys it, or barters for it, or just agrees to take it off somebody’s hands so they can get rid of it. Then he brings it home, gets it in working order, and…and that’s it. Then he’s happy.

Scattered throughout the farm are projects—some finished, some in progress, some only a vague promise in the future. It’s a working farm, of course, so there’s a haymow in the vaga-barn’s hayloft (a brief tangent; I learned that a haymow is a pile of hay, loose or baled, stored in a hayloft). The vaga-barn is also a place to store future projects. An old Suzuki motorcycle, a pair of ceramic farm sinks, a rocking chair, an old desk—all of it dusty and distressed but potentially functional.

Potentially functional, that seems to be the key. Functional and practical. Not necessarily practical in the present day, but practical for its time. For example, the vaga-barn has an operational Louden Hay Carrier. “What in the hell is a Louden Hay Carrier?” you ask. It was a revolutionary pulley and track system developed by William Louden in 1867. It allowed farmers to easily transfer hay (either loose or in bales) into a hayloft, which made it possible to build bigger barns with larger lofts to store more hay. Here’s a video showing how it worked:

Unfortunately, I didn’t learn about the Louden Hay Carrier until after I’d spent time in the loft, so my photographs don’t show the tracking system. But in the photo below you can see the loft’s drop door and the ropes that accompany the system.

The loft of the vaga-barn, with the ropes of the Louden Hay Carrier

Following Matt and Libby Mitchell around their farm, listening to them talk about the things they’ve acquired, the projects they’ve completed (or started), I came to understand their interest isn’t grounded in nostalgia. Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for a golden past that’s very likely imaginary. This isn’t about a desire to capture the past.

This is romance. Not the sort of soppy, sentimental romance we see in movies (and, okay, I confess to enjoying rom-coms, but this isn’t that). This is romance in an older sense. I’m talking about an active, emotional connection with, and affection for, old technology. It’s passionate, to be sure, but not the burning, all-consuming sort of passion that torches everything and eventually extinguishes itself. This is a quiet, relaxed, enduring sort of passion. It escapes the boundaries of logic and convention, yes, but it never strays very far from reality. This is romance grounded in the appreciation of the beauty, purity, and out-dated practicality of agri-tech that can still work.

Matt Mitchell praising mortise and tenon joinery.

The Mitchells don’t need a thing to be shiny or pretty; it just has to have a history, it has to have had a life, it has to have mattered once to somebody, and it needs to have the potential to perform its function. If that potential is there, the Mitchells would like to see it fulfilled.

That’s romance, right there.

in which i return to instagram

Posted on September 24, 2025 by greg

I stopped posting photographs on Instagram (and posting anything on Facebook) back in January of this year (2025), after Mark Zuckerberg (you know…the desperately uncool dweeb who owns Meta, the parent company of IG and FB) announced Meta was ending its fact-checking program and ‘easing’ content moderation.

FB had already become a hostile, advert-bloated social medium; as much as I loved keeping in touch with friends, the FB experience itself was annoying and aggravating. The new policies only promised to make it worse. The problems with IG were different. A lot of people were getting caught up in the illusion of ‘perfect IG lives’ and that created all sorts of emotional health issues. I was only there for the photography, not for ‘lifestyle’ stuff. While it didn’t affect me, the fact that Zuckerberg didn’t care that if it DID affect a lot of people…especially young people…was reason enough to leave.

O Holy Mop Bucket (Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025)

Why am I returning to Instagram? For the same reason I joined in the first place. Photography. I miss seeing good photography. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of good photography on Bluesky, my preferred social medium, but it’s not well organized. In fact, it’s barely organized at all. Bsky is great, but it’s not photocentric. Instagram is. IG allows me to have a curated experience. I can follow a select group of photographers, who sometimes lead me to other interesting photographers.

I’m not doing this to become a ‘better’ photographer (although I think looking at–and trying to understand–good photos CAN lead a person to try new things, which can make you a better photographer). I’m doing this simply because looking at good photography makes me happy. Being happy is a good reason for doing anything, and it’s especially important these days.

I could, of course, just look at the good photos shot by other people; I don’t have any obligation to post anything. By posting (either photos or comments on the photos of other folks), I’m basically supporting the platform, which benefits Zuckerberg. But looking without participating is cowardly and furtive. If I’m going to use the platform, I have to take responsibility for it. So, this morning I posted a photograph on Instagram for the first time since January.

Here’s a stupid thing: when I decided I was going to actually return to IG, I felt some weird pressure to post the ‘right’ photo. A “Return to IG” photo. Something somehow meaningful, something symbolic (I told you it was stupid). So I opened up my photo app with that in mind. But I immediately saw the photo above and thought, “Oooh, mop bucket” like a little kid. So in the end, I just posted the first photo that caught my eye.

And maybe that’s the right way to do Instagram.

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.

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.

the one thing everybody agreed on

Posted on June 15, 2025 by greg

Like a few million other folks, I showed up at the local No Kings protest. We were all there for the same fundamental reason: because Comrade Donald Trump and his cadre of Nazgûl have been merrily shitting on…well, everything that’s good and promising and hopeful and decent about the US.

People are pissed off about SO MANY things Trump has done (and intends to do). The attacks on immigration, science, trans rights, healthcare, civil liberties, the environment, due process, Gaza (and Israel and Iran and and and), veteran’s benefits, free speech, the national debt, the January 6th pardons, everything about January 6th, the assault on education, the assault on libraries, the assault on the very concept of Truth.

But one thread tied all the anger and frustration and resentment together. A deep, abiding rage against Donald Trump as a person. Not only for the horrors he’s inflicted on the United States, but a profound loathing for him as an individual. As I wandered through the No Kings crowd, I kept seeing this same sentiment. Fuck Trump.

People really hate this motherfucker and they hate him personally. They hate him for what he’s done, they hate him for what he wants to do, and they hate for him who he is. Which, I suppose, is only fair, considering how many people he hates for who they are. Trump has a singular talent for both hating others and being hated.

Why do people hate him so? Because he’s a liar, because he buried one of his many wives on a goddamn golf course, because he’s betrayed the United States, because he’s got truly godawful taste in everything, because he’s cheated on every wife he’s had, because he’s massively ignorant and unaware of it, because he’s a liar, because he’s fucked over every person and contractor he’s ever worked with, because he’s an unrepentant racist, because he hates women, because he loves autocrats, because he’s a liar, because he’s a coward, because he’s never owned a pet, because he’s a narcissist, because he pretends to support the military but believes they’re losers, because he’s a liar, because of his stupid fucking red hats, because he’s a phony, because he’s put incompetent people in positions of power, because he insults everybody who disagrees with him, because he’s a vindictive prick, because he’s a liar, because he’s rude, because of his stupid fucking hair, because he encourages his followers to be violent, because he hates immigrants but hires them to work for his resorts, because he’s shit all over the Arts, because he’s a liar, because he’s cruel and enjoys inflicting harm on others, because he pretends to be a Christian without having an inkling of Christian charity, because he’s a sex pest, because he’s committed many many crimes but has never been held accountable for any of them, because the people who like him are all massive assholes, because he’s a fucking liar.

I’m sure I’ve skipped a few dozen other reasons why people hate him. But I think you get the point. People sincerely hate Trump.

But there was another guy at the No Kings event. Bearded guy, dressed all in black, sitting on a granite railing. He was wearing a T-shirt that said “Hate Will Never Win.” I hope he’s right. I genuinely hope hate won’t win. But I also hope the hatred against Donald Trump will get people to stand up for themselves and for others. I hope it will get people to push back against his authoritarianism. I hope it will get people to vote. I hope it will get people to hold Trump accountable for all (or at least some) of the horrible things he’s done to this country.

And then I hope we can let go of that hate.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job

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