This is Why I Still Don't 'Do' Weddings

I have been the primary photographer for only two weddings in my life — once for my wife’s brother’s first wedding (because they didn’t have the funds to pay for a professional) and once for one of my son’s (also because there wasn’t money to ‘spare’ for a professional). Besides the obvious pressure to ‘get it right’ because there are no do-overs with a wedding event, there is also the even greater pressure (especially these days) to ensure that everyone in the photos looks their best. There’s no realistic way to achieve this state because most folks aren’t realistic about how good (or bad, depending on their perspective) photos are.

As someone with photographic skills, I have looked forward to serving as the ‘plus one’ photographer at some weddings. I have hoped to provide some interesting background asides at these events. The professionals can’t be everywhere all the time, so my work can fill in and'/or offer some (black and white) color to the photographic record of wedding events.

What tires me (and what elevates my reluctance to even accept these offers) is the way the subjects judge the quality of my photographs by the way they look. The most common are related to poochy stomachs, wrinkly faces and jowly necklines. That’s not the result of the camera adding the ‘extra 10 pounds’ or poor lighting. We live in an Instagrammy world where you can crop yourself in such as way to diminish some of these issues, or use filters to magically make them better. So essentially we are removing the realistic power of photography and using it to create something increasingly unrealistic. AI images are just the lastest step in that progression.

Yes, I am kvetching (ala photographer’s lament) about those who, upon being presented with one of my photographs, fail to recognize the composition, the tonality, the overall effectiveness of the photograph, and instead dismiss it because of the creping around their lips or less-than-model-ish way their stomach isn’t washboard flat. And, yes, I’m tempted (but never do) say, “If you are that sensitive about that part of your body image, then do something about it other than ‘fix it in post.’”

And, yes, yes, I too succumb to such reactions. I offer the photo below of one that I don’t like because it makes me look heavier than I think I am and because it makes me look like Larry King. So I’m lumping myself in with everyone else.

P.S. I have to also add that my feelings above are all wrapped up in my general reaction that the expectations around what constitutes a ‘good’ or ‘perfect’ wedding are unreal and unrealistic, thanks in no small part to the expectations driven by the Wedding-Industrial Complex. Obscene, is the word that most often comes to my mind. No offense to the photographers, wedding planners, florists, butter mint manufacturers and barkeeps that make their living off these events. I like the way my own parents got married. They walked down the aisle at a church, had their reception in their grandmother’s nearly home, stood for some photos before a Kodak Brownie, then took off for a modest honeymoon. Other than the use of a church, that’s my kinda wedding.

I look like Larry King in this recent photograph taken at a wedding.

Breathe Deep the Gathering Doom

Several years ago I posted a series called Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom, a sort of 12 Days of Christmas approach to autumn. This photograph is part of my "Wrought" project. I’m calling it Breathe Deep the Gathering Doom.

I initially wasn't pleased with this roll, taken with a Rolleiflex and Rollenair close-up attachment. Today, it appeals to me more. Maybe it's the depressing news that's become even more depressing in the past couple of days. Maybe I just don't find this too on-the-nose. Maybe it was the Paris catacombs sequence in an episode of "Lupin" I watched last night. Maybe I am now able to pick up the flow I was in when I made this. At the time of making, I almost always believe in the photograph.

I am reminded, but not comforted, by this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke:

Autumn

Time now, Lord. Summer was great,
but lay your shadow on the sundials,
free your winds over the open fields.

Bid the late fruit – Be Full. Give them
two more southerly days. Complete them,
make the wine heavy with last sweetness.

The one who has no house now, will
have no house. The one who is alone now,
will remain alone, lie awake, read,
write long letters, or wandering, blow
about the streets like the fallen leaves.

translation: Nils Peterson

Flaneur With A Camera: And Let Us Now Praise Classical Architecture

By CB Adams

In the early morning yesterday, the Flaneur With A Camera stopped, did a U-turn and parked in front of this house, once someone’s (maybe even many somebodies’) home. The shadow/light on the face of the structure evoked something that compelled the Flaneur to photograph it. So it was the visual that attracted him, but so too was something he had read the day before in Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet: “The environment is the soul of things. Each thing has its own expression and this expression comes from outside it. Each thing is the intersection of three lines, and these three lines from the thing: a certain quality of material, the way in which we interpret it, and the environment it’s in.”

So what does this have to do with this house? It’s about the pediment over the door. This triangular gable crowns the front doorway, much likes its antecedents in classical Greek temple fronts. In this context, the pediment is modest, not ostentatious yet well-proportioned. Whoever designed this entrance (architect, builder?) understood the pediment and what is evokes. Without it, the structure is just a rectangular brick box. With it, it has dignity. The Flaneur imagines the owners feeling pride approaching this otherwise humble abode. It may not be a mansion (whose antecedents are the castles and manors of Europe), but it can have this one, powerful element from one. Or perhaps, it had dignity. Unless restored, it is a breath away from the wrecking ball.

So much life must have happened within the walls of this property. Now, one can only imagine the ghosts of those moments of life. Imagining ghosts is so less satisfying than driving by and seeing a child playing or the owner planting some flowers, the residents waving to their neighbors.

More then, from Pessoa: “Every dream is the same dream, for they’re all dreams.” The folk from this house dreamed perhaps this was their mansion, dreamed by the mansion-owners to be the home of landed gentry across the ocean, who dreamed they lived in the Parthenon. Who knows how far back this particular, pedimental dream extend, for it is a dream comprised of all the other dreams. Save the dream.

Flaneur With A Camera: Serenity's A Long Time Comin'

“Because I’m the size of what I see

And not the size of my stature.”

—Caeiro (a hetronym of Fernando Pessoa)

When asked where the Flaneur With A Camera prefers to make photographs, he is always quick to reply, wherever the Flaneur is with his Camera. Yes, much of his work has been made in North St. Louis, owing more to a weekly Sunday obligation that takes him into the city from his domicile on Snob Hill, but, he feels really free to roam about the…well, country. In this instance, the Flaneur was in Boston (the Somerville area in particular) to attend the opening weekend of the Somerville Toy Camera Festival (showing his Holga-made color print, “Foxtails”). He was hot and tired and a bit late for a lunch with a fellow festival photographer, when this scene stopped him in his tracks. There' was something so serene and yet surreal by this yard. This final image required some cropping from the 3x2 ratio of the 35mm camera to render what the Flaneur’s eyemind was attracted to, but the 1x1 is what best serves this photograph

Glaring Not Gazing

The Flaneur With A Camera had completed two rolls' worth of photographs and was on the way home when something caused him to turn left instead of right and ended up cruising along a street he had photographed a couple of times before. He approached it from a different direction, so he was surprised when he recognized where he was.

The first time he was on the street (winter 2023), there was a collection of wooden crosses in front of a boarded up house. He made some photographs and wanted to return with different cameras, but a few weeks later, the crosses were gone.

This weekend, he turned a corner and lo and behold, the crosses were on a different lot, in front of a bulldozer the a half-torn-down home. A gift from the photo gods. The Flaneur was down to one remaining roll of black and white film, so he went to work. He will return and try to find out who is creating the memorial and why.

Nikon F2 Photomic, 85mm Nikkor f1.8, Kodak Double XX.

Watcher & Seer

As the Flaneur With A Camera, I wandered the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans. I would leave the bed and breakfast with one or two of the many cameras in my room. This day, I was using the Leica M3 with the 50mm Summicron Dual Range lens. I was at the end of a roll and feeling tired and hungry. From the sidewalk, I noticed this bike and basket. I imaged the gritty image I could make, but focusing was difficult in the deep shade. I am still much quicker and more adept at photographing with an SLR compared to a rangefinder. As I tried to obtain the focus I wanted, I sensed someone watching me. I did not acknowledge their presence and worked on making my photograph, knowing this was probably the last frame on the roll (and it turned out it was). The person’s presence added to the anxiety and pressure to hurry up and take the picture.

After the click, the person approached. “I live here,” he said, pointing at the cluttered and rundown porch. “I would never have thought to make a photograph of that, but I see it now.” I thanked him. He looked not at my face, but my camera. (I sometimes think my face is a camera). “I think I need to get out my film cameras again,” he said, then opened the gate and entered his property.

The Flaneur went on his way. We may have parted ways, but we shared a photographable moment.

Something Revealed

I try to create photographs that tell a story, sometimes a pointed story, sometimes (usually) subtle. I made four photographs of my father on the Fourth of July. Unlike my mother, he has always been willing to sit for me. In this case, he stood. This image makes me wonder whether a photograph tells a story in the moment of its making or in retrospect. It’s probably both sometimes. He told me something devastatingly sad about the last 30 years of his life (he’s 82 here). It’s dirty family laundry that will stay with me for now. But when I was developing and scanning and then look at the photograph I made, I couldn’t help imbuing the portrait with what was revealed a couple of hours after. That revelation was in him here. Maybe he was already thinking of telling me. Maybe it just came out later. Either way, his honesty is enmeshed and entwined with his portrait of that day.

Visual Disintegrations

I hate lulls, lethargies and languishments. I’ve been in one or all of these for the past few weeks. I’ve tried not to assess the “why” of why I’ve been experiencing this lull, though of course, I have indulged in that. I have heard the lonesome whistle of depression, what Lucinda Williams named the big black train. So far, that train only whistles from a somewhat safe distance.

Instead, I’ve tried to find the way through and out of the lull. That moment came this week when, feeling leaden, as though I weighed a ton, I put a camera in a bag and forced myself into the January air, which felt like walking through a knives-out maze even though the temperature is relatively mild. The bees in one of my hives have even spent a couple of days whizzing about.

How hard can it be for a creative to do their creative thing? How hard can it be for a photographer to start making photographs. Pulling out of the lethargy of a lull is like trying to escape from fly papers. Cruel as it seems, that’s an apt metaphor. And even crueler than it sound, I have watched flies trying to extricate themselves from fly paper and it is both fascinating and Kafkaesque.

But I finally pulled my legs from the goo and went to a scene that I had wanted to photograph a month or so ago but couldn’t because I was driving with my wife and dog and because the light wasn’t right. The light was right that day and I willed myself to go.

I have photographed this billboard before with a 4x camera and black and white film. One of the photographs I made is one of my best friend’s favorites. In fact, he’s asked for a print the next time I’m in the darkroom. A request that I am honored to fulfill. This second time, I planned on “just a shot or two” of the entire disintegrating billboard. Even that required what felt like a monumental effort.

But as so often happens, I’m photographically like that old Pringles ad slogan, “Betcha can't eat just one!”

And I couldn’t. And I didn’t. And I kept getting closer and finding a visual story in little pieces of the billboard that was peeling off the billboard underneath. Like the one presented here, focusing on a piece tells a more interesting story to me.

And, yes, it’s another photograph of decay, joining years and years of finding the allure, if not the downright beauty, of the unalluring and unbeautiful (conventionally speaking). I try not to examine why I am drawn to this subject. I just am, and best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It’s not hard to find an overwhelming amount of “ruin porn” on the interwebs. It’s a potent subject. I was opened to it by the writer William Gass. Back in the late 80s, I was working for a university alumni magazine and was assigned to write a feature about Gass’s latest project, which involved his photographs of urban/industrial decay. He had a slideshow with long-hanging rust stains and broken surfaces. I resisted liking this unpretty images. Gass made some sort of “case” for the work. I moved on and into a long fallow period when I was focused on writing more than photography.

But some sort of inspirational (aspirational) seed had been planted. Beginning about 15 years ago, images (many made with an “ugly” Holga camera) of disintegration became a recurring subject. It’s now one of the recurring themes in my work. As my body of work grows and I can take a meta view of it, I know I am drawn to certain subjects and approaches.

So, this billboard pulled me back into a working state of mind and I am grateful for it. I recently discovered William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops” (2002-3), and that work resonates (no pun intended) with its visual counterparts.

Leica m8, 50mm Summicron f2.

Finely 'Wrought' Thoughts #1

By CB Adams

I am beginning the journey of turning several months of a photography project I named Wrought (because every scene was captured either on or in proximity to an antique, cast-iron chair), into a book and solo show. Now that I have more than 10 years of juried and group shows nationwide exhibitions to my credit, I am ready to elevate my work into a book of photographs and a solo show. I chose this approach because I was intrigued and inspired to use the chair as small theater for still life scenes that reflected the changing seasons from the first frost-free date here in early May to the first hard frost in late October.

That was my original intent.

Now that I’ve had more than a year to process the film and to allow the project to lie fallow, I see, too, that the photographs I created (no matter with a 4x5, 120 format TLR or 35mm camera) also reflected my emotional states during the time of their taking. I won’t call this a pandemic-inspired project, but working remotely at my day job, allowed me to make many of the photographs at a time of day when I was usually at the company headquarters. Pandemic-adjacent.

Funny how that works.

Because the Wrought book will have both photographs and prose, I decided to use my Qwerky Photo Blog as the place to create some of the prose that may make its way into the book.

I’m starting with this image mostly because I just received the scans back from the lab after waiting several months to have the funds to process the rolls and sheets of color film. I was delighted with this image. I had forgotten I had taken it. I like its simplicity and the use of a “Mason” jar. Mason jar is a catch-all phrase for all such jars. The jar in this image is one of several vintage jars I’ve collected to use for this project. It’s an Atlas jar. I used this jar approach for several other scenes in the Wrought Project.

Why? I was thinking of this “why” just this morning when I was deciding whether to write about this image, which I’m just now naming “At Last.” Why am I attracted to Mason jars? I remember as a young boy, following one of grandmothers, or great-grandmothers, into dark basements, replete with a quotidian light bulb hanging from a cord with its beaded switch chain hanging like a broken necklace. In that dramatic light (from a small boy’s perspective), were rows upon rows of vegetables, pepper relish, and chili sauce. They looked like science specimens to a “city” boy who was accustomed to green beans and corn in cans. Not jars. And certainly not dusty “dirty” jars in a dank basement.

But I soon loved the vegetables that came from my grands and great-grands. They all had large gardens and they all spent steamy late-summer hours “putting up” whatever vegetable was at its peak. And not to forget the jams and preserves. I learned to love gooseberries after I got over the unattractive name. If it wasn’t strawberry or raspberry, it just sounded weird.

I was fascinated watching them boil the jars, fret about the rubber seals, and carefully place the vegetables in the jars. The whole, long green beans lined tall jars like pencils, especially fascinated me. Canning like this is, at the practical level, is/was a way to ensure you had something to eat during the non-growing seasons, but it is, at a more intellectual level, a way of preserving the season. Preserving time.

As I review the images I made using these jars, no wonder I nicknamed the series “Preserve Your Memories.”

Hello Holga, My Old Friend

It’s been a while since I used one of my Holgas. With three photo projects at various stages of completion, my cameras of choice have been predominantly large format 4x5 and medium format. Much of this project work has involved still lifes, which are not usually part of my toy camera repertoire. Still, the Holgas have “eyed” me from their shelf as I reached for the Toyo or the Rollei or even the Leica or Nikon. They certainly were reluctant to make room for the Pentax Auto 100 that’s found a place in the photo cabinet.

Holgas are always in my mind, however. I strive to match cameras with the subject or scene and for the past several months, a Holga wasn’t the right camera for capturing the images I envisioned (when I envisioned them; most of my work is not pre-planned, but rather in the moment).

But a couple of weeks ago, as I loading the small trunk that sits on the back of my recumbent tricycle, I grabbed the Holga named Leaky and added it along with the Fed 2 — both “high-impact” cameras that are suited for the sometimes rough ride on the local trails.

I found this scene and shot an entire roll of this and a couple other graffitied columns. After developing and scanning, this one stood out. There it is, in all its glory, the Holga Look. Hello vignette. Hello distortion. Nice to see you again, weird aberration in the lower-right region, a sort of double exposurey effect. This is exactly the right scene to make the most of a Holga’s quirks. It’s nice to be reminded how a camera renders light in its own way. To borrow a phrase from John Denver, “Hey, it’s good to be back home again.”

“Because You Can’t Your Initials On A Concrete Column” Silver gelatin photograph from medium format Holga camera.

Ghost Sign - Who Is Mike Brown.

I have photographed and written about this mural before. I drive by it often on a certain route along Union Avenue when I am heading into the City of St. Louis. The last time I photographed it, I was “run off” by woman who I assumed just didn’t want me photographing the mural. As I’ve considered that incident and the vague exchange we had, I have come to think she may have been concerned for my safety. She may have been warning me because is one of the areas of St. Louis with a reputation for violence. The sort of area that Springsteen meant with “…Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don't stop…” in his song “Johnny 99.”

When I made this photograph last weekend, using my large format 4x5 camera, a few people walked by, looking at me strangely. One man rode a bicycle along the sidewalk and we exchanged pleasantries.

Making another photograph of this mural was not in my plans. I drove by and noticed the dumpster and made a note to stop after my appointment. I used to think of documentary photography as more like news or journalism photography. I was never that type of photographer - not counting high school yearbook or local newspaper work. But documentary photography is a portion of my continuing work. I may not be photographing “breaking news,” but I am photographing slower-breaking events. I have been surprised at how often I have photographed a scene, thinking I have plenty of time to stop. Then finding the place bulldozed or burned down the next time I pass by. This has been especially true of my work in Cairo, Illinois.

I returned to this mural because the dumpster scared me. The building is probably just being renovated. But one never knows. That Jiminy Cricket voice urged me to photograph again, with the dumpster, just in case the mural becomes a ghost sign. That, plus, people have painfully short memories. If the mural goes, so might its message, slowly yet again progress. It’s inevitable that soon — if not already — someone driving by would ask, “Who is Mike Brown?”

Gedenken Im Gedenken – Memorializing Descansos

I have been photographing roadside memorials for close to 20 years. I had seen them, of course, for many years longer than that. I began to think of them as subjects when I was working as a consultant in Greenville, Texas. One evening, at the “golden hour” loved by photographers, I happened to be parked near one on rural road (I was out for a decompression ride). This memorial had a distinct Hispanic influence, and I know now they are called descansos. This particular descanso was elaborate and yet simple, and the golden light was intriguing, especially as I thought of the person or persons who had died in this vicinity.

“Ricky I” from my ongoing documentary series Gedenken Im Gedenken, photographing roadside memorials, especially in the Midwest.

I didn’t have a camera with me that day, but the memory of that descanso set me onto this long-term project. Like most of us, I drive around a certain amount. Unlike my “Wrought” photo project of 2021 that had a definite timeframe (first free date to first hard frost), my roadside memorial project is ad hoc. I photograph less than a percent or two of them that I pass. Without trying to sound woo-woo, some speak to me while most don’t. And of those that have spoken to me, some have been exceptionally dangerous places to stop (there’s usually a good reason why people have died in a certain spot), and a couple have been hair-raisingly spooky. At one, there’s something spectral captured on the negative – only on the two or three frames I made there; none on the rest of the roll. There’s probably a processing or other cause, but still…

Which brings me to these images I made last weekend. I’m calling the series Ricky. I’ve been regularly passing Ricky for at least two years. For the past couple of months, I’ve been actively planning on photographing the descanso. I considered bringing 4x5 equipment, but hesitated. For some reason, last weekend, I packed my newly acquired Leica R4 with either a 100mm Elmar-Macro R or 50mm f2 Summicron R and some bulk loaded ORWO UN54. This was the day I was going to stop.

To reach the site, the highway crests a hill then drops at an overpass. The site sits between the access ramp and the interstate. I was concerned about making a stop. There was a wide shoulder, which helped. My goal was to photograph the cross with the billboard in the background that has the work HURT on it. I exited the car and approach the cross. The billboard was a bit obscured, but was more or less as I imaged. I exposed a couple of frames and moved around the site. Only then did I realize something was happening in the opposing lane.

“Ricky II” from Gedenken Im Gedenken, a photo series focused on roadside memorials.

There had been an accident. With an overturned car. And traffic backed up around the bend. I was so focused on making the original photograph, I had been oblivious to the surrounding. Of course, I hoped no one was seriously injured, but the photographer in me couldn’t help but feel elated – a roadside memorial overlooking a new accident. This took the site to a new level.

I like both images presented here – for obvious different reasons. I make more than 30 frames with the accident, but the one here is the only one that has depth and complexity. There’s the site, the accident with the individual standing on the highway next to the overturned care, the two side roads with cars and the traffic trying to go around the accident. All of this, overlooked by Ricky.

I’ve only had a working title for the roadside memorial project, the eponymous Roadside Memorial project. But the accident photograph has led me to Gedenken Im Gedenken. I love Arvo Part’s Spiegel Im Spiegel, so I borrowed that approach. Gedenken in German means memory and commemoration. I realize one of the reasons I like photographing roadside memorials is because, in a way, I’m memorializing the memorials. I have documented some memorials that were damaged or destroyed by highway workers, mowers and neglect. The memorials will probably not last any longer than the people who perished there. Memory In Memory. Commemorating the Commemoration.

Gedenken Im Gedenken.

“Ricky III” I marvel at the effort someone has put into erecting and re-erecting this memorial. This speaks to me of the fierce way some hold onto the memory of someone. Tangible, ongoing grief.

Old Globey

In the past year or so, I’ve been more patient about processing my film, waiting until I have a bag of rolls so I can minimize the cost of chemicals. I had enough rolls of Bergger Pancro to warrant a developing run, and these photographs were from a roll that I’ve been eager to see for several months.

When I happened upon the old St. Louis Globe Democrat newspaper vending machine in North City, I saw more — much more — than a rusting relic from a bygone media era. That’s probably why I filled an entire roll of 36 with this one subject.

Why? Because I worked for the Globe during its final two owners. I was hired during the Gluck days, in part because I worked for him while attending J-School at the University of Missouri - Columbia. He published a student paper called the Campus Digest (often referred to as the Campus Disgust) and I wrote features for it, mostly because he paid a small amount for articles.

I could write 10 blogs about my short time there, but those are for another time. Seeing the old vending box reminded me that during my long career, my Globe days are the ones I am most fond. It was an exciting time for a 23-year-old to be the Music/Arts Editor of a major metropolitan daily. Hell, it would still be an exciting time for a middle-aged writer.

The story of the slow death of this paper still breaks my heart. As recently as last week, when I mentioned I was a Globe reporter, the person said (as they almost always do), “Man, I miss that paper.”

I made a lot of photographs of this box because it may be the last remnant I have of that newspaper (except for the battered wooden inbox that I took on my way out that last day after the press conference when the final closing was announced).

I’ll still have the memories. And 37 black and white photos of a newspaper vending machine on its last legs.

My Aim Was True

None of the houses I grew up in had a finished basement. All were glorified storage lockers and laundry areas with the occasional attempt at a home office - always in the corner, the proverbial “corner office.” Yet in all the basements, my father found a place to hang a dart board. When he was playing by himself, he hung the board from a rafter. When he began encouraging me to start throwing, he had to hang it from a sheet of plywood because I missed the board so often, which meant the darts hit the concrete wall. This bent a lot of tips.

I always appreciated the wood and feather darts that my dad favored. But I needed to earn the right to throw them. He gave me the brightly colored plastic darts to practice with. They were cheap and didn’t feel as good in the hand as the wooden darts. They also weren’t as accurate or forgiving. Like playing billiards and basketball, I never excelled at these activities like my athlete/engineer father.

But I tried. He didn’t judge. I had a can-do nature. My aim was true, even if I didn’t hit the bullseye.

I have never owned my own dart board, but I did receive this can of darts among the trunks of items my parents saved from my childhood. Darts was never a large component of my childhood, but, as with many items in the trunks, if I touched it, it was important to save.

Got To Go Round

I don't know how anyone else spent the last day of 2021, but I spent it photographing a piece of rural property with a friend and photographer. These “play dates” are actually working dates. We agree on a location (urban more often than rural), bring our favorite camera du jour and then work the scene. The resulting photographs could not be more distinctly different.

Rollei 3.5 (Tessary) with Rolleinar attachment, Lomography Metropolis film shot at 400.

 I haven’t seen what my friend produced from that day. I received my film back from the lab today and this is a quick first pick. I like the tone, the undercurrent, the sense of a year ending that is conveyed in this photograph.

Staring At the Sons

A son.

The holidays are officially over. We finished “taking down” the decorations and packing them into the storage room this past weekend. I also processed the last roll of black and white film from the portrait sessions with my sons the week of Thanksgiving. There may be a roll or two of color candids, aka happy snaps, which I made with a point-and-shoot camera, but these are the last “serious” photographs I made. Photography was definitely part of my overall enjoyment of the holiday. As I looked at the scans this morning, the experience was different. Their eyes were upon me.

A son.

I’m taking Nietzsche’s oft-quoted phrase out of its original context and meaning, but his phrase “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back” came to mind. I thought that if I looked at their portraits long enough, I would stare back at myself. Somehow. And I did. I certainly “see” myself in my sons in terms of the physical and personality. I am reminded of Chuck Palahniuk’s assertion that “Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary” balanced with Richard Avedon’s aphoristic “My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.”

I hope that someday, somehow, even without me knowing it, they will stare at their own portraits and see me. “The Child,” after all, as observed by Wordsworth, “Is father of the Man”

Corpus Operis

I’ve known for a couple of weeks that my photography project called “Wrought” was soon to end. I set the timeframe of frost-to-frost — that is, I began photographing scenes right after the first “safe” frost-free date for my area of eastern Missouri. Around the first week of May. I envisioned, lo those many months ago, that I would end after the first hard freeze of the fall of 2021. There’s been some light, spotty frosts, but none here on Snob Hill, so I kept shooting.

I had a Truman Capote moment this morning. I poured my first cup of coffee and looked out the kitchen window and a voice in my head said, literally, “Today’s the day to end it.” This was a Capote moment because it reminds me of one of the opening scene in “A Christmas Memory” when : “Imagine a morning in late November …A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. “Oh my,” she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, “it’s fruitcake weather!”

So it was this morning. I had small panics last weekend as I thought about the end of this project. It has consumed me almost daily since I began. Yet, I worried — seriously worried — that I hadn’t shot enough (whatever that means) and/or what it what I had shot wasn’t good enough and/or would there be enought time to make the remaining images I envisioned. I captured some scenes last weekend and a couple during the week. This morning, my plans were to work through the honey-do list I have to complete before guests arrive next weekend.

Then I had the fruitcake moment. I agreed with the voice in my head. I folded the honey-do list and within a few minutes I was schlepping gear from my basement office to the front yard. It was the perfect overcast sky that I love to shoot under. I told my wife of my plans and assured her I could complete the images in a hour or so.

Four hours later, I dropped the proverbial mike.

So, now it’s done. I’m a bit disoriented. Sure, there’s black and white film to develop and color rolls and sheets to send to the lab, but that voice keeps coming back. This time with, “It’s over. It’s really over.” I should be pleased that I have completed my first true photo project — one conceived of specifically as a series of still lifes taken during the sprouting-growing-dying seasons here on Snob Hill. I feel a bit like someone — or something — has died.

Only the image-making portion of this project is done. I rationally know that. I have many months ahead of me culling through the work, editing, making prints, and sequencing will all be new experiences for me as a first-time photo project creator. Then there will be deciding if there’s enough strong work — and eventually text, too — to warrant making a book and landing a solo exhibition (another first, if I get one).

I am proud that I finished this project. I probably don’t even know exactly what I have. That will be exciting and challenging.

Yet, right now, it’s a bittersweet feeling. It was time to wrap things up (it is lightly sleeting as I write this, not exactly a hard frost but, let’s say, frost-equivalent. A gift of good light and bad weather tonight. Message received, ye photo gods.

I can’t help feeling like the narrator in Capote’s story at the end: “…A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string.”

How Bad Do You Want It

I was reminded this week of that great line from Yeats, “…the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” It’s from his “The Second Coming,” and which the title itself reminds me of those “The End Is Near” cartoons. The joys of an associative mind. I have thought of Yeats’s line when I see a car plastered with political sentiments, thinking the owner was certainly worse for all that misguided intensity.

But this week’s experience made me disagree with that line because change, whether I agree with it or not, can be fueled by someone’s passionate intensity. I was biking under a major highway bridge and noticed from my low vantage point that someone was putting up a flag and a sign along the pedestrian walkway. My inner photojournalist came forward and I decided to see what the person was doing, knowing that I had a Fed 2 camera with a nearly full roll of HP5 film in my bike bag.

The man was putting the final tie on the second of two signs. I approached and told him I was a photographer who liked to document interesting things, including signs, and could I photograph his — as traffic whizzed by a highway speed. The man hesitated at my request, which I didn’t have to offer because we were on public property. He reluctantly said ok, and then added, “But I don’t want my face in the picture.” I told him the photo was for my own use and he still said no.

At this point, the man’s reaction bifurcates into two distinct issues. The first, which deserves its own exploration in another blog, concerns many people’s belief (many in the younger generations in particular) that they are free to wave signs and placards, create performance art, or engage in any number of other public displays on public property — all activities that scream, “Look at me!” — and have the right to refuse to have their actions photographed. They believe they should be free from the gaze or the attention of a person with a camera. The law says otherwise, but they insist they have a right to a cone of capricious invisibility. This is a thornier issue that it seems, so I’m saving that for later.

The second issue relates to the Yeats quote. Clearly, this man believed strongly in the messages he was advertising. He went to the trouble to find a spot just before the exit ramp that led to a COVID-19 vaccination site and to tie his messages to a fence while battling the backdraft gusts of passing vehicles. I can’t quibble with his desire to be heard.

But his denial to literally stand by his message astounds me. Whatever respect I have for any person who feels the need to express themselves like this publicly is diminished by the lack of conviction, the lack of passionate intensity. The power of public protest lies in the humanness of the message, the willingness to put a part of yourself into your message.

I’m tempted to use the cliche about having skin in the game, but I hate cliches.

I didn’t agree with this man’s message. I support wholeheartedly his right to express it. Any chance that his sign might change my views is dramatically decreased by his lack of actually stand up for the opinion.

Let’s end with a few lines from a more recent poet…er, songwriter - Don Henley.

“…You got to bring somethin' to this party, boy / If you party here / …How bad do you want it? / Not bad enough…”

For What It’s Worth

“There’s something happening here / But what it is ain’t exactly clear…”

Apologies to Steven Stills and Buffalo Springfield for co-opting their anti-war song, but this opening phrase often plays in my head in relation to any number of associations. I developed this roll of Kodak Double X a few weeks ago, then scanned it. This image was one that I singled out.

I was using my recently restored Nikon F2 Photomic, which I constantly point out has been in my camera bag since I purchased it used in 1978, and a new-to-me Nikkor 43-86mm f3.5 lens, gifted to me earlier this year. I do not typically shoot with a zoom and have, in fact, sold off two or three in recent years. It’s totally unreasonable, but I eschew zooms because prime lenses are supposedly “sharper,” which is an almost meaningless term in the age of pixel-pumping, and somehow “cheating” because you can…well, zoom. Rather than position yourself, Bresson-like, in the ideal position.

This type of snobbish constraint was something I picked up as a young autodidact from magazines and photojournalism student friends. It’s rubbish, but it clutters my head, nonetheless.

I was drawn to this scene because it was rich in content. There is, indeed, lots of “something happening here.” I set up the shot, guiltily using the zoom to frame the scene. I pressed the shutter once and felt satisfied, but before I pulled the camera from my face, I watched the person walk quickly into the lower right of the frame. Now there was something more happening here. I instinctively pressed the shutter again.

“BAM!” It was an Emeril moment.  

I am describing this image because, like the best dishes, it has layers of intentional content, from the tiger-stripe curtain to conquering ivy, to the damaged wheelbarrow (so much depends upon a wheelbarrow). This is not a swipe-type image. It is meant to be savored – compliments of the photographer.

The Photo Gods Giveth

My photo gods are awesome gods.

They giveth…and they taketh away. The are capricious and sometimes reward superstitious processes while making photographs and other times punish for no apparent reason. Such is the nature of the photo gods.

This photo is a case in point. I have recently been running a lot of film through two Soviet cameras. First, a Zorki 4 with a Jupiter 8 lens, and second, a Fed 2 with an Industar lens. Like others I read on the interwebs, I wish these two cameras could have wed. I like the Zorki’s larger viewfinder, in particular. But my copy exposes the film a bit low, so that the bottom is cut off and there is more space between the image and the top sprockets. I can live with that, just remembering it has this quirk.

More troublesome, however, is how ‘fiddly’ the Zorki is, especially after turn the knob on the shutter release to rewind the film. The rewinding works fine, but turning the knob back to the shooting position often doesn’t work as advertised. The film doesn’t catch and advance properly. It doesn’t stop when positioned to take a photo. I have found that if I rewind the film without opening the back, I can usually get it to catch properly. I sometimes lose the first few frames trying to reposition the film back to the beginning.

I encountered this issue when I took several shots of this funnel cake stand at a local fair. These were the first shots on the roll, and I noticed the usual Zorki post-rewind situation. I went through my perhaps superstitious routine of rewinding and starting over. It didn’t seem to work, and the light changed and so I though things were screwed. I also though I had set the exposure wrong.

I was pleasantly surprised when I developed the roll and all but two of the imagers were indeed hosed. There were two that were properly exposed and looked good. After scanning, I realized that the one ‘keeper’ shot I had hoped to capture, the one here, with the stand, the flag and an old dude heading for the porta-potties turned out.

I have been trying, somewhat unsuccessfully for years, to improve my gratitude. So, thank you, photo gods, for providing me with this shot. I will be humble moving forward, because the photo gods may giveth, but the take away in equal measure.