La Macchina Fotografica

I feel anticipation as I approach the pumps. Each day they are different. Astride a small dam that forms the lagoon, they adjust the water levels of the various channels and basins that make up our ambitious flood-control project. These homely contraptions are the unsung heroes our lowlands. For a town that was once known specifically for its floods, we haven’t had a big flood in years.

The water level of the canal, which the pumps feed, is a mystery. I’ve never been able to correlate it to the changing tides or weather or the impending threat of flood. Sometimes it’s low, other times to the brim. When low, the pump apparatus is visible. It reminds me of the exposed and vulnerable shellfish at Muir Beach during low tide—the enormous outlets of the pump are uncomfortable and naked. When silent, they take on an ominous stillness. It feels like the suspension of time. I want to stay there until they spew forth the frothing, churning water of the lagoon behind them.

The pumps remind me of Robert Smithson’s seminal work, The Monuments of Passaic (1967). Smithson, a native son of Passaic, New Jersey (as am I) and best known for his earthwork, Spiral Jetty, contemplated the significance of the wastelands of suburban New Jersey. He proclaimed the pipes and pumps of Passaic to be fountains. Its bridges and sandboxes and pontoons were, in a wry perspective, also monumental.

Has Passaic replaced Rome as the Eternal City? – Robert Smithson, The Monuments of Passaic

Are the pumps of Corte Madera our monuments to fine urban planning? Or are they the reminders of the follies of filling our tidal marshes with tract houses? I haven’t decided. Yet, there is no question of their significance. People pass them every day with their poodle or bichon frise. They ignore the noble structures, even as they protect the low-lying tract houses from the surge of bay’s tide. It’s a thankless job. In honor of their fine work, I’ve decided that they, like The Monuments of Passaic, should be elevated in status. I hereby proclaim the pumps to be now named, The Fountains of Corte Madera. Postcards to follow.

“I wish I were in Italy right now,” I thought. Then, suddenly, I became aware of my mental complaining. Sometimes the camera will do that to you. It wants to find something exotic. On this particular morning my macchina fotografica wanted an italic slant on things. All I could give it was a simple walk around the hood which is actually good practice for the mind’s eye. If you can make images in suburbia you can make them anywhere.

Generally, come the month of February, I start getting antsy. The nesting instinct starts getting old. I look at the migratory birds and wonder when I might fly somewhere for the new season. Pretty soon our feathered friends are leaving this habitat. I might like to go with them.

While busy making migratory plans I came across a homely post, set in concrete. “Nothing here,” I told myself and my camera. Then I looked with more intent. There actually was something about this tiny scene that appealed to me. I got lost in the moment. A weak, winter sun provided a moment of golden illumination. I made an image. The moment left along with the shaft of sunlight. I felt sprinkles on my back.

Instead of longing for Italy I completed my walk with camera, looking for more images like a hawk does for his breakfast. My step quickened as my anticipation for an exotic journey waned. It was replaced by my desire to get to the studio and see my post picture. When I got back I was not disappointed.

Staring at the edge of the canal I look down into the morning light. Lately I’ve preferred looking at the sky’s reflection than directly at the real thing itself. Sometimes the sky is too much for morning; too bright and too vast. Its reflection is nearer and more intimate—something into which I get lost.

Getting lost is the phobia of contemporary society. We’ll do anything to prevent it. We have Google Maps. We have GPS. We have our phones. Soon we’ll carry with us every song, every book, every bit of contact info, and every Word document we own, at all times. Then, in our brave new world, whatever we do, wherever we go, we simply cannot get lost. We will always know where we are.

I now know why getting lost is so frightening. It is losing control. It is letting go. It is looking deep into a reflection until the reflection yields—and becomes something else. Lately, I’ve been looking into morning reflections. And getting lost.

I looked out my window late yesterday morning. High clouds. Normally I like to make photos early in the morning when the air is fresh and the sun is golden—when the world is my own. But high, wispy clouds mean magic in photography so I broke my own rules. I went out with my camera in the latest part of the morning.

Cirrus clouds diffuse the sun just enough to soften and fill shadows. They add drama to sky. Painters know that cirrus clouds are the most difficult of clouds to paint. Their delicacy is elusive. In photography we must take care with when pointing the camera to sky. Blown-out highlights are the death of wispiness.

While I’ve noticed the cottony light of cirrus skies for years, I have come to realize that there is more to the magic. Reflections take on new drama and depth on days like these. Gone are the harsh specular highlights that can ruin an image. Surfaces glow instead of sparkle. There is always something new to learn about light. It is a magician who never reveals all the secrets. The sorcerer unveils the truth with time and contemplation.

Yesterday I found the Larkspur Palms again. The sky turned them to towering monuments of grace and drama. I found angles and perspectives that I’d not known before. It was the light that whet my appetite but it was also the emerging truth the comes with familiarity with a subject. Too often we seek the unfamiliar with photography, forgetting our own backyard. The truth can be found in the familiar. Revisiting a subject over and over is like peeling an onion. I’ve only begun with the Larkspur Palms.

I stand there with my big, nerdy camera and they look up at me—straight at me. Their glare goes right through the lens and then right through me. I shiver. It’s my least favorite aspect about photography. I am probably the shyest, most self-conscious photographer in the world.

The frustrating thing is that I love photographing people. However, most people hate having their picture taken, at least when a stranger comes poking around with a big, black camera and lens. If only I were invisible or in a bubble. Shyness is a curse.

I’ve gotten more skillful over the years at being unobtrusive yet respectful (at least in my mind) about photographing in public. Sometimes people notice me, the stare back, smile, or stiffen up. That, actually, can result in marvelous images. Other times they go about their business, ignorant of me in every way. Life being lived.

Serious cameras are just too big and obtrusive. They separate us photographers from the world and turn us into skulking paparazzi. There are too many buttons, beeps, clicks, whirrs, and protruding appendages. More times than not I feel more like a dork than an artist. It’s like those well-past-middle-age guys you see driving the hot Porsches—somehow there is a disconnect. They (we) are trying too hard. It isn’t about cars and cameras.

No, it isn’t about cameras but next camera is going to be small and simple. Then, rather than being the painfully-shy photographer with the big, nerdy camera, I’ll become the painfully-shy photographer with the small, weenie camera.

Old cars share a sadness. They speak in faded shades of worn patina. Old hopes reflect back to me in their marred paint. Long after fat ties and worn suites are rounded up into Goodwill bags, certain old cars hang around the neighborhood. I have written of them in past blogs.

I still see most of the same old that I wrote about back in December ‘08. Nothing much has changed with them. They are as predictable as my morning routine. On a rare day I’ll veer off routine’s course and find a new street with a brand new, old car. Rarely is the car not photogenic. Its history radiates out and is easily captured with camera.

A bit like encountering Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, an old-car encounter is emotionally dark. There is nothing like a has-been to kindle feelings of one’s own missed opportunities. The scratches and dents and dabs of touch-up paint remind me of a black-tie charity event. Everything is past its prime and the stories are in the details—behind the smiles and makeup. I wonder about the body putty on the fender, some primer sprayed on the nose.

Meeting a new old car reminds me of my Uncle Fritzie. Uncle Fritzie drove an old, black sedan with a sunshade over its windshield. He worked in a perfume factory and always smelled like a cosmetic counter after an earthquake. You could always smell his presence long before actually seeing him. His sedan, needless to say, possessed his peculiar odor whether he was in it or not. When his car was at my grandmother’s house I always knew that I’d have to kiss him on the cheek and sit in his lap. If I paid enough attention to him, he’d give me a quarter. Old cars are the essence of lost times.

In a scratchy dream I learn to fly. In effortless propulsion I glide through air and space. “Why haven’t I tried this before?” I ask myself. Somehow I reach an oasis of palms. Lanky and swaying, they acknowledge my arrival. They are rooted, yet free—something I make note of as I land on my feet and look up.

In my altered state I realize that these palms are familiar. They are the palms of Larkspur. I stay for awhile, something akin to a picnic. Then I propel myself off again into the pearly fog of my dream. I soon awaken in my bed, now firmly tethered by the gravity, space, and time. For a split second I wonder why I can no longer fly. Then my cat whacks me.

When one embraces a place in a dream, its reality changes. It becomes hyperreal, of a different dimension. Having forgotten the rules of dream-flying I place my feet on the floor and put on a fresh pair of socks. New socks in the morning are one of life’s great pleasures. The cat nudges me and prances off. In that moment I decide to visit the Larkspur palms, which are within walking distance, in the town next door.

I have admired the palms for years, mostly passing by in my truck. “I must photograph them someday,” I say. During my walk on this day I approach them from a different perspective, one of a freshly-minted dream. I look up and they sway at me just like they did the night before. I wonder, for a moment, if the dream is still on. My feet, feeling the somber weight of gravity, tell me otherwise.

No, the dream has surely left. But, it has given me a gift of insight and I see in a less-rigid way. My day to photograph the palms has arrived. I seize the moment and find a tiny smidgen of bliss…

Meetings—business meetings, that is—drive me crazy. Every one of them feels like slow death. I’ve never been to one that brings out the best in anyone, especially the best in me. I was a manager at 25, a vice president at 29, and a burnout at 40. Meetings, even today, at the age of 54, bring back the whole sordid tale.

With the prospect, on my mind, of a large meeting tomorrow (around a large table) I went for a walk. A long walk for a large meeting. Mist tickled the back of my neck and shortened the projected lifespan of my camera. My posture hasn’t been that good lately. I tried to, as my father would say, straighten up.

The first photo on a walk is always the hardest. It’s like starting up a car with bad spark plugs. A certain amount of black smoke is emitted. Click. Then it starts to flow. I enter a different dimension. So, I try to click my first click as soon as I can.

Once I started making images the sensation of rain on my neck disappeared. I turned my attention to the overflow pond in the park. The reflections had a gloomy quality that, at the moment, resonated with me. I pointed my camera at them. Suddenly, into my viewfinder flew a squawking bird! Singing a song of utter freedom and rebellion he soared into my image field—as if he were waiting all morning for my arrival.

By the time I looked up from my camera he was gone. With him went my angst. With him went my dread. I smiled with the realization that the impending meeting now meant nothing to me. How could a blasted meeting compare with a visitation from a spirit? I walked on with spring in my step and straight posture for four miles.

Sometimes a meeting is just a meeting.

It was only a week ago that I was writing about the heavy ground fog and smoke that was hugging our hamlet here north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Picturesque (albeit laden with small particulate matter) it presented me with a treasure of photographic opportunities. Now it is raining.

It has been raining straight for at least seven days. If the little, weather icons on the top of the Chronicle’s weather page are correct, it will rain for the next seven. The ground is saturated. Water is pouring off the hill upon which our little bungalow is perched. My garage studio, cut into the hill at street level, has an inch of water on the floor. More water is pouring in from the old concrete walls. It is so dark that I need lights on during the day as I work in my home office. I’m starting to feel like a soggy mole.

This brings into the forefront the nature of creativity. Painting in the studio is not possible. Taking my camera out might be feasible if I want to risk short-circuiting its electronic brain. I don’t. This isn’t drizzle I’m describing, the rain is hard and steady, peppered with some hail, thunder and lightning. How does one actively create when his milieu is flooded?

Yes, I realize that great, heroic photographers like Robert Capa and W. Eugene Smith would show disdain for this weeny essay. However, I am decidedly not a great photojournalist and am quite comfortable in my own skin. And there are times when I am willing to risk camera and well-being. This week does not happen to be one of those times.

Happily, there is more than enough to do on a rainy day here in the incandescent glow of my office. The office is also a digital studio and I can review, edit, arrange, and print the myriad images already made in drier times. I have plenty to do.

However, a holed-up photographer isn’t a pleasant thing to behold. Mostly, we need to be out in the air making new images. Postproduction (something we used to call a darkroom) can be rewarding but not in megadoses.

holed up
Sitting at your PC – day and night – in the dark in your jammies without any human interaction.
– Urban Dictionary

Yet, the nature of creativity requires dormancy. It is like life, itself. Our creative selves need uninterrupted sleep. Thinking and fretting and forcing are the poisons of creativity. Conversely, we nurture creativity with meditation, peace, and allowing. Action is not always the best thing for artists.

So, here I sit. It’s actually raining harder than it was when I started this blog. I edited a photo that I took in the now gone fog/smog and have presented it here. The lights just flickered. I’d better post this before the power goes out. Then I can sit in the dark and ponder things with meditation, peace, and allowing. That would be right before I bounce off the walls of this dark, little office.

In hindsight, after a tempest I can always see it—the mark on the trail, the warnings, the storm brewing. It seems so obvious. That is the way of the path. Seldom does anything really smack us unexpectedly. When there is trouble ahead, there are signs. Always.

It is the unconscious mind that cannot see the stirrings of life. It reminds me of a mundane conversation I once had while walking the streets of Venice. I was with a chatty friend who insisted on talking and talking and talking. A half hour later I suddenly realized that I’d just missed a half hour in one of the most remarkable places on earth. It’s that way when we don’t pay attention to the path. We just float along, consuming air. It’s like eating junk food.

Walking can be the great tonic. One can walk away most any perplexing situation, any dilemma, any care. I can get lost on a path and dissolve into it. I find there the most amazing things. As if wise gremlins were at work during the long night, I imagine exotic and mysterious symbols along the way. I suppose if I were truly enlightened these symbols might speak to me and tell me what might lie ahead. It’s as if they were the hexagrams of the i Ching.

Life flows when I am aware of what is directly before me. I guess that’s what being streetwise means—knowing the street.