La Macchina Fotografica

Carrying a camera around in a public place is tricky business. Sometimes I think people assume the worst in the person behind the lens. The world of paparazzi and hysterical mass media have made us wary of everything and everyone. Try carrying a tripod around a few major buildings in a big city and watch the reaction. Most likely a security guard will pop up out of nowhere and tell you to go away. When a society assumes the worst, it usual realizes its expectations. Sadly, fear is big business.

The fear of photography gives me angst. My camera and I are simply trying to find that little sliver of a moment when people become themselves. Sadly, cameras can get in the way of the treasure hunt. People stiffen, sometimes smile, other times scowl. They tend to look at the camera askance, out of the corner of the eye. While the reaction to the camera is part of the reality of the moment, my goal is to trigger the shutter just before that happens. While my intentions are good, it makes me feel more like a hunter than an artist.

The world of photography is partly to blame for the hostility towards it. Photography can be aggressive and invasive. Examine, for a moment, the language of photography. We capture images, take photos, and shoot our subjects. The term, snapshot, is borrowed from the sport of gun shooting. I know not why these terms were adopted by photographers. However, I try never to use them.

Who among us wants to be shot, captured, and taken?

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 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.

“Mark!” my father always bellowed my name. “You could get run over by a car crossing the street. When your number is up, it’s up.” He was one of the few people I’ve ever known who could be a fatalist and optimist at the same time. In this case, despite his lecturing tone, he was mostly trying to be an optimist. That kind of talk, however, never made me feel very hopeful.

They say that your parents’ admonitions play in your head like a magnetic-tape loop. Over and over and over and over. “Do this, don’t do that. This is the way the world works, blah, blah, blah.” I don’t know if that’s true but I do know that I hear my father’s voice whenever I cross the road, especially a busy one.

In California drivers are supposed to stop when a pedestrian is in a crosswalk. Most do. But a few like to go as fast as they can and stop at the very last moment—a game of chicken with the pedestrian. Sometimes I see that happen and just stare. Could this mean that my number is up? So far, the driver has always stopped. But my father said…

Lately I’ve been photographing my experience in the crosswalk. I point the camera at the cars from waist level and click away in rapid-fire mode. I want to capture that moment of vulnerability as a two-ton body of steel confronts a 200-pound body of flesh. I figure it will someday result in a body of work. And if one day, my number really is up, my last photo ever will quite a shot.

During a walk near the local school I noticed a man on a roof of one of the prefabricated buildings that clutter the schoolyard. A giant tub of roofing cement in front of him, he was frozen in an impossible position. Seagulls walked around him, flew over him. He remained frozen except for one arm that swung back and forth as it lathered black goop onto the homely, little roof.

Back and forth, back and forth, he seemed more like a clock than a man. One bird edged closer to see what he was doing. Fascinated myself, I started to photograph him as if I were a tourist in an Italian piazza. In most every piazza there is a statue of a serious man with a pigeon on his head. Neither the statue nor the pigeon ever seem to move. I waited by the schoolyard to see if the seagull would light upon the worker’s cap. To my disappointment it did not.

Back and forth, back and forth. The worker reloaded his trowel with gunk. Even with that he moved nothing but his arm. A second and third seagull drew closer, joining the happening. I made another dozen images. The still, morning air hung with anticipation as the birds and I waited for the man to move something, anything other than the swinging arm.

I realized that my back was stiffening. How could the worker remain hunched over like that. Shots of sympathetic pain ran down my spine. One of the birds followed the swinging trowel with his head. Back and forth.

At last, one of the birds lost interest and flew off. The others followed. Tired of photographing the man, I turned and walked away, my back feeling the better for it. I looked back one last time to see if the worker had moved. Nothing had changed so I made one last photo as I walked off, my arms now swinging back and forth.

One of the best things about cell phones is that I can now talk to myself in public. Not that many years ago it was considered odd to have a conversation with oneself. Now people are talking aloud seemingly no one just about everywhere. True, they usually have some kind of Bluetooth earpiece attached to to them and they are, theoretically, talking to an other human being somewhere. But, who knows for sure?

I don’t wear a Bluetooth device. Nor do I enjoy cell-phone conversations. But, I’ve considered getting a cheap earpiece just so I can talk to myself without being self-conscious. I figure if it’s okay that everyone is jabbering into cyberspace it’s perfectly normal to jabber to oneself. After all, most of us are in our own little world anyway.

It’s easy to spot people in their own little world. I love going into public spaces and finding people who seem alone in thought, daydream or preoccupation. If one is a photographer one needs to be quick. The moments are fleeting. Usually some kind of external stimulus prods our dreamers back into the social universe. Often the click of a camera shutter is all that it takes to jolt them.

I feel connected to those lost in their own universe. It makes me feel that we really are all the same—inextricably linked yet very much alone. Seeing others in this state sends me off into my own little world. I wonder about them; their life, their history, their story. And If they start talking I secretly hope that it’s just a conversation with themselves and that there’s no silly Bluetooth gadget hanging off their ear.

The daisies in our front yard reach high for the midsummer sun. A fantasy forest, they come from nowhere and then, one sad autumn day, I realize they are gone. It happens every year.

Maybe it’s because they reside in a patch of earth near the front stairs. I never seem to be present when I’m walking down the stairs. I’m ever on the way to somewhere else as I scurry down them. The daisies have their own agenda and come and go as they please. Every time I notice them I plan to make a visit to the patch for an extended stay. Alas, it never seems to happen.

Today, as I was rummaging through my image library I came across a photo of one of the daisies. Like finding a photo of a long-lost lover or deceased relative, it made me sad. Why didn’t I enjoy the daisies while they lasted? Did I take them for granted? I look out my studio window as I write this. There within the grid of window mullions I see the patch of raw dirt that was the daisy field not so long ago. It is a long wait until summer next.

I look back at the photo. Is the daisy flirting with me? It leans dangerously over the edge of its territory. Kissed by a spotlight of sun, it beacons me to slow down. I did stop for a second to make a photo but it was a perfunctory visit at best. I then ran down the steps, eager to be somewhere else. The daisy was still there upon my return. I then neglected it again.

As I stare out the window, I promise to make a visit to the daisy forest once summer returns. This time I mean it. I swear I do.

Like a snapshot, my reflection catches me in a moment of my life. There was a time when I looked forward to a surprise reflection of myself. These days it merely shocks me to see how much I’ve aged since the last reflection. I shake it off and tell myself to stand up straight. It’s hard to find a flattering reflection these days.

My reflection makes me feel like a ghost. I split off into several entities—the “I” that looks at the strange little apparition that is “me.” Is that old guy really me? Before I saw him I felt like a kid. That’s where the shock comes in.

Lately I’ve been looking at my reflection in the waxed finish of old cars. This particular style of reflection seems more fleeting, more amorphous, more me. There’s a timeless quality to a reflection in an old car. The patina matches my own wear and tear. The entire effect is bigger, maybe better, than life.

These days I walk the neighborhood, looking for old, clean cars that have a good polish to them. The rust is mostly localized and contained. They have the best, most ghostly reflections in them. The old cars, like old me, have habits. I find them in predictable places. I check out the car, it reflects back me. I’m always glad that it’s still running, still making its way to this particular spot in the neighborhood. I smile, make a picture and walk on to the next moment of my life.

Daylight Saving Time plays tricks come October. The mornings are dark long beyond when my body clock says “Morning!”. My brain tells me to get up. My eyes say something different. I don’t like to move clocks forward and backward. It feels like I’m trying to cheat the cosmos or mold it into some kind of seasonal convenience. It never works. October mornings are dark forever.

I woke up the other morning and it was even darker than normal. “Fog!” I said to myself and sprung out of bed. I am energized by weather, especially gloominess. I grabbed my camera and went down to the park, knowing that the low-hanging fog would soon burn off like cotton candy on a tongue.

The sun poked through the mist. I had less time than I thought. Exposure is tricky when shooting into the misty sun. I fumbled with the stupid camera controls, missing the blunt simplicity of my long-lost Nikon F—a camera that mysteriously disappeared many years ago. I spun my thumb and index finger, and click, click, click.

New cameras have these crappy little spin wheels and buttons that never seem intuitive. It’s a simple reciprocal relationship between aperture and shutter. But, modern cameras seem to think I need five thousand pieces of data in order to get a photo. Buttons, metadata, presets. I don’t need 90% of what the camera thinks I do. If I push all the buttons will it make my photos better? I don’t have that many fingers!

I ignore everything and bracket the shots. “Maybe if I hang the manual around my neck…” I say to myself and the imaginary camera engineer that I complain to all the time. Suddenly I realize that it isn’t about the camera at all. The light is stunning and it’s disappearing right before me. I grab at the fog and try to make it last. “One more photo!” I plead to it. But the sun burns through it all and I need my sunglasses by the time I click my last click.

I went back home in the low October light, hoping I got the photo. The golden sun erased the moment, but there it was again, appearing on my studio computer. The miracle of digital photography gave me instant feedback. The manual bracketing did the job and hit the sweet spot of exposure.

Now, if only they would do something about those buttons and spin wheels…

“Let’s get the show on the road!” my father always said when he got impatient. I always imagined us as small circus ensemble as we’d rush to get into the car. It felt like he was ready to drive off without us if we didn’t hustle. Dad loved to drive. If it were a long trip he’d have a thermos of coffee that he’d refill again and again at truck stops along the way. Day of night, he’d drink coffee and drive.

We’d go on these cross-country trips in August. Dad would drive the whole way. Once he drove straight from Arizona to Columbus, Ohio. The rest of us were exhausted but the agonizing drive didn’t faze him. At a gas station, while he was filling his thermos, we made our move—refusing to get back into the car. He begrudgingly got us a room at a local motel but resumed his mania the next morning. “Let’s get the show on the road!”

While packing and preparing for a trip is an endless stream of to-do lists, exhilaration supersedes all when we finally hit the road. Wind to our back, we race off. In constant motion we cut through air, race past the inert. We’re on the way. All possibilities lie before us. The past shrinks right before our eyes.

If I were a dog, I’d be the kind to stick my head out the window. Nose in the air, I’d sniff the world for exotic new fragrances. My ears would flap, I’d stick out my tongue and grin in that dog-like way. Dogs know just like my dad did—there ain’t nothin’ like getting the show on the road.