La Macchina Fotografica

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.

The entire weekend was a shroud of fog and rain, a lazy prelude to the looming holidays. It is hard to take a camera out in this weather, mostly because one would prefer a blanket and black cat to stay warm. But the mundane world is transformed into wonderland for those with the initiative to venture forth.

Eschewing the trappings of cozy house, I go out. The mist scrapes the hills, tingles my face, and hugs the ground of our little park. Formerly the tidal wetlands of our great bay, wetness is the park’s natural condition. This time of year it feels like a soggy kitchen sponge when walking on it. Soon there will be signs that tell us to keep off the grass until summer. I don’t find the grass to be pleasant at all. Once my feet are wet the day seems lost.

I often long for the faraway places of my imagination. Then a gentle storm comes in and makes my nearby world a place of mystery—my imagination is fulfilled. I have always been drawn towards weather’s magnet of energy, the wilder the better. But this particular gentle storm allows me to stand still in fog and rain and to simply look, as if I were seeing for the first time.

Soon, my feet get wet and the black cat and blanket prove irresistible. But, before I leave the soggy park, I find a sweet image of a row of saplings. I make an image.

The other morning I looked out the window. Rain. I wondered how the tree in the park was. The rain was falling straight down—no wind. That probably meant that the tree (and all the trees around it) hadn’t suffered wind damage. It was simply wet and cold, good for trees, not for walking.

I have come to discover that days that are bad for walking are good for photography. It hardly matters why. Getting up and out when it’s the last thing one wants to do almost always equals great photos. Maybe I make better images when I’m cranky. Maybe uncomfortable conditions or getting up before sunrise show me my metaphorical shadow. Maybe it’s a simple matter of great light always being present in adverse conditions. No matter. Whenever I don’t feel like going out with my camera is the exact time when I know I should.

On this given day I yielded to my inspired side. I bundled up and went to the park. The tree just stood there like, well, a tree. It was wet. The sky was gray, the light was drab. It was raining. I grumbled. There was nothing there. My camera was getting soaked and so were my feet. Once my feet get wet I figure the only cure is to go back to bed. Cold, wet feet never recover for the rest of the day. I decided to make quick work of this with a few, perfunctory shots.

Leaving the tree, I looked down to avoid the driving rain. The tree’s reflection shimmered and danced in a tiny puddle. Asphalt transformed into dream—a minor miracle. I gasped and took out the camera from inside my raincoat. I made a picture. My heart sang with delight, proving once again that showing up is the biggest battle in any art project. Then I walked home, hardly noticing my wet feet.

As promised, I visited the eucalyptus a few days ago, during a rain storm. It’s always chancy taking modern digital cameras out in the rain. It used to be that a rugged Nikon could pretty much withstand most anything. I had a trusty old Nikon F who’s brass body would bounce off a concrete floor unharmed. Today’s cameras, though well-made, are more delicate. It doesn’t take much now to short-circuit delicate electronics. Having written that, my Nikon D80 has made it through two dusty Grand Canyon adventures that included several rain storms. Yet, each trip in the rain could be a voyage of no return for my beloved camera.

As I approached the tree I could see that a large congregation of geese had already gathered. The ground around the tree must yield geese goodies during a storm. They were hunting and pecking, oblivious to my arrival. The tree seemed still and majestic, as the feeding frenzy transpired beneath it. Regardless of the birds, it was the sheen of the bark that allured me in close to the tree. A eucalyptus always appears somewhat nude as it lacks the toothy bark of most other trees. It glistens in the rain, its colors becoming more intense and disparate.

Today’s image reminds me of Edward Weston’s Torso of Neil. Weston’s famous photo depicts the marble-like torso of his young son, cropped tightly below chin and above crotch. The stingy cropping is an invention of photography and can only really be pulled-off successfully in this medium. Photography gives us the tactile clues we need to complete the subject that is outside the frame.

Painting has borrowed this kind of cropping from photography but is less successful when it does. I believe, since we’ve all made photos, that we relate to the “moving-in” or “zooming-in” with a camera to get more intimate with our subject. One does not get closer with brush or pencil in nearly the same way. The lens shields and protects us from close encounters in a way that allows us to go in closer and closer. The camera gives us a kind of raw intimacy that no other medium can.

I felt the need to get up closer to the tree in order to give it a more sculptural quality. It now looks like a truncated ruin, brooding in the rain. Like with Weston’s photo of his son, we are left seeing very little of the whole but understanding the whole better than if we saw it in its literal entirety.