A blog about photography & transformative art
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There is that old Paul Simon song that pops up in my mind when my brain gets weary: Maybe I Think Too Much. Thinking is sometimes a curse. I’ve never solved much from thinking through anything. But, it hasn’t stopped me from trying. My mind is a trickster. It does its thing regardless of my deeper wishes. A walk on the old rail path with my camera usually gets me out of my head and into a better state of presence.
Looking through a window during the winter season is so very evocative. Sometimes I’ll walk through the neighborhood at night just to feel the warm glow of light coming out from windows of all the homes. Incandescent light is magical at night, especially in the winter.
Seagulls seem often to pose for me. They stare at me and patiently wait as I fuss with my camera settings. They’ll stand still when I’m on land or hover miraculously over me (giving the illusion of stillness) when I’m on a moving boat. I’d swear that they know when I have a camera in hand. I suspect they are birds of significant vanity.
A trip to the city is a time-honored holiday ritual, no matter which city is yours. When I was a young boy, New York seemed to be the greatest Christmas city in the world. Only forty miles from my home, New York seemed so far away, so hugely exotic; a Christmas wonderland. Now, New York actually *is* far away, almost 3000 miles from my home here in Northern California. These days, a holiday trip into San Francisco evokes the same memories, albeit not as chilly or white.
Much of my work is inspired by ghostly traces of the past. My MFA show, *Desolation’s Comfort: Photographic Re-collections* was a literal expression of these tendencies. In that show, I re-contextualized[ Fix this in blog] snapshots of the past and put them in places that I felt needed filling.
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.
A delivery truck speeds by. A man crosses the street with a bag lunch. In the distance, a woman and child hold hands. In the foreground, a tattoo parlor waits for its next customer, reflecting the convergence of activities in its shop window.
I often look down and see something at my feet worth photographing. It’s as if little gremlins were arranging things just before I got there. These are delicate little compositions that seem so elegant that I cannot resist them. They are the best reason I know to always carry a camera. They are also a good reason to walk slowly and to look down at my feet.
I mostly visit my tree in the morning. I’m not even sure what it looks like in the afternoon. I pretty much avoid the park late in the day unless it’s summer. Then, a long walk at dusk is the perfect thing to do. I never visit it in the afternoon—I’m not sure why not. The tree has a darker presence in the evening, a foreboding and looming shape at dusk. In the morning it stands tall and regal, casting a deep shadow onto the path where I pass by it. The halo formed by the low, morning sun lifts the tree upward, making it seem taller and more substantial.
It was another tough day at the blog. Blank screen fever. Maybe it’s some kind of holiday funk or full-moon insanity. You’d think with some 30,000 images on file I could find one that I liked—at least for a day. But, today it all looked like garbage.
