A blog about photography & transformative art
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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.
Outside looking in. Fourth Street is dead on the Monday of a three-day weekend. There is a sterile scent of nothingness in the air. I escaped from the studio to see the world and the world stayed home. I'm just slightly out-of-sync on the tail end of a twilight-zone holiday.
The camera makes me feel like a skulking voyeur. Pointing the damned thing at people makes them nervous. Therefore, I often walk around with my camera as if I were a cat tiptoeing on a sheet of aluminum foil. Cat owners who have actually seen their feline doing this will appreciate what I mean. More times than not, I want to be invisible.
There are times in a photographer's life when the light is so exquisitely right that it aches. When the right light combines with a compelling subject one can feel an alchemical change occurring. Clicking the shutter becomes an intoxication, something we must do. Endorphins rush into the brain. It's heady stuff.
Suburbia. It feels like a dream in which a towering mountain of wet wool buries my sorry soul deep within it. In that dream I poke my head out of the suffocating mass of animal fur. I am nearly decapitated by a black SUV as it rushes past me. Some crazed woman is taking her child to piano lessons...and she's running late. Welcome to my suburban postcard from hell.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
