Happy anniversary, blog. This April marked the 3rd year this blog’s been alive. (Holy crap!) 500+ published posts and counting. Apparently, the proper third anniversary gift is glass (24-70 f/2.8L?) or leather (Leica M6?), but we all know that in these parts the only acceptable gift is the gift of a photograph.
This is a little photo I took with a digital point and shoot in October of 2006. I was a horrible photographer, having only taken vacation snapshots on a crappy film camera and then a 2 megapixel Canon Powershot here and there. But I suppose even then I’d had a lot of practice looking at things, particularly through a car window, because when I drove by this scene, I felt compelled to stop. I took a couple of pictures, using the roof of the car to steady the camera, and when I looked at the photo at home, it was the time that I thought photography might be interesting, that a camera might be more than something you pull out at scenic viewpoints and on special occasions.
The birth of this blog pretty much coincides with the first proper photography class I took, which was Lukas’ intro black and white darkroom technique back in the spring of 2008. So when I think of how this blog has changed, I inevitably also think about how my process and work have changed. In the year and a half between that first significant frame and the darkroom course, I upgraded cameras many times and I remember them all, as many photographers do. Not because gear means much of anything, but because, let’s face it, when we change gear it usually indicates a corresponding change of mental attitude. When we buy a new camera, we ultimately hope for a change in the way we shoot.
It’s amusing that so much of my progress I piece together by looking back through online accounts – Flickr, Facebook, my email… reminds me of this line from Toby Barlow’s incredible book, Sharp Teeth: “We hand our lives – our addresses, our letters, our numbers, our photos, our dreams – to these dumb throbbing machines as we become emptier, remembering less and less.”
But I don’t believe that. If it wasn’t the internet, it would be a notebook, a photo album, a scrapbook.
At any rate, I laid out the last four or so years for myself to get a sense of what happened when, and I was surprised to see how simultaneously slow and fast the time has gone. Four years is a long time, but when I flesh out each development, each dose of learning, it doesn’t seem like much at all. When things happen slow, they happen real slow, and when things happen fast, they sure happen fast.
It’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve been comfortable in my current workflow. There are flurries of shooting, but something intangible happens in the idle spaces in between; it’s true that shooting a lot is productive, but I’m not so sure that not shooting isn’t productive. I’m fairly certain by now that my particular brain is some sort of breadmaker – out comes the loaf, after a long stretch of poofing (for god’s sake, don’t expect it to happen quickly). Who knows what witchery makes it happen, but please don’t forget the yeast. For your sake I hope your brain is a coffeemaker.
As for the present, I’m gearing up to do some social media work for Open Show (watch out, we’ve got something good this fall) while continuing to shoot some production stills for Futurefarmers’ wonderful A Variation on the Powers of Ten, which I believe I’ve mentioned before. The project has progressed enough that we can say that there may be a book of stills and background material as well as an exhibit at some point. Plans will need to be firmed up, but I’m curious and excited to see this happen.
Meanwhile, in the back of my head, a mad scientist is trying to throw fine art photography, multimedia installation and collaboration with the scientific community together into the same stew. Will report back on how this concoction tastes at a fruitful future juncture…
For now, here are a few more China photos if you haven’t been Flickr-vigilant. Preliminary, but shaping up to… something.
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