I gave up waiting for rain and started bicycling to work again. The upshot is that I am slowly finding my way back to shooting the East Bay streets. I’ve felt disconnected from it for quite a while, and I started to think maybe my photography stint was over. Now I’m feeling optimistic.
In addition to committing to a projet to post every day on this blog (I know, I know, that Vegas trip got me two days behind. But I’ll catch up!), I have been participating in a post-a-day project over on flickr as well. Needless to say, it is pretty hard to get all this in, especially after a painful 2 hours working with the kid on his homework. And I really didn’t have an opportunity to shoot anything today.
So, I was reading a discussion thread over on the flickr project 365 group where a poster shared his strategy for deflating the pressure of getting something up every day. That was to shoot the same object every morning as a backup shot in case no better shot gets taken that day. That way there is no pressure in completing the daily assignment. I was about to start employing this myself, with a little queasiness that I wouldn’t feel too good about just putting up a dispassionate shot of something sitting on my desk every once in a while.
Then I saw another strategy that I like even better and I can combine with another task I have to do anyway. This strategist points out that her goal in participating is to get post-production practice in as well as clicking the shutter. So, she’ll sometimes post a photo that was taken previously, but that was processed on that day.
I realized this would work well for me. I too, have thousands of photos that I have not processed yet. I also have a huge amount of file backup work to do. So, if I don’t have a newly shot photo to put for a given day, I will process an untouched photo from the current batch that is getting backed up. That way, I get some processing practice in, and some processing done, and get back to burning backups of all my files. Whew!
Here is the original unprocessed version of the shot found I rediscovered today while digging back through for the backup task.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Pontiac. Ever since word of its demise, I have been meaning to take a picture of the sign at the dealership on Auto Row in Oakland. I finally got around to it the other day. And while I was driving around looking for a place to park, I saw some other photo ops on the side streets. This old Plymouth was in beautiful shape. And as I just commented over on flickr, I have to admit I find it very sexy in a zaftig sort of way.
I’m not sure what to call the kind of photography I have been primarily engaged in since getting back into it over the last two years. I just know it hasn’t been landscapes and scenic photography. Indeed, I have not been trying to make images that are overtly beautiful or aesthetically pleasing at all.
Yet, there is something irresistible about nature. Often, it is awe-inspiring. And as we all know, sensations of pleasure, well-being, and the loss of self in the one-ness of the creation often lead to addiction. Gotta get that fix again and again. That leads to wanting it for oneself, even in a puny way like making a picture of it.
That’s not to denigrate scenic photography. I find a lot of it pretty wonderful. I just also see the production of it as beyond my ken–not to mention my lacking the wherewithal to afford the gear and the travel to seriously pursue and produce beautiful scenic photography.
All that said, I’ve had fun working with some shots of San Francisco Bay taken mostly as an afterthought–or just because I always have my camera with me, so why not? And the other night I was at a friend’s home that is on Albany Hill and overlooks almost the whole bay. After taking a couple shots from the deck, someone showed me the Richard Misrach book of the Golden Gate. It was inspiring. I came to see the intrinsic interest of a series of photographs of one thing taken over all the different conditions to which it may be subject. I think I may try my own little series from a given vantage point and see what happens. If only I could get a neon martini glass, or rusted car, or dead cow or something in there…
As far back as when we lived in Fresno and regularly drove to the Bay Area for shows or to visit relatives, I was enamored of the scenery along Hwy 99. How far back is that? Well, it was before the housing boom and bust, before the first tech boom and bomb. Before graduate school in the Great Northwest gave me the opportunity to appreciate scenery vastly different and yet, at times, strangely familiar. What nature wrought was vastly different. What humanity wrought, strangely familiar.
Before Flickr, before I had ever heard of Stephen Shore, and before I realized the importance of acting on the impulse, I intended to do a photo essay of the road between Fresno and Oakland that would consist entirely of old, usually free-standing signs that no longer had buildings or businesses associated with them. I would call it “The Lexicon of Abandonment”. (I suppose I could now work on a series called “The Lexicon of Procrastination”; perhaps I’ll get to that soon.) Among the most memorable abandoned signs we would pass along the highway was a wonderful old sign at the entrance to a drive-in theater in Merced. I believe it was called “The Starlite Drive-In” and it was, of course, a fabulous mid-century specimen. But even 20 years ago, it stood in front of an otherwise empty field of weeds, tall and forlorn along the roadside.
My intention probably suffered a mortal blow during the recent development boom when many old, abandoned buildings, signs, or other things, were finally torn down to make way for the new and shiny. A new development right along old 99 finally brought down the Starlite. I never shot it. That’s not to say there aren’t still many abandoned old signs out there. But just as in the Little Prince, that Starlite was special because it chose me and I chose it.
There is something else along this strange stretch of road that greets me like a tired old friend each time I traverse it. Just north of Merced on the west side of the road and next to the railroad tracks, runs a series of telephone poles. For a long time, years, they seemed to be in use and maintained, if only barely. But now, many are leaning, missing cross pieces, or simply snapped off. Here and there, wood hangs limply from the sagging wires. Sometimes, it is all on the ground. To me, they look like lonely sentinels along a desolate road somewhere in the midwest. They wave to me when we go racing by on our frantic Fresno excursions to visit family. Now, I’m acting on the impulse and waving back, with my camera. Sitting shotgun, I aim through the glass and get what I get: portraits of my old friends looking just as I’ve always known them, flickering by 65 mph.
I noticed the purple Nova while biking to work one morning. The intense color caught my eye. I took a couple shots, and I noticed right away on the camera that the color was not as bright and not as purple in the image. This was true on the computer as well, and I sort of forgot about it for a while. I didn’t think it would amount to much.
A couple weeks later, I started fooling around with the post-processing work on it, and got something I rather liked. I eventually uploaded something to flickr, and it suddenly turned out to be one of the more interesting and popular things I’d produced in awhile. (Bear in mind that I measure these metrics in small fractions of what most flickr pop stars do, so my data set is pretty limited. Nonetheless it seems meaningful to me!) I guess the moral of the story is that you can never tell what is going to resonate with people. At least I can’t.
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