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.
Along the rail path are plants that seem to thrive regardless of anything I do or don’t do. As I walk by them they remind me that they are still there. They grow without me, thrive without me, die without me. If I choose to, I can revel in the opus of nature. No matter—it will do its thing whether I am present or not. The boggling complexity of nature’s work is done without effort. Mountains are built. Birds learn to fly. Everything abides by the proportions of sacred geometry. Only I seem to think too much.
It is the magic of photography to slow us down. The twitch of the finger on the shutter requires no thought. It simply acknowledges what is there. The click is an affirmation. “Yes!” All is well, all has always been well. The universe swirls with effortless magic. Only I seem to think too much.
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.
The days are so short and sun is so low that any light, even artificial, is welcome and bone-warming. Even in daylight, winter windows beacon. Shop windows, taverns, inns, and restaurants invite us in from the chill. From the outside, looking in, it all seems different. We see people interacting; laughing, talking, or even sitting alone. But, through the window we hear nothing. It’s all a silent movie.
It’s not that there is anything particular about any of the window scenes that is compelling.
It is the separation between inside and outside, cold and warm, light and dark, that draws us towards the winter window. Whether in a foreign city, or on our own street, we see windows at night and wonder about the magic of the interior space. Winter windows forever enchant us like the frozen vignette of an Impressionistic scene in Paris.
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.
On some days I get sick of the heaviness of it all and the ponderous nature of art and writing about art. Today is such a day. So, I prefer now to focus on the simple glory of birds. All birds have an inherent lightness about them. They defy gravity—I don’t know anyone not moved by a soaring silhouette of a bird in flight. But, the attraction of birds goes beyond flight. Their lightness goes beyond the obvious.
The other day I watched an egret come crashing, feet first, into a drainage canal. He seemed intent on making a big splash. A few months ago I sat on the beach and watched pelicans dive head first into the surf with abandon. Once, at the same beach, I saw a one-legged curlew hop along without a care in the world, oblivious to its disability. Birds seem to have taken a lesson from their literal ability to soar. They are the embodiment of soaring, the essence of air.
While we humans ponder what we’ll do next in life, our feathered friends are content to simply be what they are. My seagull friend watched me as I got on the ferry, intent to fulfill my plans for the day. I was thinking about getting into the city, going to lunch. I was mentally projecting out my day. The bird stood and watched me make my photo and then just flew away to the next thing.
A new year is about to begin. We humans insist on reflecting on the past and resolving to do better in the future. The birds don’t care a whit. They are too busy being birds. And maybe seeing when the next silly photographer comes along to take their picture.
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.
A couple days ago I went to San Francisco for a holiday lunch with a very good friend. Taking the ferry from Larkspur to avoid parking and traffic, the day was pure joy. It was the simple celebration of all that is important; a good meal, good company, a celebration of holiday and life. On the way home, the sun, at its winter-solstice lowest, glowed like a holiday fireplace. It was the capping to a perfect day and a reminder that a photographer should always have his or her camera at all times. One never knows when the world will turn magical on you.
The happiest of holidays to everyone! Auguri!
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 recontextualized snapshots of the past and put them in places that I felt needed filling.
That work continues on. Another show is currently in the works. But, while working on some images of Venice, it came to me that the entire city is a ghost of the past. One feels its haunted nature from the very first moment one sets foot in the city. Having been to Venice some ten times, I have collected a body of images that I am now revisiting and reworking. Ghosts in Venice is the working title of the project.
Venice is a theatrical stage of a glamorous past. It is easy to find its haunted nature. It is in a poignant state of decay, getting ever more beautiful with time. Echos are omnipresent. Shadows lurk. Sounds, smells, and visions flood the senses. It is a city seemingly frozen in amber, encased in a suspension of time. Yet, the ravages of time eat away at it, each year grinding it down like fine sandpaper. It is easy to see its ghosts. They shout out at you, taunting you to chase them down.
The best thing to do would be to visit Venice again, with this project in mind. But, for now, I will visit the city in my notes and memories. I am working with some new digital imaging techniques that will subtly accentuate the ghostliness of the city. We’ll see where the project takes me. A gallery will appear in my new web site, scheduled for debut in early January.
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.
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.
This moment came and went with the click of the shutter. Today’s photo has in it all that I love about snapshots; the unexpected drama, the forever-frozen moments, the uniqueness of one spot at one time. We are left with more questions than answers. We can stare into the reflection, looking deeper and deeper into it. The image is about nothing and everything.
The great photographer, Jay Maisel, apparently once said, “If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.” I love that quote because I know it to be true. Things happen when you have a camera with you. Sometimes things happen that you don’t quite understand until you go back to the studio or darkroom to look at the images. But, in order to make an image, you need to have your camera. This is a lesson that is often learned the hard way.
When time is frozen, the world takes on a curious pose. Nature did not quite intend for us to see things this way. Yet, we behold a still image within the context of an ever-moving world. So, the photo still moves in its own way. A static tension is developed. We crave resolution but never quite receive it. The characters in our drama are forever going somewhere, motivated by something. And we never learn why.
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.
The place I like best to find these still-life compositions is the beach. The surf is a wizard when it comes to still life. Every couple of feet there is something to behold—a treasure hunt that forever reveals the universe at work. Usually these tiny constructs are overwhelmed by larger things. Therefore, a quiet mind is an essential ingredient of the search.
Today’s composition was found twenty feet from my home. I was warming up for a three-mile walk, still checking out the camera to adjust its settings. I looked down and there it was. A lovely start to yet another adventure of discovery.
UPDATE: I woke up this morning, fully expecting to find the world enveloped in rain. I so wanted to make some photos of my tree in the rain. But, alas, there was sun. The rain is just now arriving. The next visit to the park eucalyptus will have to wait.
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.
Lately I’ve been walking around the tree, trying to discover something I might have missed. I remember hearing the great photographer, Jay Maisel, once say that one needs to approach a subject from a 360-degree perspective. “Move your ass,” I believe he said. So yesterday I went right up to the tree and spent some quality time with it. To be honest, I didn’t find anything new. There was no epiphany, just a quiet, deepening understanding of it. I did realize, once again, how much the scar on the tree meant to me. It’s where the tree lost a big limb during a winter storm a few years ago. So, I focused on that for a bit, photographing it until I got bored and needed to move my, er, ass.
The bark of the eucalyptus is its most appealing attribute. One can stare at it for hours, finding new color and shape that changes with the quality of light. Moving in, towards the tree, the bark’s abstractions dance and play with the imagination. The bark seems in constant motion, tearing itself free from the trunk and flinging itself to the ground—a pagan earth dance. The bark is so very smooth after its outer layer has been shed.
I’ve decided that I want to be with the tree during a storm. It is then that the bark flies off it with a fury. I’ve only seen the aftermath, the piles of bark shreds that litter the park lawn after the storm has passed. The forecast is calling for rain tonight. I can see the trees outside my window sway with the incoming wind. Tomorrow I shall bundle up and venture forth to the tree in the wind and rain and see what it has to offer. Stay tuned.
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.
So, I took my camera out for its usual walk. I went past the old cars (all were still in their usual places, thank God) and my tree (still standing). I clicked my way along the old rail path. The exercise was good, the inspiration ordinary. Once you’re in a funk it’s hard to shake.
Suddenly I saw it. There is an abandoned railway station in Larkspur that has interested me for years. The path I walk on is the old bed for the now-missing tracks. The station has a ghostly feel to it, I sometimes imagine the sound of the train as I pass by it. I wonder who might have been in the station and what stories the old building might hold. On the stucco wall of the station there is always a shadow as delicate as gossamer. I’ve photographed it forever, always disappointed with the result. Today it was different. The sun, being so low in the late-autumn sky, somehow acted as like a lens on one of the shadows, bringing it into focus on the wall. A crooked tree branch emerged from the normally soft shadow, dancing along surface of the station.
Its sharper shadow seemed to bring to life the ghosts of the building. And the resulting photo is different than any I’ve taken of the dancing shadow. It seemed to call attention to a fleeting moment that is now gone. The shadow most assuredly has moved. Like the train tracks it is no longer there. And while the shadow’s life was shorter than that of the station or its tracks, its impermanence unites it with everything else there is.
I suspect that tomorrow’s version of the dancing shadow will be different yet, perhaps reverting back to its normally blurry self. It took 100 bad photos of the dancing shadow to realize the image I’m showing today. Photography is that way.
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.
