Going the Distance

Good portraiture is certainly challenging enough, but making a portrait of someone you love is like a marriage. A definitive portrait (of that person, at that exact moment) must resonate. It must be intimate. It must be evocative. It must have a timeless quality. And it must be something you will want to hang on the wall and look at for the rest of your life.

Today, when I received the roll of film with this image of my youngest son, I realized that I have done him a disservice photographically. Robert Capa famously said, "If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough" Conventional wisdom is that he was referring to positioning yourself physically closer to your subject. If distance were the only issue, then this portrait meets that criterion because I stood in his personal air space to take it.  But more importantly, he let me.

Unlike his brother, he has never really been comfortable being photographed. I have the scowls, the glaring (or deliberately closed) eyes, and the bored-to-death countenance to prove it. Maybe he thought the camera separates rather than unites us? The result is that I have too often backed away physically and emotionally. I have not developed a rich photographic language that is unique to him.

Then there are those rare moments, like this one, when he is willing to open up, and I am willing to move into that emotion space. To quote a Lucinda Williams song, "If wishes were horses I'd have a ranch." If these moments happened more regularly, perhaps I would not value them as much. They evaporate far too quickly. My ranch becomes a mirage. But in that isolated moment, the alchemy of light, film, chemicals, and being in the moment creates a decisive portrait.

Lately, as I watch him mature into a young man, I am reminded of a line from a song by Harry Chapin. It was written about his daughter, but it is really about being a parent. "I have watched you take shape from a jumble of parts / And find the grace and form of a fine work of art."

I will hang this one on my wall.​

Nick/17

The Elusive Image

We are flooded with imagery, both moving and still. But the just-so photograph is much more elusive. I read that performance equals motivation, ability, preparation and "other factors." I used to write this on the board for my writing students. Now I ponder how it applies to my photography.

This photograph of my kid and my old sled is meaningful perhaps only to me. Who would want to hang this photograph of my youngest son on his or her wall?

 This shot is all about performance. The snow performed. I performed as the photographer. My fussy Diana toy camera performed. The film and the lab performed. And there's a sweet spot in the center of the image. My son performed, too. He has never enjoyed having his picture taken. At this moment, he was still young enough to pose for me without attitude.

An 8x10 sits on my bureau. I love this shot not because everything came together properly, but because I do not have more like it. I'm greedy. C.S. Lewis wrote, "The most intense joy in life is not in the having, but in the desire." I can't agree. I blame those damned other factors.

We Just Have Happy Accidents

​For this title I borrowed a line from that bushy-headed, hippy-dippy Bob Ross. A majority of my posts may be lo-fi analog images, but I am not a photography Luddite. I have a nice pixel-based camera. Even when I "went digital," I remained a Nikon guy. No offense to the Canonites.

One of my favorite and sometimes most frustrating aspects of shooting with toy cameras are inadvertent incidences -- double exposures, ​light leaks, flare, etc. But happy accidents can happen in the digital world, too. This image was not planned. It was created completely in camera -- with a a bit of digital darkroom tweaking.

Mr. Ross once said, "All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a vision in your mind." The same holds true for photography, with just an occasional bit of serendipity. ​

Slush & Trees

Decisive Moments

When to press the shutter. I heard someone describe how all the great golfers could imagine -- or pre-imagine -- their swing and the ball finding its mark. This approach does not work for me. Too many variables. 

Instead, I try to live in the moment. I heard a studio photographer describe himself as an "experiential" photographer. That comes as close as anything to describing my process.I can't define how/when I choose to click, but I know it when it happens.

I am guided by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who said, "Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."​

I am also guided by the words of a fellow toy camera practitioner who goes by Tread (www.gotreadgo.com) who wrote, "Are you into 'decisive moment' photography? You are a studied observer of your surroundings and live quickly."

He must have been watching me as I took this photograph of a youngster playing in a waterfall in downtown Chicago. I look his way, raised my camera by instinct as he turned toward me, and decisively pressed the shutter. I call these my money shots, to coin a porn term. The young man's father was not pleased by my picture taking. I walked away, thinking ... Oop!

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Falling Water

Fallen Leaves

Like language, photography has a "tense." As such, photography for me has a "this-will-have-been" tense, to borrow from the philosophy of Roland Barthes. All photographs capture fleeting moments. They can also play a reverse role of letting the viewer see something about the photographer. I shared "Fallen Leaves" with someone a few years ago, and she dubbed it Lonely Trees.

Like most photographs, this was an image of opportunity. I just happened to be running an errand to the grocery store just after the snow stopped falling. I just happened to have my Holga with me. And I just happened to look right instead of left. This image beckoned me. I followed the whisper. It now has been.