With the new month comes a new postcard. For this month I wandered over to the local park, which had recently renovated the tennis court, now used primarily by four retired women to play pickleball. Let me know if you want a copy.
On any given afternoon the sounds of people shooting basketballs, playing softball, and hitting tennis balls echo through the park. Ah summer.
I was asked to take photographs of the local area for a soon-to-be revamped community website (brynfordcivic.org). I wanted to do something different, something that captures the experiences of walking and living in the area, or at least how I see and experience living in the community. Here is some of what I see as I wander the streets and parks:
I am working on a long-term project to talk to the people who own and run local businesses, the people who make our community unique and real, and to photograph them at work. Rather than a set of portraits, I want to focus on their hands because they tell the story of their efforts. And I want to talk to the people, to listen to their experiences.
The last year has highlighted just how fragile our communities are, as we watch shops that have been around sometimes for years close and go away. I worry about what we are losing. So this project is very much one of preservation. An effort to record in words and images what we have before it’s gone.
In my mind I imagine a project that echoes the form of Dorothea Lange’s American Exodus. She paired photographs with words in a powerful way to capture the experiences of people heading west in the hopes of finding a better life. But I work more local. With people I know or want to know.
In the end I will produce a book that collects together these photographs and experiences, that joins words and images to tell a story about the community where I live. I will also produce photographs for each person/business, sometimes large format single photographs, sometimes collages or triptychs. They are free to do with those photographs whatever they want. It’s the least I can do for those who let me come sit and listen to them while they work.
Here is a small sample of some recent photographs, taken at a local bike shop while I listened to the owner talk about opening it and finding ways to keep it going over the past 14 or so months. I imagined them as a set of poster-sized prints for the shop.
When I started this Daily Photography Project I committed to taking one still life photograph each day. Nothing too elaborate, no lovely basket of fruit spilling across an opulent tablecloth, or pile of exotic flowers and fine bone china. For my goal was not composition. Instead, I had pragmatic and instrumentalist goals: to become better at using my flashes and better at understanding how to light something simple. The variable was the lighting, not the subject.
Now for nearly four weeks I have been taking photos of glasses, usually filled with some liquid, and the occasional flower. But just taking 30 photos without pausing to think about them seems unlikely to help me improve, except by chance. So I’ve spent some time looking at the photos and thinking about how they did or did not capture what I had in mind, and how much and what sort of work I had to do to get them close to what I imagined.
I’ve learned some things, and become aware of others. I have a new appreciation for and awareness of how shiny surfaces reflect light from other light surfaces. I think now about how a flash (or any light source) will reflect on certain surfaces and not others:
How many times have I had to adjust slightly the flash so it doesn’t overexpose the close side of a glass? Or how many times have I had to put up a dark book or some other object to block the light from spilling back from the far wall, which happens to be white and therefore rather bright?
I have a better sense of how shadows fall depending on how near or far the light source is from the object, and how large or small that light source. Want a hard, distinct shadow line? Take off the softbox and move the flash a bit further away. Smooth shadows? Softbox and close flash.
I haven’t discovered any insights. What I have become familiar with these lessons to the point that I can now produce the effect I want without going through a series of trials and errors. Insofar as I wanted to learn something about flashes, this exercise has been useful.
However, I have largely disliked this project. I find it dull. I have fallen into the habit of thinking that making the single photograph (which I do each evening) is sufficient. As long as I do that, I’ve accomplished something for the day. Consequently, I find myself taking fewer photographs as I wander with my camera. As if I’ve replaced taking photos of the world around me with taking my daily flash photo.
I appreciate that other people might find these daily projects useful and generative. But I don’t, at least not in a particularly fulfilling way. Useful? Maybe for acquiring a particular skill. Generative? No. Maybe I need to think about the project differently. Maybe by imposing greater constraints, e.g., a photo each day of the same half-filled glass. Michael Beirut who popularized the 100-day project reportedly drew his left hand every day for 100 days. Or more open, e.g., commit to taking a photo each day that captures the sense of some word I’ve chosen for that day (Day 1: Green; Day 2: Anger; Day 3: Wealth; etc.).
In the end, for me, I worry all these parameters will encourage me to produce quantity without encouraging quality or creativity or imagination or questions.
With the new month comes a new postcard. For this month I tried to produce one photograph each day of something on my table. Some of those photos were better than others. Some more peaceful. Let me know if you want a copy.
A still life can encourage us to pause and relax. Forget for a moment the chaos of everyday life and just sit still, as the name implies.
