We work incredibly hard to create remnants of the past that will help us imagine what it was like: think of ghost towns and historic monuments. National and state park systems have developed strict guidelines for how to repair “historic” structures, e.g., what materials can be used for public-facing projects (stuff visitors might see) need to be or seem to be authentic to the period (whereas non-public-facing projects can use modern materials). Valley Forge is filled with such structures — fences, cabins, embankments — maintained to give visitors a sense of history.
Landscape #220312
That stormy March afternoon, the quiet, lonely cabin certainly didn’t help me imagine the history of the place — 244 years earlier I suspect it was a relatively loud and lively camp with perhaps as many as 1,500 cabins and more than 10,000 soldiers scattered around the Valley Forge encampment. This cabin doesn’t help me understand what life was like for the Continental Army, but standing there in the blowing snow and listening to the ice cracking on the tree limbs as they flexed and bent in the wind I was able to conjure up an image, a fiction of what it might be like to live in such a place.
It was a miserable day. Cold and windy, and then cold, windy, and snowy. Stores closed early because the “winter storm warning.” Most people wisely chose to stay home, warm and dry. A perfect day, it seemed to me, to go for a hike. Thick leaden clouds and blowing snow created a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland of dead trees and empty spaces. There was no palette — everything shaded from black to gray. Nearly every scene was hauntingly beautiful.
Landscape #220312
On days like this I am drawn by the sirens’ songs and venture out into the howling winds. The discomfort and physical effort compensated for by the chance to be alone and the opportunity to photograph scenes few other people will experience.
Standing here looking west, it’s easy to lose yourself in thick forest of trees. There is no path leading forward. No obvious way to the far side, if indeed there is a far side. Although the sun shines somewhere overhead, here under the canopy of branches and leaves a diffuse light seems to permeate the scene. I pause for a moment to enjoy the solitude and to imagine I’m on the edge of some vast unknown.
A particularly wooded section of campus.
Then the pneumatic hammer begins pounding, so close it startles me. I am not, alas, in the middle of some ancient forest but a scant few feet from a construction project. Men running jack hammers and excavating the existing parking lot presumably to replace it with a new one. I turn around and watch the workmen for a few minutes, lament the intrusion of civilization, and then head down the nature trail toward my office where, if I’m lucky, it will be quieter.
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 want a new camera. Or is it a new lens? I want something to kickstart my photography out of its late winter creative slump. Ya. I think I would prefer a new lens, a new 50mm f/1.4. But first I need to do some research to be sure I get the best lens possible for me. Off to the internet to read reviews, to watch unboxing videos, hands-on reviews, long-term reviews, to compare sharpness, transmission, vignetting, distortion, chromatic aberration, weight, weather sealing, to listen to other photographers explain why they think this lens or that lens is the best (or the worst). And then the pleasure of watching sample images appear and disappear on my screen, examples of the miracles each lens can work. I can’t go wrong. Any of them will be better than my current lens.
#181110.1
I know. I’m not supposed to fixate on my equipment. I need only the tools that enable me to realize my vision, to make the photographs I need to make. Clearly good tools help make good photographs. But how, exactly? What strange alchemy occurs, transforming my base creativity into precious photographs, when I affix a new lens onto my camera? What if a new lens, a new camera, a new tripod, a new filter, a new [whatever] actually has the opposite effect?
In large and small ways, explicit and implicit, concern for equipment permeates so much of the conversation about photography. The sounds gear makes, or a simulacrum of that sound, has become de rigueur for videos, as have clips of people loading film or attaching a camera to a tripod. We can’t look at a photo without wondering what film stock was used. People talking ostensibly about photographs and making photographs sit surrounded by cameras, usually lurking on shelves in the background or proudly sitting on the table in the foreground. For me, all of that emphasis on gear distracts. It unhelpfully deflects attention from the joy of photography, which is, again for me, making photographs. That is why, I suspect any new bit of kit will in the end dull my creative vision. That new gadget distracts me from doing what I need to do in order to realize that vision: from making photographs.
#181027
No. I don’t need or even want a new lens, let alone a camera, or any other fancy bit of new, or retro, gear. Those won’t help me realize my creative vision. Only going out and making lots and lots and lots of photographs will.
In the chain that leads from vision to photograph, I am already the weakest link. Fortunately, I cost the least to improve.
Snow still covers the ground, lays piled by the sides of roads, and blocks the sidewalks. Ice covers the pond. This morning the world is still monochrome. But not for long.
#210227.1
Fog rises from the melting snow, growing thicker as the morning warms. At first the world seemed to be a circle of visibility moving along with me as I walked, no more than a few hundred yards across. But soon even that contracted. Shapes fading into existence as I approached gained faint color and texture only at the last minute, when I could nearly touch them. They lost both color and texture as they receded behind me before quickly dissolving into the whiteness.
#210227.2
A world shrouded in fog is a magical place, full of surprises and unknowns. You can neither see nor hear clearly — the fog seems to dampen noise as much as it obscures sight. The noises that do penetrate unsettle and unnerve because they seem to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Every now and then, a tree with the remnants of last year’s leaves clinging to its branches emerged from the fog, water dripping from its leaves glowing golden brown against the milky scene.
#210227.3
Mornings like this happen rarely around here, once or twice a year. I feel sorry for all the people who missed this one, but am glad they didn’t invade my enjoyment of it.
Benches are so much more than merely a place to sit. Arranged around campus they seem like sentinels watching over a particular vista or guarding a quiet corner. Should you happen across one, it invites you to pause and maybe even to linger. Alone or with a friend, passionate conversation or silent observation, it matters little. Benches don’t care.
#210223a
Their insistence on reflection and contemplation put them at odds with a world that celebrates busyness. Now, more than ever, we should perhaps take them up on their offer to loiter and to dawdle. We would all benefit by spending some time doing nothing. We don’t need some app on our ever-present “smart phone” to tell us when and for how long to focus. We need not regularize and formalize downtime. Just go find a bench. There are plenty out there waiting for you.
Following the lead of others requires little effort and less courage. “Innovate and iterate” while a route to financial success and often a means of improving our efficiencies rarely produces genuinely new and imaginative things. To strike out on your own requires conviction and courage. To pursue your own goals wherever they might lead demands trust in yourself. Better to get lost having set out alone into parts unknown, than simply to tread an established path to some recognizable destination. So too in things creative.
Winter has happened this year, or at least February has already been properly cold and snow-filled. We’ve had some wonderful days of blowing, bitter snow storms. A thick layer of snow covers the ice on the local pond. The storms keep people inside, and so naturally I’m compelled to be out, wandering the streets and parks and open spaces. Even through the haze of snow and the monochrome winter afternoons, the promise of spring lurks in the tree branches tinged with yellow. Soon they will explode in the fresh growth of a new year. But not yet. Today winter still rules.
Often I want to be alone, to avoid the company of others. I am no misanthrope nor do I aspire to be a hermit, but the constant din of daily life does little for me. I much prefer solitude, the restorative companionship of quiet, both in an acoustic and in a psychological sense.
But it’s hard to be alone. Robert Frost, I think, understood the desire to be alone. Yet he acknowledged the futility of that desire. I too seek, as often as possible, similar opportunities, moments where I can choose the less certain, the less worn option. My initial excitement, however, soon mixes with a sense of melancholy as I come to see that I have not succeeded in avoiding the company of others. There seems always to be traces of predecessors; I can’t help but see evidence that I’m little more than the latest follower. And I know that my passing can’t help but encourage others to follow.
#210208.1
That wet afternoon I had hoped to be alone. The cold rain and gloom discouraged others from intruding on my peace. But I wasn’t alone. I saw in the path I followed the evidence of those who had passed before me, some recently had left footprints in the soft dirt others more remotely had helped to beat down the grasses and to shape the path itself. I could almost hear the echoes of their footsteps, whether lightly landing on hard, dry soil, or tramping through the soft, wet mud. I stopped regularly to listen to the water falling onto the leaves and from there dripping onto the grasses. I lingered for a moment.
Then I turned and set off into the thick. I struggled to make headway. Soon I was drenched from pushing through the undergrowth. Finally, after considerable effort I came to a small clearing at the top of a rise. The dense woods sloped away in front of me, seemingly impenetrable. I looked down and saw a shard of glass, the remnant of an old bottle. Even here I was not alone.
#210208.2
Originality is, I think, just another form of seeking to be alone. And it is equally difficult to find. Somebody has been there before me; somebody will come after.
