It’s The Time of the Season

07-16-0025

Damn hot & humid. For real. I see tourist with du rags on their head, towels over the shoulders and people selling Ice Cold water running out. Amazing. Personally I love the hot weather but I have an issue when the heat mixes with the humidity.

So, Andre’ the Fuji X100T and I were out on a walk-a-bout. We covered a few miles and made some photos. Some won’t get posted because they belong to a project I am working on, Faces and Spaces. The happen to be the better images because my intent is flying high on that project and I just see it. This stuff is basically Flikr & Facebook stuff. I try to support the community at both places and I feel it’s important to do that.

So, we are cruising around City Hall and going thru the walk ways. I used to do that with Ed Bacon but now I just have the memories of him telling me all sorts of facts as we walked around the building. Then as I went thru the West corridor heading to the East corridor, I get  a glimpse of a young woman walking with a bag in her hand and it has a face of  Marilyn Monroe. Now, she’s young and I’m not so young.This means she can walk faster then I can even see but I wanna make a photo so I focus on her and realize, it ain’t gonna happen cause she’s far ahead of me. The, the Angel of Grace floated down to her and put some other woman next to her. I thought geeze, I need to get the Angel a present. I walk close and know it’s just a one shot deal and I know what I want and get close and ….CLICK!

07-16-0026

The great thing about photography is seeing how things get when they are flat. It’s a real amazing experience and then to make it B&W, well…..

I remember going to museum and Ding showing me photos. Sometimes I would see a self portrait of the shooter and could not stop looking at it. I wanted to understand that person just by seeing them in a photo. Then I learned that I would realize that person by the body of work they produced.

What I found and still do, is selfies, selfies by anyone interest me. I have many of myself for all these decades. Maybe when we look at someones work, we see what that person felt and saw and responded to at the moment. When we see a selfie of that person, for some reason, they become human and they are real for us. It’s a trick of photography. A trick of freezing time. A trick of Life after Death.

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I used to wonder what people that were not photographers saw and what they responded to in photos. Now that an exercise one can only dabble in but must at certain points in our life. I remember many moons ago I had been at the Museum and Ding picked a handful of my prints that her liked and felt were worth owning.

I was excited. I went home and when I got there my in-laws were there. I showed my prints that Ding wanted to my wife and she smiled and was proud and happy for me. My Mother-in-Law came over and asked me…:Donald, why do you always make pictures of nothing?

 

 

 

11 thoughts on “It’s The Time of the Season”

  1. Hi Don,
    What I got out of this blog is the moral of the story was that you could always make something out of nothing. It’s not what you in conjunction with camera in hand sees, but how you see that translates into how an images speaks. In sum, the images be a reflection on how, at some time in a photographers life, they made something out of nothing, and it opened further opportunities. Others maybe blind to this, and so, don’t appreciate the history contributing to the who, what, when, where and why …
    Sean

    1. Sean, I think I got out of the story pretty much what you got out of it. That’s a good thing…..

  2. I always read the post to the end as I know something profound is coming. So now we know what people who are not into photography see. I try to avoid selfies… maybe I shouldn’t.

    1. Sharon, selfies are a very important aspect of making photos. Inside, most of us want to know what the other looks like.

  3. “Donald, why do you always make pictures of nothing”? – You know, I guess that kind of sums it up for a lot of people who don’t get what street photography is all about. But we know … and that’s what counts. I feel for you out in that heat and humidity. I hate going out when the humidity if up there. Just sucks the energy out of a person. Take care out there!

    1. Funny Dave. I was shooting as a stringer for a paper. I lived on the street for a month and made many photos of homeless and all sorts of things. That was in 1974 and I still feel the same and sometimes hear that from my wife especially….

    2. “Donald, why do you always make pictures of nothing?”

      Exactly the reaction I get… Who are those people? Were they OK with being photographed? Why, oh why don’t you make pictures like everyone else…?

      Well, just because, I guess…

      1. Frank, Next person ask me that question, I would like to refer them to you. You seem to have a better frame of mine for that then I do, and in all these years, never a proper answer.

        p.s. did not forget you but we haven’t installed the calendar yet, It’s on the schedule.

  4. I love selfies but I rarely post them. I used to feel embarrassed at even taking a selfie because I thought it seemed kind of vapid and self absorbed but then I started following one of my nieces on Instagram and her Instagram is mostly selfies and she’s the least vapid person I know. Then I realized that what frustrated me about my family and how they hated me taking pictures of them is that I felt that pictures captured them as they were at that time and when I looked at those same pictures years from now, I would be taken back to that moment. Aren’t selfies the same thing? You’re capturing yourself as you were at that moment. It was then that I learned to not roll my eyes when I see people taking pictures of themselves.

    1. Tina, exactly right. What we do with a camera is really….making memories. Every single frame made anyplace with any intent, a memory. So my thoughts on selfies is that I am making a memory that I want to see as I grow older. At 66, I look at my selfie from my 20’s, even with my kids and a tear grows in my heart. Not because of me but because I see the passing of time and the effect it has on everyone.

      So, maybe we need to redefine the word, PORTRAIT to include everything we make a photo of. After all, everything we make a photo of deserves the respect and love we have within us because no one, nothing at all escapes the sands of time.

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