“The perception of beauty is a moral test.” Thoreau
People often ask me what I like to shoot, and I’m never quite sure how to give a pithy answer. I started out as a photographer on a medium sized daily newspaper with a small photo staff, and we shot everything–mug shots, boring (visually) meetings, handshake ceremonies, groundbreakings, sports, fashion trends, debutante parties, traffic accidents, murder scenes.
You had to be a generalist and that has stuck with me. Instead of looking for a certain subject, I’m trying to find the picture in whatever is in front of me. Some times are easier than others.
It was a little over a year ago, and we were in Mexico, at a horse ranch. There had been a heavy shower in the afternoon, and the sun was filtering through clearing clouds and rising mist.
There was a wildflower field between the guest rooms and the stables, usually navigated on paths around its perimeter. Just then, the middle of the field, with the tall wet grass and large puddles, was the right place to be.
Our tented encampment was in the middle of the Serengeti and hours from anything except more camps. Still, the dining tent was impeccable. With a wine list. And a full bar. And a view of the bush in every direction.
We were some of the first visitors after the pandemic quarantines and they treated us like long lost friends. Barbara and I were on safari with another couple and when we got to this camp they had a sort of tent duplex set up for us, with separate bedroom tents, joined by a common seating area tent. Each bedroom wing had a subdivision petitioned off for a lavatory, toilet, and shower.
“Shower” is not an appropriate term for what we had. In three days I was never able to get more than a trickle out of the nozzle, and that was ice cold.
But then every night there was a big campfire at twilight, outside the dining tent, sitting watching an infinity of stars appear, gin and tonic in hand. Even with a crowd around the fire, moments of silence just happen. Except for the shower, this could be heaven. (I’m probably forgetting the bugs.)
I looked the site up recently and photos indicate it’s a lot more of permanent installations now. I think I like the tents better, but the plumbing is probably much improved.
In the beginning…(please continue with your preferred origin story).
When I saw this solitary iguana making his way from the ocean inland, it reminded me of an old poster about evolution, with a fish coming from the water, growing feet, and becoming a land animal.
Observing the animals and landscapes in the Galapagos, and looking at my photographs from there, the specter of Charles Darwin and ideas of evolution are unavoidable, but it’s more than that.
The tectonic plate activity on the western edge of the islands makes the archipelago one of nature’s birthplaces and nurseries. Much feels primal, visceral, an ongoing Genesis.
My life would have been much more complicated if I had married someone uncomfortable with being photographed at any moment, often with little primping time. Fortunately for me Barbara is usually fine with any impromptu, “Hold that,” or, “Look here,” or, “Stand right over there.” If mainly just mugging for the camera, her first instinct is to wave.
So when I saw this art installation, I had to have this picture.
Courtesy of the City of Savannah Municipal Archives
“A wormhole is a hypothetical structure that connects disparate points in spacetime.” Wikipedia
A friend, doing some research on properties in Warren Ward, a neighborhood less than a block from our home (Washington Ward), came across this old newspaper clipping from March of 1967.
I do not remember that assignment. I was 19 years old, working full time as a staff photographer at the Savannah Morning News-Evening Press (two different newspapers, with two separate editorial staffs; I swear). I was also a full time student at Armstrong State College (now Georgia Southern University), trying to hang onto my 2S Selective Service student deferment. I dropped Calculus, lost my deferment, enlisted in the Army, and reported for active duty 6 months later.
If you had told me then I would live in the next block, the idea would have been so alien to me I wouldn’t have even bothered to pooh-pooh it.
We lived downtown when I was 3, mostly because that would have been the cheapest rent my parents could find. Our family was part of the “White Flight” movement from urban to suburban, except we went a little farther, to countryside, where we were surrounded by forests. Mom and dad were country people and wanted enough land to have a garden. City living was not in my experience nor on my radar.
Also, the preservation/restoration movement was only about a decade old then and downtown Savannah was another 1-2 decades from approaching the kind of popular appeal, and sometimes magical beauty, it has now.
Ann and Mills Lane were early proponents of reviving downtown, investing in the area just east of the central business district. They moved this house across the street from it’s original location, and had it restored. Lane also restored the building our home is in, with one of the workers finding an old gold coin while doing the roof work.
Now my parents’ little acre is just part of the metro area, surrounded by a large school and tract housing; the neighborhood is bisected by the Truman Parkway. And I have fallen through a wormhole, living down the street from the Carswell House.
Sam was a complicated man. He was one of the brightest and most clever people I’ve known, and very self-aware. In 1992, we were getting ready to put a new version of the old Nikon School back on the road and the team (5 of us) had gone to Toronto to see Larry Frank’s Canadian Nikon School for ideas. We came across one of the Sam the Record Man Stores and I wanted this photo. I shot it, but Sam staged it. It has always seemed to me a conscious balance of ego and self-parody. That intellect, along with a wealth of knowledge about his profession, photography, and maybe even more knowledge of another love, the movies, that was my partner Sam.
We were friends, with friction sometimes, for about 35 years, and in the 9 years we taught together I spent almost as much time with him as I did my wife. We were on the road together for 26 weekends a year, speaking to 400-500 people each weekend, and sharing a lot of downtime, with meals leavened by swapped stories of movies, old assignments, travel, politics, sex, religion. We generally agreed on most things. In thinking about him this week I realized our texts and conversations had continued in the same character, as when we were traveling together, yet it had been 25 years since we shared a stage, and almost that long since we had actually seen each other.
The School was quite a production in those days–9 projectors, 24 trays of slides, programming and audio gear, redundant gear for backup. The second photo is Sam catching a nap on the 20+ cases of equipment we shipped from city to city, during one of our regular “waiting for somebody to do something” periods. On Saturday and Sunday mornings we were “Admin,” selling and taking tickets. During the daylong presentation we were the “Talent.” But most of the time, we were the “Roadies,” unpacking, setting up, taking down, packing up.
I learned some things from him. I had done a fair amount of photo instruction of small groups, but he told me a large audience is easier to manage than a small one, and it’s true. We saw a kind of herd behavior happen regularly.
Another important insight was that if you are going to charge someone real money to sit in a hard chair, in a hotel ballroom, for 8 hours, while you talk about your pictures and how you took them, you also damn well better be entertaining. His storytelling chops and sonorous voice, illustrated by his strong photographs, could capture an audience.
When we had hiccups with equipment, or any sort of class disruption, one of us would have to “dance,” AKA keep the audience entertained, while the other fixed the problem. He could dance. One time he had an hour long section to present, and for a variety of reasons (very long story) he only had one slide. He kept the room engrossed.
He could also piss off the Pope. His rapid delivery once provoked a shout from an audience member, “Talk slower!” His response, never missing a beat, was, “Listen faster.” We did lose that student. One time someone objected to him calling one of his models a “girl.” He pointed out she was only 15, with great makeup.
At the end of one class a very satisfied student was going on about how good the program was and how good we were, and suggested we should go on stage. Laconic Sam said, “We just did.”
My favorite part of the School day was always the Q & A for 15-20 minutes after lunch. We took questions from the audience and tried to give useful answers, while Sam and I bantered. Matching witticisms with Sam required you to bring your A game. That was fun!
Back when Dennis Miller was funny, and taped his show on Friday evenings, one Friday afternoon I met Sam in Anaheim to set up for our Nikon School weekend there. He knew I was a fan of Miller, told me he had reserved a ticket for me at the show, and that he would do set up alone. It was a nice gift, and I enjoyed the evening. I also think he liked introducing a naif into a bit of the entertainment milieu he loved.
Sam once saw a cheap promotional airfare from NYC to Bermuda, bought two tickets returning the same day, and took a female co-worker to Bermuda for a lunch date, but in recent years a once gregarious Sam had gone from someone ready to travel almost anywhere and on short notice to someone who rarely left his small apartment. He seemed to tire of friends’ efforts to get him out more when he preempted the conversation with me, telling me if he could find a waterproof TV he would never leave the bathroom.
The first thing I noticed was the richness and variety of color in this small leaf, about palm-sized. It was under a canopy of much larger caladium leaves in my deck container garden, and I started thinking of how to photograph it.
It wasn’t until later that I saw the circle of life piece, where the lifespan of this leaf is visible, from top to bottom, in one moment.
But, before that….
I understood I needed a light tent to get soft, even, diffused light, and to remove any distracting ground. I tried to remember what white, translucent material I had that would work, and then what to use for a stable frame to hold the fabric over, under, and around the leaf.
Then I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have something like that setup all the time, in a little corner of the office, so I could quickly pick up any small object and shoot it immediately.
Well, in that case, I should build something perfect, and with some flexibility. Just before pulling out my drafting board to start designing some working plans, I remembered the little leaf. It would not wait for my design/construction scheme.
I don’t know where it came from, but “mixing bowl” popped into my head, and I got the biggest one we had in the kitchen. Leaf in bowl, bowl in some open shade, I got the soft light, and the simple ground.
As I was finishing I remembered: Edward Weston, from my personal Photography Pantheon, made his famous “Pepper #30” photograph by placing the pepper in a large tin funnel, laying on its side. Great minds, or, more likely, he planted a seed.
“They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.” ― Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Little House in the Big Woods” (It works better if you can hear that in a young Melissa Gilbert’s voice.)
And yet it was such a long time ago, chronologically, emotionally, psychologically, philosophically.
Hunter Teen Town was, as implied, a teen club for military dependents at Hunter Air Force Base, before it was an Army base. Visitations by “civilians” like my sister Kitty and me were normally limited, but they never said anything about us being regulars almost every weekend. Because of my involvement in Civil Air Patrol I was friends with many of the dependents, and several of the older guys wanted to date Kitty.
I even achieved the status of being allowed in the DJ booth to keep the music going on the dance floor on normal weekends, but for holiday dances, there was a live band, although it seems like it was always “The Fabulous Sphinx.”
As I remember it there were two other rooms–a TV room, and a game (pool table) room.
Mrs. “Mama” Hoover, the military spouse who took on the responsibility for managing this hormone-laden multitude was beloved, in spite of always knowing instantly when someone turned off the lights in the TV room.
What does a teenager know about time? We never thought it would end, but the Air Force base closed and the dependents scattered to new cities, college, military service, jobs, careers.
“Those were the days, my friend We thought they’d never end We’d sing and dance forever and a day We’d live the life we choose We’d fight and never lose For we were young and sure to have our way…” Mary Hopkin “Those Were The Days”
