This blog will aim to document my photographic journey. It'll be part diary, part teaching tool, part self-motivation. I'll try to make these posts informative and fun, and I'll give myself bonus points if you learn something along the way. With any luck, a story that's been building up in my brain will finally get told.
A little about me first. I don't really remember my life before I knew what a camera was and what it could do. My mom had a Kodak Instamatic that I just loved. I have no idea what my very first picture was. All I know is that I loved photography enough that I got my own Kodak Instamatic for Christmas in 1980 when I was 12. It took 126 film and Flipflash (mom's used the flash cube). Below is my very first photograph with it. On the right side you can see the yellow box the camera came in:
Not an award-winning photo by any stretch, but one that I spent 10 minutes studying tonight in quiet, achy nostalgia. Let's chase around it, okay? I already pointed out the yellow box, but the subject is clearly my sisters (Rebeccah and Rachel) enjoying their Christmas morning loot. In their pajamas. While it is still dark outside. Learning a little something about my family yet? Rachel's new 33⅓ rpm record reveals that the compact disc is not yet commercially available. Beccah has so much stuff she can't carry it all.
Now veer to the right edge—that blue chair and ottoman is demoted to being a table in this shot, but will be a major compositional element for one of my favorite photos, taken a few years later. Now head due left, all the way to the edge. You can't see it too well but I recognize two of the Wise Men in my family's nativity stable. Slide right again and find my mom's jade plant under the bay window, looking gnarly but happy. Go left again, up high—the sight of paper chains and strands of popcorn/cranberry garland revive memories of fun evenings after school with my sisters. Finally, make a dash to the right to that locked door, which startles me a little, since it will be removed a year or two later during a major remodel. This change will also mean the end of cold, cold linoleum. Oh! That's visible in the shot too!
I'm sorry if you are dizzy. But do you think I could create a thousand words for this image? You bet. Indeed, the image has become vastly more poignant for me this week, because this house burned to the ground exactly 1 week ago as I write this. No one knows why. A spark when no one was home, and *POOF* 3 decades of stuff turned to ash in just hours.
To my family's great fortune, "no one was home" is the key sentence there. Although none of the stuff in the above photo exists any more, those 2 lovely young women are alive and well, raising their kids in their own homes. Probably they checked their fire detectors this week. I know I did.
So life-changing grief is not a theme of my 2010 holiday season. Instead, I've got a pile of photos that are giving me moments of "achy nostalgia." Plus, as my family starts to cope with insurance investigators, the photos are helping us compute the value of the things that were lost.
Don't worry, this blog isn't about how to make the prettiest imaginable insurance photos. Nor is it about how to chase around a photo to extract the story it's telling (because your job as a photographer will be to be the storyteller). Still, I'm occasionally going to get personal because, well, it's part of the journey.
Hang on...the ride will soon be a lot more fun.
Now veer to the right edge—that blue chair and ottoman is demoted to being a table in this shot, but will be a major compositional element for one of my favorite photos, taken a few years later. Now head due left, all the way to the edge. You can't see it too well but I recognize two of the Wise Men in my family's nativity stable. Slide right again and find my mom's jade plant under the bay window, looking gnarly but happy. Go left again, up high—the sight of paper chains and strands of popcorn/cranberry garland revive memories of fun evenings after school with my sisters. Finally, make a dash to the right to that locked door, which startles me a little, since it will be removed a year or two later during a major remodel. This change will also mean the end of cold, cold linoleum. Oh! That's visible in the shot too!
I'm sorry if you are dizzy. But do you think I could create a thousand words for this image? You bet. Indeed, the image has become vastly more poignant for me this week, because this house burned to the ground exactly 1 week ago as I write this. No one knows why. A spark when no one was home, and *POOF* 3 decades of stuff turned to ash in just hours.
To my family's great fortune, "no one was home" is the key sentence there. Although none of the stuff in the above photo exists any more, those 2 lovely young women are alive and well, raising their kids in their own homes. Probably they checked their fire detectors this week. I know I did.
So life-changing grief is not a theme of my 2010 holiday season. Instead, I've got a pile of photos that are giving me moments of "achy nostalgia." Plus, as my family starts to cope with insurance investigators, the photos are helping us compute the value of the things that were lost.
Don't worry, this blog isn't about how to make the prettiest imaginable insurance photos. Nor is it about how to chase around a photo to extract the story it's telling (because your job as a photographer will be to be the storyteller). Still, I'm occasionally going to get personal because, well, it's part of the journey.
Hang on...the ride will soon be a lot more fun.
There are probably lots of things that you did first! Looking forward to reading your posts. We'll miss you this Christmas, bro! Hope to see you soon.
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