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01/01/2002 Entry: "get on the bus"
Back in May of last year (2001), I was taking pictures, working on them in the darkroom, and generally unhappy with how everything was turning out. The photo class I was taking was nearing the end, my final portfolio was due the next week, and I didn't have a single print done.
The problem was, my photographs were boring. Without any other ideas, I stubbornly kept printing these photos, trying to get just the right look for each particular boring photograph. Soon it was a Friday, with the portfolio due on Monday, and as I paged through my large stack of prints, I knew there was nothing good coming from it.
The choice was to cut down and mount these prints, or to do something else. Whatever something else was, it had to be done in the next 72 hours, or my photography grade was going to seriously suffer.
In walking around Washington with Charlene, I'd often (one might say "too often", or moreso "He's having the exact same thought he has every time he sees this, does it really need to be repeated again?") comment on the people I saw go by in buses, and the incredibly revealing expressions I saw that I thought might make interesting photos.
And with that thought, and a swift motivational speech from Charlene, it was decided. I went down to the photo store, rented a really large white lens, and bought some film. At about 7 o' clock that night, I went out with the single lens mounted on my camera, my tripod, and a pocketful of film, to make pictures that weren't boring.
Immediately, it felt invasive to be pointing a camera lens at someone who was unaware of its presence. I was a jerk, obnoxious, a pretentous little college kid, a capturer of bad photos and a waster of film.
Despite my best efforts, these feelings never left me for the next two nights, and writing this 7 months later, I'm not sure that those feelings were unjustified.
I shot 10 rolls of film, talked to people on the street, got dirty stares, smiles, had people make funny faces at me, but best of all, what I was most thankful for, was that I was mostly ignored.
Composition, photo theory, it didn't matter, I was taking photographs that made me nervous, and that challenged my own ideas about how I could make pictures. I didn't feel comfortable, I took at least thirty bad shots for every good one, and went home every night poring over Bresson and Wingrand's work for moral support, and wondering if any good would come of this.
During the day on Saturday and Sunday, I processed the film in my bathroom, and made prints in my closet darkroom. By Sunday afternoon, I had made forty prints, and with Charlene's help, I narrowed them down to 14, which she expertly cut and mounted.
Critique went well, but even better, I had broken out of a 2 month long slump of taking dull pictures. Looking at them now, I know they're not stunning photographs by any means, but I think they're revealing, and I'm proud to have worked so hard on them, and to have shot, processed and printed what was supposed to have been a half of a semester's work in a 3 day period.
A few of them are up here, on photo.net.
Replies: [C.1]
i really like this story. I don't know what to say besides that. I'm trying to learn as much about photography as I can (science and personal) and this was very good.
Posted by joan @ 01/02/2002 08:59 PM PST
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