Sorry I couldn't handwrite this post

"I couldn't pull a Migration Assistant without bringing over all my bad settings along for the ride, so it turned into a Windows-like upgrade. First, none of my external hard drives existed anymore. I had to grab a new driver for my eSata card. I reinstalled all my apps from disks and download backups, and pulled over data from the Tiger backup disk, which is where I started running into more problems. I couldn't import a bunch of mailboxes, and lots of folders came over with no RW permissions and the dreaded red no-go icon. When I tried to set up a Final Cut scratch disk, I found that half my disk drives had errant permissions."
— from a recent post on Doug Plummer's photoblog Dispatches

Doug's blog occasionally ventures into geek-speak, but this seems like a particularly acute case. Is this what writing and thinking about photography has come to? In many cases I think the answer is yes. My guess is that many photographers spend countless hours on a computer mastering an ever evolving set of digital skills, or else spending money on constantly revised software. To be a working pro you need to. But the skillset seems to be spinning further and further from photography's essential activity which is simply seeing. All those hours of keystrokes and mouseclicks used to be spent photographing.

I am thinking about this as I begin my second week gradually re-adjusting to computer life. While in Maine I went for about three weeks without posting and without reading any other photo blogs. I checked in briefly for essential email but that was about it. I shot film and collected the exposed rolls in a ziplock. In some ways film is a hassle (try asking airport security to handcheck 40 rolls) but at least it liberates a person from looking at screens.

Reminder: Poltergeist was meant to be a scary movie,
not a societal proscription
But alas, now I'm back and the computer has crept steadily into my routine. It's like a vicious drug. You barely notice you're using until suddenly it's come to dominate your free hours. You check all the photoblogs, you post your own, you shoot various messages here and there. In the most extreme cases, you can't photograph without it.

With that in mind my new resolution is to slow this blog down a bit. Instead of posting nearly every day I plan to spread out and take my time. Write fewer, longer posts. Spend my precious free hours pressing on a shutter instead of a keyboard. That's the plan anyway. We'll see if it sticks.

What To Do? #40

118. Maine, 2003

119. Maine, 2005

120. Maine, 2008

WTD? is a weekly installment of old unseen b/w photos

Robert Johnson: What Was He Thinking?

Robert Johnson's prolific website offers a nice dose of street photography from its heyday in the 1970s. Some of Johnson's current work can be found here.


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1975
"I am not really a morning person. On this day it was about 6 am, and it was only me and the dogs on the street. I very rarely ever take more then one image but I did that day. This is the best one. Dogs were free to roam the streets back then. A fun thing to witness."


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1973
"I can remember being in the back of a pretty small vehicle operated by a friend of mine. His girlfriend on the right was a shy person and did not get involved in a lot of conversations. The commutation with her was mostly through her eyes. I hope that it shows with this image."


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1974
"I shot this at a pizza parlor that I would often frequent during the evening hours. It was a busy place with a homey feeling. And, if you wait long enough people do look at each other. Sometimes all at once."


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1979
"This was shot on a pretty busy street at the time. The window of a neighborhood bar. I guess that not much was happening inside the bar that day. They all thought that the guy pointing a camera at them was the most interesting thing at that moment."


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1975
"This was shot at a mall that was a big deal at the time. They had to rip down a big percentage of the established small shops that made up our real downtown to build it. The mall was an almost magical place to visit back then, but after a few years the magic faded away. The the mall faded away. They did try to revive it a few times. It is now slated for destruction."


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1978
"We were about to take a drive to nowhere as we often did back then. My cousin was showing his dog some affection before we left. Click…"


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1973
"This is a very early street photo of mine. I had wandered into a local skating rink and was going to take a picture of the group of kids and the arcade gun. As I hit the shutter the owner jumped to kick me out! He made the shot!"

Arrivals and Departures

I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,

I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,

Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',

Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,

I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',

I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,

Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,

I met a white man who walked a black dog,

Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it

I am finally back home after travels afar. More posts to follow...

You're Not From Around Here

First image retrieved by Google image search for "backwoods Maine"
I'm off to backwoods Maine today. They barely have electricity up there and don't even ask about internet access. There are lumberjacks and moose and snowmobiles and twelve year olds who'll drink you under the table faster than you can say Mattawamkeag. It promises to be a good ol' time.

But alas, posting will be spotty until I return home in early September. In the meantime here're a few sites where my photographs have recently taken root:

Red-Green-Blue | Eugene Grid Project | Fraction Magazine