This could be the last “Around the House” I do for this home. By the time spring rolls around, we could sell the house and be living somewhere else.
We have a walker now. She’s padding around the place pretty easily these days.
Lots of sunny weekends to go outside and rake all those oak leaves. Then start a fire in the burn pit and make the whole neighborhood smell like Halloween.
Winter is such a slow photography time for me that’s it’s nice to get these last few days of decent weather in before the gloom settles on us.
If there’s any solace in this election, it’s that struggle and angst breed great art.
From World War I (Modernism!) to the Vietnam War period (Woodstock!), when people are upset, they tend to make great things. Heck, during the George W. Bush years, a lot of people took their protest and turned it into memorable work.
Art is coping. This time, I’m sure we’ll see lots of great stuff.
November so far here in Michigan has been rare and lovely: mid 60s, sunny, and the leaves have held on for what seems to be a longer time.
But then there’s all the weirdness in my life right now: the whole family has been sick, we’re trying to sell our house, the election. To top it off, yesterday our water well pump gave up the ghost – while I was in the shower, with shampoo still in my hair, no less.
That’s life, right? The good and the bad. The strange and the secure. Everything is in transition.
Luckily, the nicer weather means more chances to make photographs. I took the boy to an area nature preserve yesterday for some hiking, just to get out in the woods. My wife picked up a bushel of random apples yesterday, so I may do a little still life project around that.
Strange November. It may get even stranger tomorrow night. Make sure you get out and vote.
The fall colors this year have been a lot of fun to watch, especially here on campus. So I couldn’t let a little thing like a rainy day stop me from wandering and grabbing a few images.
Orange, yellow, green, muddy browns – all the October colors were there. Although the rain would knock many of the more colorful leaves down.
I haven’t had the time or energy to get out and take autumn photos like I’ve wanted to. We had the weekend up north, and lots of Halloween fun, but I feel like I’ve watched this autumn pass by. Thankfully, an umbrella makes dreary day image making possible.
In Sound City, Dave Grohl’s love letter to the legendary, hit-making studio in California, he and other musicians gush about the “real” process of getting guys in a studio and recording music live, on two-inch tape: “the human element of creating and recording music.” ProTools has its place, many of the artists say, but there’s nothing like analog.
We’ve heard this before, of course. Everyone from filmmakers to photographers are returning to (or, in the case of movies, never leaving) film.
Lots of words get used to describe this process: magic, alchemy, mystery, human. Digital is too “easy.” You can fix everything with digital. Etc.
For many, it’s a return to what is known. Analog is more familiar to those of a certain age. A lot of what Grohl and Christopher Nolan and other film fans seem to be saying is, “You missed the good stuff, the good old days.”
Those of us who adopted photography as a hobby or profession in the digital age don’t know what a dark room is like because we’ve never used one, and may never step foot in one.
(A side note: my college newspaper had a darkroom attached to it, behind this sweet swiveling circular door, and I did spend some time in there – but never to actually develop or print images. I remember photography students spending a lot of time in that room, and I’d catch glimpses of what they were working on when they brought their prints out into the light.)
We seemed to have this big upswing, in the ’80s (music), ’90s (movies), and 2000s (photography) toward digital art making. In the last decade, that digital tide has swung back, and more and more artists are experimenting with analog again. Call it the Maker Movement, call it hipsterism, call it whatever, but vinyl records and photo film seem to be doing okay again. Not great, but not dead.
So it is with blogging – away from federated, silo’d social media platforms and toward artists and writers owning their material.
Maybe we’re all learning that perfect isn’t the goal. The goal is to make something great, imperfections and all. Something human.
On the first of October last year, I took a walk in the Whitehouse Nature Center in Albion, Michigan. It was a beautiful fall day, one that only hinted at the darkness to come. The leaves were just starting to fall, and I wanted to play with the light and see what I could capture.
This what I came up with – edited and processed more than a full year later.
I’m doing this more and more: letting projects sit for a while, and then addressing them months (or a year) later to see what sticks out, creatively. For these leaves, I knew I wanted to let them marinate for a while.
Last weekend we traveled up to Harbor Springs, Michigan—a beautiful little bayside town along the Little Traverse Bay, on Lake Michigan—to visit family for a birthday party. These little weekend vacations are a nice, quick getaway. We need a distraction from selling the house, and who can say “no” to northern Michigan?
The autumn colors were gorgeous, of course, but so was the light coming in from the big living room window. It’s one of my favorite situations to shoot in; we’re lucky enough to have a big window in our living room back home.
But for this weekend, with all the cousins playing together and quiet fall mornings spent sketching or watching the game, we soaked up all the light and seasonal spirit we could.
I’ve been enjoying the heck out of Rebecca Lily’s (of that fame) 365 project blog. It’s a lovely mix of daily images and journaling.
But it got me thinking: what if you did a 365 day photo project and didn’t share the output with anyone?
No blog, no social media, no nothing – just kept all those images to yourself.
Now, what if you took those photos and made a photo book, but only shared it with someone you love or admire? One person, one copy.
Or what if you created a photo book and only printed a copy for yourself?
As artists, hobbyists, and professionals, sometimes we feel the need to share everything we do. But what if you made something just for you? Would you still do it? Would it still be worth doing?
