August in Michigan means hot days, cooler mornings, and a slow dive into autumn.
For me, it’s always the seasonal transitions that are the most fun to photograph. Summer is nice, sure, but the end of summer always holds something special.
Same for when spring (my favorite) comes, and the fog rolls in as the snow melts. Or when winter starts frosting the yet-to-fall leaves.
This time of year is always hard for me emotionally, for some reason. I don’t know if it’s because Winter Is Coming™, or the days are shortening, or what. But I get to feeling down. The last few years, I’ve tried to work my way out of the funk with a few photo projects and writing more.
We all knew, years in advance, that this day was coming. Our attention spans are short, so we only really started preparing – with the glasses and the filters and our lunch plans – earlier this summer.
So we took the kids, the grandparents, our fellow students, our co-workers, and we all went outside for a bit this afternoon. Novelty glasses in hand, we looked up, and we saw our sky change.
We watched young and old, rich and poor, conservative and liberal, natural born and immigrant go out into the fading sunlight and watch and wonder. See how the light changes? See how the shadows shift their shape? See that funny cardboard contraption the astronomy students are wearing on their heads?
See how everyone, regardless of background, came outside and shared an experience?
Astronomers have our solar system down pat. They know where the sun and moon and Earth will be in relation to each other from now until Rapture. Barring an unexpected astroid, the future is predictable, thanks to models and observation.
We Americans think we know better. Sure, we show up at an appointed time expecting a celestial show. But when it does happen, we don’t think that makes the scientific method any more reliable. We question and we “fake news” everything, still, even when the heavens dance around us, as predicted.
It’s lunacy.
We rarely get the larger message – in plain view there in the sky, in front of our own filtered eyes – just as we rarely think about eclipses a decade down the road.
We don’t have to “believe” in the eclipse; it happens with or without us. We don’t get that message, either.
Point being, don’t just leave it to photographers and film-makers – you can find inspiration anywhere. The more you take from that well of inspiration, the more you shoot what pleases and moves you in that odd little way, then the more your work begins to acquire a character and coherency of its own.
Absorb and adapt. Keep reading, keep looking, keep making it your own.
It’s been a perfect summer, weather-wise. We had a week or two where the temperatures reached into the 90s, but mostly it’s been high 70s to mid 80s. Late May, all summer long? I’ll take it.
That means we’ve spent a lot of time outside, playing in our new yard, planting our new garden, walking up and down our new street. We have great neighbors. We love our new neighborhood.
There are parts of me that miss living out in the country. My commute is not nearly as fun, photographically and spiritually, as it used to be. It’s all intersections and highway these days. I miss the quiet, and the trees. But then an airplane flies over our house every few hours, and the kids look up to watch it pass overhead, and it becomes one of those neat little things that make the new home so fun.
This summer I’ve worked steadily on the new portrait project. I photograph the kids as they play around the yard. But there haven’t been any photographic adventures – not like there used to be. There are only so many hours in the day, and photography’s slice of the pie is getting smaller and smaller.
That’s okay. My camera’s always ready when I need it to be. Like these late summer evenings when I can’t resist heading out to the front porch and watching the sun set.
It’s dark in the morning when I get ready for work. The evening looks like it did when we first moved into the new house. The shadows creep across the floor in different directions.
The Hot Air Jubilee is one of Jackson’s big annual events. Photos of hot air balloons are all over the Chamber of Commerce’s promotional materials, and for good reason: thousands of people head to Ella Sharp Park each July to watch the liftoffs.
For me, it never gets old. There’s magic in these giant sacks of hot air slowly inflating, and then leaving the ground, heading to Oz – or the outskirts of the county. It’s not just the balloons, either. The Hot Air Jubilee is like a small county fair, with junk food and rides and games of chance.
Tons of local photographers fight for the chance to get inside the launch grounds. I’ve been there, but it’s just as fun to sit on the sidelines and watch the show as a spectator.
It was stuck at 33% for weeks, then it creeped up to a high of 48%, and never got over that half-way hump.
I knew, going into it, that it was a long shot. My first rumblings of failure came when I had to explain to people, again and again, that they weren’t making a donation. No money was being exchanged up front. It was a pledge. People didn’t get Kickstarter.
The second rumbling came when a lot of the people I thought would support the project didn’t. After being stuck at 33% for so long, I knew my chances of reaching a fully-funded Kickstarter campaign were slim.
So it goes. As I mentioned in my last project update, the work will continue, albeit a little slower.
The truth is, my heart wasn’t totally into the idea of the Kickstarter. It was more of an experiment, to see if I could do it; to see if something like this could be possible in my small Midwestern city. Jackson wasn’t ready for Kickstarter. Plus the idea of constantly sending out updates and pleas for pledges is not me – I’m the anti marketing guy. It’s hard enough to get people to support your project, but to ask them to make pledges to support your project? Blah.
But it’s all okay. I’m fine, and I let Sunday’s project deadline go by with a whimper.
A lot of things are slowing down for me. Call it a phase, but I’m barely getting this musicians project started. I’m barely blogging. I’m barely making photos. It’s one of those seasons in life right now.
It was supposed to be an easy-going four day vacation – a quick trip down to Toledo, Ohio (the Midwest’s premier getaway destination, naturally) and visit the zoo on Friday. Our first trip with the three kids.
What we got instead was a near-drowning in the hotel pool, a scary trip to the emergency room, and a rainy zoo day.
Despite all that, we made the best of it. We took an impromptu trip back to the Toledo Zoo on Saturday, when it was warm and sunny, and did it right. We also met some friends at Tony Packo’s and enjoyed some good Hungarian hot dogs, coney style.
Easy-going? Not so much. But we got out of the house and started the vacation season in earnest.
“We can talk about the photographer as an author who – on the basis of facts and by means of a minimal shift in perception – creates in close proximity to reality.”
We never had to prompt either kids to pick up a crayon and start doodling.
They both do it totally on their own. The crayons are always there, there’s always paper handy – they just need to sit down and scribble. It’s what they do.
That’s a good feeling, to have both kids take to art and music. It’s our fault, of course, as parents, because we surround ourselves with such things. It’s what we do.
As a kid, my parents always had music going in the house, and we loved to doodle and color in coloring books. But neither of my parents really did music (like play an instrument), or did art (as a hobby, say). I took their small spark and ran with it.
It’s exciting to think about what these kids will do.
My wife does a great job at themed birthday parties. Both kids have never wanted for a fun, tied-together celebration, from Lego to Batman to Daisy Duck.
This year, the boy turned six, and picked Mario for his birthday theme. So, as usual, we went all out.
My wife is big Disney fan. Her family goes to Disney World every few years, she knows all the movies and songs, her mom collects all the figurines. They’re a Disney Family.
Nintendo is my Disney, being a video game kid and growing up with Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda. For this party, I was in my element:
And sure, all the kids had fun with the theme, too.
The conversation, the sharing of experience, the laughing and joking around. Remembering local history. Swapping stories. Sharing a complete and consuming love of music.
Last time, it was about art and creativity, about the Jackson market and the struggles of being a small-city artist.
This time, it’s a lot of same, except you swap paint brushes and cameras for guitars and microphones.
I’m launching my new community portrait project, Musicians In Jackson, on Kickstarter today.
A week ago, I kicked off the project at my studio open house. But this project has been in the works for almost a year now. I’ve thought and thought about it for so long, and now it’s a real thing in the world that I’m working on.
It involves capturing local Jackson, Michigan musicians on black and white medium format film through the summer. I’ll capture our conversations, make portraits, and share the creative love in my hometown.
Why Kickstarter? There are film costs, and the studio space to rent, and photographic prints to produce. It’s also a way to preorder prints or the book when it’s released this holiday season. Really, it’s a way to support creative endeavors like these community portrait projects.
“Just like any real human relationship, there are better looking, smarter, richer people out there,” says Olivier Duong. “But what really counts is what you do together.”
It’s such a strange way to think about buying a camera.
If I’m going to make an investment in a camera or lenses, I’m going to think about the lifespan of the equipment and how much work I can get done with it. Resale value doesn’t enter into the do-I-buy-it equation at all.
For me, I’d rather have a well-used camera that helps me make photographs than worry about selling it down the road.
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