Commonwealth Lake

November 24th, 2022 from 5:34 PM to 6:07 PM PST

apart from “ball” on November 22nd, 2022 at 1:20 PM PST

and “shades” on December 5th, 2022 at 6:45 PM PST

It’s been two years since I took these photographs, and whatever I can remember from that window of time is too worthy of skepticism to warrant any narrative. Days like this one, when there is no intensity of thought or desire, only a pleasant admiration of the world, nothing much is really remembered, only moments recalled in pictures.

I know then I was with my family, probably anticipating food, enjoying the Viking twilight as my two small left toes went numb and the grandchildren rushed ahead of me. We trailed the pavement that wrapped itself around Commonwealth Lake, past the search party of emerald wigeons that patted the blades of grass with their webbed feet in search of food. Around the corner there stretched humble bridges and extended wooden boardwalks occupied by hobby fishermen. In hidden bush shelters was the domain of the nephews, the invading nutria sheltering amongst their foliage.  I was maybe thinking about my future, feeling love for those around me, jousting thoughts of death as some do when they watch the descending sunset. I look at these photos now and I think similar things, but in abstraction, on the other side of a one-way mirror.

There’s a sensation that I often feel in the midst of recording sound or video; a glee in my mostly permanent etching of time, but also a greater fear in anticipating its end. I become aware of my future-self listening to this recording, awaiting the second that I end it, when he has run out of footage to watch and the bridge between us is cut. Sometimes, after I have recorded a video and I press stop, I take note of everything around me, knowing that I am existing in a space beyond a border of my later memory, a space that a moment ago was fixed and eternal and is now active and transient. I’m a little sad to think that the me that is here now is vulnerable again, already dead in the future. But I am also liberated, like a child no longer under surveillance.

As we return home, I look ahead to my family trekking the sidewalk that trails up the hill to my parent’s house, the headlights of a passing car outlining their shapes in bold yellow. I steal the moment selfishly for myself and no one else, not even me.

Forbidden Pool

November 21st, 2022 / 3:43 - 4:55 PM

I almost always occupy the position of sole photographer on any given outing, usually lagging behind the party, twisting my body in swift pivots as things grab my attention and I step aside to stop and steal the scenery. However, on this occasion, as we hiked the Wahclella Falls trail, I was joined by my sister-in-law Kara as well as Ted and dog Reu, the latter obediently but with coiled energy leading by leash.

The air was damp and thick with fog. Condensation budded dew drops on warm sweaters of moss that clung to shedding trees. The landscape itself seemed to hold its breath in the high mountain ranges, but even still there was an autumnal movement hidden just beyond the grey curtains of fog and foliage. I craned my neck upwards as the ground slanted higher and the tall trees appeared even taller. The task of identifying birds in such ancient wooden towers seemed beyond comprehension, their aerial highways too far above my head to perceive. Such cumbersome and brightly dressed creatures as we were that trudged loudly on muddy paths couldn’t hope for any stealth, and very rarely did I hear anything other than the low hum of moving water in the distance.

Kara and I shared the same camera model as well as the same disposition to search for shots, which meant that stopping was a more acceptable occurrence. I’m ashamed to admit it, but with similar equipment, it kindled a competitive thought, however faint and irrational, to compare our photography. Only in visiting populated tourist attractions had I ever felt joined by other people in a collective urge to photograph something, and usually, I would be so repelled by the derivative tourism of it all that I’d be dissuaded from participating.

This time though, it was a much more pleasant experience. However, I’m compelled to lay bare my ego in this situation for the sake of transparency: there was the faintest fear that Kara’s photos might be better than mine. Naturally, this was a deeply repressed, nearly nonexistent fear. I was more than anything else happy to share the experience of photographing with someone else and potentially glean some insight from our differences in shooting. I was slowly shedding my old understanding of what it meant to make good art or just any art in general so even the idea of asserting that there was a better photo between the two of us felt beside the point of the experience.

We reached the end of the trail and stood gazing at a small waterfall. Its stream poured out from the neatly cleaved cliff rocks and cascaded into the black water below. I began photographing the waterfall from a higher perch, but Kara took notice of logs strewn along the edge of its accumulating pond. She stooped low and framed the wood in the foreground against the downpour of water. I admired (a little enviously) her decision and attempted to replicate it myself, nearly lying on my back in the mud to achieve my shot. I felt cheap in my imitation and discarded the prospect. Kara handed the camera over to Ted as I briefly held Reu’s leash. She stumbled about the logs as he snapped a few candid shots of her face in bewilderment.

Writing this now, I can’t help but reflect on the way I engage with my photography around people, and the revulsion I feel in public holding a camera.

What is it that upsets me as I stand on the observatory overlooking the vast Yellowstone landscape and I see a man lift his iPhone to snap a photo? Do I see in him my own uncritical impulse to document every moment of my life, not because I have any desire to look back on it, but for the shallow sake of collection itself for fear of death or forgetting or something else—and if I could, I might install a camera in my head so that no millisecond of time could be relented to memory? Is this the impulse we all carry in ourselves now that technology has given us the ability to steal time so easily?

Do I feel that this man is not engaging with the landscape properly? That him photographing is an extension of a culture of consumption that with one hand rips at the flesh of nature to indulge itself while in the other taking what little is left and covering it in a glass cloche? A landscape reduced to a marketable experience meant to satisfy our personal growth and fuel our digital image; left discarded and unexamined as we return to our concrete lives and think more and more that we are beings separate and unbound to the natural world.

Or maybe, most likely, a more cruel and selfish idea is biting me: that what was once an untethered love of photography has soured over the years as I discover that my passion is neither unique nor unreplicated but has in fact been so democratized and oversaturated as to become meaningless in the annals of art history.

Be it a cultural critique or an internal frustration projected outwards, perhaps there is a kinder, less complicated analysis to be had here. What do I benefit from my revulsion of a tourist taking pictures (even if my analysis is true)? Is a man with a Sony a7iii Mirrorless Camera any more justified in his appreciation of beauty than a dad with an iPhone? Did the money I spend buying this camera make me any better of a photographer or any less contributing to its oversaturation? And what does it matter anyway if a tourist photographs Yellowstone? He’s not drilling for fossil fuels. He’s not reducing the bluebird population. This view of the vast and enchanting American landscape that he has now captured on his camera, has it any less beauty, any less punctum? Has he robbed it in any way?

I am quick to assume he’s photographing in a lethargic stupor, adding to the growing digital noise of images when he could be experiencing a very personal moment. But what do I know of his heart? And what have I philosophized ad nauseam the value of an image to be? For this man, this photograph could represent the culmination of a long journey. It may well be a token sent back to a loved one he’s dearly missing. In his personal moment, here exists a permanent window of time forever unable to be replicated, likely to live beyond him.

As I engage in photography more earnestly with Kara, I’m scolded in my ego. I am an artist so entrenched in thought that I watch in frustration as others experience their craft so effortlessly, knowing that only when I was a child was I so unchained to critique and comparison. 

Oh Yeah Life Goes On

November 5th to 27th, 2022

I sat on a couch that hugged the wall of the bar as my friends got drinks, staring vacantly at a row of fluorescent lights beneath the skirt of a bar table as it illuminated a maize of patron legs. There was a potential photo forming here that was too tempting to let drift into memory, and yet, I knew this was an obviously inappropriate setting to shoot in. I was overwhelmed-- the wall of white noise that penetrated my head was so washed and singular that it morphed into an indistinct drone, which lulled me to sleep. I sank into the couch's soft leather cushions, cradled in its bosom as my eyelids sagged. Someone approached me asking if I was okay. I must have looked very intoxicated. I sat up and gave them a white person's smile followed by a thumbs up or something stupid like that. I probably should've gotten up and joined my friends, even if it was just to stand around, not drink and pretend to comprehend people's conversations. My attention returned to the proto-image. I sat there in detached thought for a long time, assessing the risk of photographing in a bar, especially given that I appeared alone and indisposed. I made a quick decision free from further speculation and snapped the image. A momentary violating light washed over the walls of the bar and lapped the legs of strangers. I forgot to silence the flash.

I caught my breath at the unambiguous act, waiting for the inevitable consequence. Very shortly, a staff member approached me. It was an ill-lit place, but I could guess with a shameful amount of confidence what expression she was wearing. She greeted me in the way people do when they have more pressing things to say but still wish to maintain a modicum of professionalism. I returned her greeting, feigning ignorance to the direction of this conversation. She was a short woman, but I was sinking so low into the couch that she still had to stoop over to speak to me as if I was some child left unsupervised. She quickly accelerated the string of usual dialogue and interrogated me with a slew of questions: was that a camera? What was I photographing? Why was I photographing, etc. I did my best to explain myself honestly so as to lower her guard, even showing her what I had photographed. She weighed each of my answers, nodding silently, staring at me then my photos then back at me again, not in any way reassured by my explanations.

I was aware that nothing I could say would lower her suspicions of me. I was already sitting by myself. I was also a guy, not dressed in a particularly flattering or advantageous way given the circumstances. I had that sort of Unabomber fashion, which I mostly blame on my oversized jacket. Plus the beard and glasses combo. It gave me the aire of some antisocial private investigator. I knew that the photographs I showed would only raise more questions. I don't mean this to be an ulterior compliment on my photography being too esoteric for her, only that there was no amount of explanation at that moment that would do any good in such a truncated social situation. There was a degree of public decorum that I had violated by photographing people here, though others in the bar had likely done the same, stealthily or perhaps brazenly raising their smartphones to record as they leered and laughed at other patrons. That was besides the point though. I knew at the very least I should have been more discreet.

It would've been strange and long-winded of me to go off on some tangential explanation of my camera philosophy, attempting to yell over siren music that made it hard to hear myself speak as an exhausted worker fulfilled her obligation to investigate me as a problem. It was an unfortunate instance of compounding social barriers preventing us from speaking plainly with clarity, and I was frustrated and sharply aware of this invisible border dividing us. The woman was eventually at a loss for words. She had exhausted all questions and looked at me dumbfounded as I pretended like I wasn't aware of the issue. In resignation, she shrugged, deciding I was not worth the effort and went about her myriad of other tasks. I took one more half-hearted photo and shamefully stowed away my camera for the evening.


Second Draft


First Draft