Seeing the shot
(alternate title: “A brief history of my photographic interests”)
I’ve often heard a lot of talk about photographers seeing a shot that they’d like to take (usually said when the photographer doesn’t have a camera handy). It’s happened quite a few times to me.
Although I’ve always loved taking pictures, I really started having a serious interest in photography when I received my first digital camera in 1999. For the next few years, you’d find me out and about on weekends trying to find new places to photograph. I often ended up at Schoodic Point, Otter Point, or Portland Head Light. Once there, I’d take a couple hundred photos of the nature surrounding me and capturing my interest. Three- to four-hundred mile day trips weren’t ever out of the question.
Over the last couple of years, my focus has slowly changed. Maybe I ran out of new places to photograph. Maybe I got tired of driving. I like to believe, though, that it was an artistic decision. I was fortunate to take a photographic storytelling course with Bill Kuykendall in college. Bill, a very talented photojournalist and a frequent photographer at Penobscot Theatre, said something in regards to nature photography that I didn’t believe at the time but that I agree with wholeheartedly now: “after a while, you get tired of shooting rocks and trees.”
Starting around two or three years ago, something new started to appear in my photos: people. The most likely initial cause of this was probably photographing dance concerts at the University of Maine; from there, I found that capturing movement and emotion wins over rocks and trees any day of the week. It’s unusual to find me without a camera at a concert, a play, or a sporting event now, and I usually try to send the photos along to someone participating in the event so that they can use them for whatever they like if they choose.
Since I mentioned concert photography, I might as well touch upon the American Folk Festival. I take hundreds of pictures at the Festival each year, and it’s one of my top events every year to photograph. Last year, I wrote a bit about the missed shot that still haunts me: the entirety of the in-parade staff from the Bangor Daily News talking before the parade begun.
I’ve also found myself doing weddings for a few of my friends over the last couple of years. It’s amazing to look at the photos from weddings a couple of years ago compared to ones I took a couple of weeks ago; the entire subject matter is different. There are more stories in the photos, more expressions, more life, really. I always tell people I have a very photojournalistic approach to capturing events, but really I just enjoy emotion.
One of the aspects of photography I enjoy the most is that you learn to look at your experiences in a different way. You notice little things that would often be missed. At the same time, though, it can be a bit distracting; you can miss the actual performance or event while you’re looking at the “meta.” I’ve told Molly (one of the dancers at the University) that I’ll probably have to start going to two of the concert dates: one to photograph and one to actually watch the concert.
In April of last year I posted a quote from another BDN photojournalist, John Clarke Russ:
If you are a photographer and you take photographs for a living, you don’t do it for the money and you don’t do it for the glory. You do it because, somewhere along the line, in the course of any single day, you find yourself saying, “I need a camera to look at that.” And there’s a point in your life when you find that you’re stuck with it and you only look at life through that rectangle. Hopefully, you see life in a way that is different from how others see it.
Last night I went to the Penobscot Theatre’s performance of “Guys & Dolls.” The show was directed by Nathan Halvorson and was supported by the participants of PTC’s musical theatre camp. While my ears heard the Broadway numbers, my eyes saw the actors and singers in the wings encouraging their friends and Nathan encouraging the campers. It also turned out to be Nathan’s last night with the campers, and after the show there was an emotional farewell on stage as people exited the theatre. It made me wonder how many people in the theatre saw the stories surrounding the one being portrayed on stage. It also made me want my camera.
I have a feeling I’ll be seeing shots for the rest of my life.
My good friend Jess just sent me my first birthday present of the year. On September 16, 2004, I sent her a few pictures of lighthouses from around Maine for a project. One of the ones I sent was the photo of Portland Head Light to the right. Little did I know that two and a half years later, she’d return the picture to me - as a painting.