Facing Our Misteaks!

I chose two photos taken late last week during a short photo walk, which upon their review, prompted me to think about mistakes. With digital files, mistakes are easier to manage. The way most of us deal with them is by simply pressing the delete key. The file is gone, and as the saying goes, it is out of sight and out of mind, and we feel we got away with something. However, film photography is not so forgiving in our efforts to correct or even to dispose of the printed image and negative. (Currently, I am shooting a roll of color film through my old Minolta 101, so my way of thinking about how I take photos and how I respond to the "clinkers" has been challenged.) When I think about culling a processed film print, I always feel a tinge of guilt and shame as I tear it in half and place it in the wastebasket. Perhaps this is because film mistakes make us physically confront the photo and make a purposeful effort to remove it. (I have never accidentally deleted a film print.) I think my guilt escalates with each wasted film print, because film carries a financial penalty when it is wasted, and the opportunity to capture a well considered composition feels squandered.  

Both photos featured this week are mistakes. They are both digital files, thankfully, and not film captures. The top photo failed me because I made the mistake of not knowing what I wanted in a final print. My failure lies in being indecisive about my treatment of the water when I viewed the scene. What attracted me was the way the fall leaves moved across the water. My failure was not settling how I wanted to treat the water. I am not a fan of the milky-smooth treatment of water overused by some landscape photographers. However, I didn't exactly want the look of wildly splashing water, which I felt would be inconsistent with the tranquillity within the overall scene. So I compromised and selected a shutter speed of 1/30th, which was a compromise that failed to deliver. I was caught between maintaining the integrity of the scene and my bias about how water "should be" photographed. My indecision led me to frustration and a poor result.

The second photo was also a mistake, but a mistake of a different sort. While walking to position my camera, I encountered a cyclist who drove by while I was carrying my camera swinging on its wrist strap. This was not an intentional photo, but there is something about it that appealed to me, unlike the first photo. It captured several photos of this accidental cyclist, and this is the one that appealed to me, as it shows a blur of the fall colors and showed enough of the cyclist to suggest energy and movement. Little did I know that the display screen on my camera is touch-sensitive and has the capacity to activate the shutter from the screen, bypassing the top shutter button. 

Photography is 90% plus intentional, and it is important to have an intention in mind at the time the shutter is pushed. The lesson experienced this week is that lucky mistakes are also a factor in some photos. I suppose that fate occasionally intervenes just to keep us engaged and humble. My dad frequently repeated the old adage, "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes." This week I was reminded of that during my photography walk.

  

 Revisiting Homecoming

This past weekend was homecoming weekend at our local high school. It's a big weekend for the students and community alike with a football game under lights on Friday and a homecoming dance on Saturday evening. Homecoming dances are no longer the simple events of years past when a guy invited his date and bought her a corsage consisting of a single large mum wrapped in ribbons sporting your school colors. They were ordered during the lunch hour the week before homecoming, ensuring that each girl would get a fresh mum just like the one worn by every girl who would be attending the homecoming dance. Dance attire was casual, which translates to today's "business casual," which is very unlike the cocktail dresses and color-matched tuxes or suits featured at today's dances. None of this is a criticism of the changes that have occurred over the years. I am certain that the memories made this week will be just as good as the ones from many years ago.

As I make this observation, I can't help but notice how easily the older homecoming traditions blend with the newer ones to give homecoming a fresh look and spirit each season. In our small community, one of those traditions is painting the windows of the downtown businesses. I photographed some of those windows for this week's blog. As I photographed them, I remembered taking my children downtown for a Saturday morning for a donut treat and walking the streets with them admiring the artwork. That unexpected memory is truly treasured.

Today those windows will be washed by the students immediately after the weekend celebrations, making them look ordinary once again. (I think one of the reasons window painting has remained a part of the homecoming tradition is that the students take responsibility for both decorating and the cleanup, and in doing so, they preserve the tradition for another year.) While the windows and high school life will return to normal, the memories created by celebrating this event will remain for a lifetime.

“Home is what you make, not what you find."

― Christie Valentine Powell,