Making Sense of Missouri

The Missouri Photo Workshop came and went like a dream. It was a suspension of everything in my life I consider to be normal and familiar. It was a shock, a marathon, a jump start, the kind of approach to learning that I am increasingly moving away from, but maybe still has some relevance in helping me understand what I want and don't want out of a career in photography.

Before I left for Missouri, I had a hard time easing into the idea of throwing myself into that kind of situation. Everyone I talked to who'd done the workshop said it had made them cry -- I was fine with crying, in fact, I enjoy the purge, the release of crying -- but I didn't want to feel beaten down, get the wind knocked out of me, like most intense and intensive educational experiences have left me feeling. I did a workshop earlier this summer that I walked away from feeling a lot smaller than I did going into it. I used to think this kind of boot camp experience was the only way I could be motivated to learn, but I am beginning to understand that my own desire to learn is really the only tool I need. When I want to learn or achieve something, the resources seem to sort themselves out.

Even after coming to that realization, I was nervous as hell the day before I left, having fits of nausea where I couldn't keep down anything I ate, thinking to myself, oh God, what if I can't pull this off? I'd applied for this workshop at a time in my life -- just a few months ago -- when I felt like I still needed to be pushed by others in order to learn anything or to get anything done. I had been accepted, I'd paid, and now I must go through with it and make the most of it. That night, I drove up to my family's house in the Napa Valley in an effort to calm myself, and ended up sleeping under the stars in a hammock in the middle of the forest. Somehow seeing the vastness of the night sky, which I'd felt overwhelmed and fearful of about a year ago, soothed me in that it helped me look at this workshop experience, however it turned out, from a greater perspective. If I failed, if I didn't find a story to shoot, if I didn't get along with my instructors, then oh well. Nobody would die.

When I arrived in Clinton, the trembling and nausea having stepped politely aside, I began to think to myself that maybe I was up for this after all. I met my other team members, my team leaders, or "editors" as they are referred to at MPW, Barbara Davidson and Dennis Dimick, and it seemed less daunting now that it was happening, now that I was doing it.

During my first meeting with my editors, I remember Dennis asked me what my background was and why I was interested in photography. Giving an answer mattered less to me than the fact that he actually asked me, and cared enough to listen to my answer. Few people had straight up asked me that question before, and it felt like such a relief that I didn't feel the need to beat it over the their heads, to justify myself. I explained my reasons, as coherently as I knew how, and they seemed to make perfect sense to both of them. Pretty cool, I remember thinking. I didn't have to work hard to be around these people.

I decided to shoot a project about coming of age in a small town. It was going to be a simple story, and I decided at the beginning of the week that I didn't care about impressing anyone with my ability to gain access to something deep, dark, and dramatic. Whether it impresses anyone or not, I've already done that, not to mention that I feel like I need more than a week to do that kind of story. I wanted to go back to the basics of good old fashioned storytelling: characters, setting, themes, narrative, and finding the visual cues to describe and evoke these elements.

The scariest thing about documentary photography for me is making initial contact with my subjects. But I did what I needed to do in order to overcome my fear, to make myself feel more at ease with the idea of gaining access to someone's most private moments. I rode a bike around town. I took baths. I went swimming and hung out in the hot tub at the hotel. I listened to Roy Harper and Joanna Newsom as I walked to and from the workshop headquarters. Taking my time to do what I needed to do to feel at ease in a potentially stressful situation helped me face my fears in a way that made them feel less like fears, or like chores, or like something I had to do for someone else, or "for my own good." And my story came together in a way I was reasonably happy with.

The most important lesson I learned from this workshop was that I need to feel good in order to want to photograph, to feel inspired to get myself out the door, and to make pictures that I feel happy about. I now am beginning to apply this to my long-term project here in San Francisco on a story that does happen to be deep, dark and dramatic. And so the journey continues...

First Post, Third Blog

I think this is about the third time I have tried to start a photo blog. I remember doing it for the first time about a year ago, when I got back from a workshop in New Orleans with a photographer there, and I was determined to do all the necessary things to "put myself out there." Since I had no website, starting a blog was on the top of my list, even though I really didn't have much work I was proud of, nor did I genuinely feel that love of photography that has seeped under my skin over the last year, since I've gotten more "serious." I think the most important thing I have learned since then is that this profession, or passion--I am starting to make less and less of a distinction, simply because that distinction feels less and less relevant to my life--has to inspire me emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually, in order for me to A) make pictures that I care about and B) sustain me in my various photography-related practices, to feel like they are worth my while, from getting out the door to shoot, to digital workflow, getting into the darkroom to process, print, and scrutinize my film-based photographs, going to class, or doing things to promote myself, like writing this blog.

I am working on filling in some technical holes right now, from gaining a better understanding of light, design, color, the zone system (dear Lord...), to making friends with the studio, experimenting with different films, cameras, developers, et cetera. Sometimes the technical stuff starts to feel too much like work, and I get impatient, because I don't want work to feel like work. Tomorrow I have to shoot a gray card five times at different exposures and measure the density of the film. How can I make this interesting to myself? I think the answer lies in one of the reasons I am attracted to such a technical art form in the first place: paradoxically, it gives me pleasure because it bores me, and I appreciate the challenge of the boredom. It gives me the opportunity to slow down, breathe, feel things with my hands, look closely, cultivate patience, extreme patience sometimes. But it doesn't just feel like it's "good for me," like sitting uncomfortably in lotus position or imbibing foul-tasting medicine feels good for me--I am, on a good day, able to psych myself up about it enough that I enjoy it. On these days, I am able to allow myself to enjoy the weight of my camera, the satisfaction of loading film, tripping the shutter, the simple, visceral pleasures of the relationship between me and my camera. These small, simple moments are what, I believe, help me feel like I can fly when I am out in the field--help me achieve that unstoppable feeling like things can't help but line up in front of my viewfinder. That feeling, which used to be so rare but is becoming more and more frequent the more I shoot, is my only reason for continuing to photograph.

I want to write about my experience at the Missouri Photo Workshop last week, but I know that's going to take a bit longer for me to make sense of, let alone in writing. All I will say right now was that it was an incredible experience that there's just about no way in hell I would repeat, but I would recommend it to pretty much any photographer who really wants to challenge him or herself to move FAR beyond his or her perceived limits. This is one of the last pictures I took, of Tessa Bartlett and her father in the morning as he is taking her to school.

I have named this blog "Twelve Hours of Sunset" after a Roy Harper song that I was listening to when the idea occurred to me to start a blog again. Roy Harper's music helped me in a major way to rise to the occasion of the challenges of last week, along with being able to ride a bike around town, take little detours on my way to dreaded arguments with my editors, lie on cool grass while closing my eyes, and swimming at the hotel pool. Roy Harper was there with me through much of it, and I know he'll be there with me through so much more. Him and Joanna Newsom.