I've carried a camera with me everywhere now for a long time. At times I feel like Linus from the Charlie Brown cartoons. He is always depicted with his "security" blanket. His constant source of self-comfort. There are people who love fashion and clothes and who spend lots of time going through their closets and standing in front of mirrors trying, each day, to pick out the perfect outfit. And I can feel the resemblance as I go through a filing cabinet drawer trying to pick out what I feel will be just the right camera for an outing. Only, it never really is. I always end up somewhere wishing I'd made a different choice.
So, this year I was heading down to San Antonio to have Christmas dinner with an extended group of in-laws, my wife and my son. At the last minute I decided that the way to make the perfect choice of camera would be to not make a choice. Not bring a camera. Instead of being an "observer" at the evening's festivities I would instead be a more active participant. And I wouldn't have my "security" camera to hide behind, or speak to my long constructed identity. Instead, I'd be...part of the family.
Everyone had a smart phone. Lots of photos were taken. The elementary aged kids of my niece were great and well documented by various camera happy phone shooters. There was a group shot done on a phone by a nephew's fiancée which was exemplary and shared via group text minutes later. We all look well fed, happy, congenial. The gear (an iPhone) and the person wielding the gear were more than competent to make us all look good. And she did it in the first shot. Which made me conscious of the times in the past when I've tortured a group by taking a bunch of shots in the pursuit of ever elusive perfection.
Interesting to me was the fact that I never felt I was missing a chance to do a great photograph. There isn't always a reason to photograph. Not always a reason to document everything. In fact, the flan was delicious but visually? It's just a flan. More photos of wine bottles? Not needed. More photos of our 95 year old relative? She might have indulged my need to photograph but it might also have made her uncomfortable, and who needs to feel over-documented at a holiday dinner?
We all had a lovely time. We exchanged gifts and stories and happy news. All without a leather strap over one of my shoulders or a camera bouncing around on my belly. We drove back late in the evening through a mix of fog, mist and light rain. When I walked into the house there was a lonely camera sitting on the edge of the dining room table. Waiting patiently for me to use it with complete attention --- but not as just a fashion accessory. Not a part of my uniform. All of which made me feel a bit chastened as I remembered all the times when I felt having a camera always at hand was somehow important.
Life goes on whether we document it or not. We can choose the moments to be out enjoying photography but we can also, I think, develop the realization that so much of life is meant to be lived, enjoyed and participated in rather than always being the guy waiting on the sidelines for a potential picture to present itself. Because....why?
Today I was back in Austin. Everyone was busy and engaged. I had the day to myself and I did feel like going for a walk, and also I felt like inviting a camera along for the time I'd be out on the streets, walking and looking at post holiday downtown.
I brought along an M240 with a 50mm lens on it. A perfect choice for a quiet walk. Good company. And instead of becoming a distraction in the midst of a party I was merely a tourist in my own town, looking for the things that make my town fun.
A few odds and ends came via Fedex today. Really small and simple stuff. A 43mm lens cap. The 43mm lens caps always seem to be the ones that get lost most frequently. They are small and I guess when I drop them they are good at rolling under big furniture and hiding there. I got a protection filter for a favorite 35mm lens that kept getting rain drops on the front element last time I was out. I broke with the tradition of buying the expensive filters and went a bit down market. Works just fine.
I also bought a second honeycomb grid Attachment for a recently arrived LED panel. One of the Godox Compac 100s. I love the narrowed and more controlled beam that results so I can now have more control but with nearly the same soft light. At $50 it's a nice modifier to have at hand. More thrill with less spill.
At this juncture I am proud to say that I didn't drop another $7,000 to $14,000 to buy either a Leica Q3 - 4/3 or a Leica SL3, or both of them; even though I thought I really wanted each of them. Now having not bought them and resisting the lure of them I seem much happier to use the older M240 cameras. Interesting that such nice files can come from 12 year old cameras. Nice for me since I already have them to shoot with. But it feels odd to have gone through an entire year without spending on multiple cameras. I did pick up a Leica SL2-S, used. But I was able to rationalize that one as a "work" camera. I'm not sure I'd be able to believe my own rationalization process if I tried to trick myself into thinking that a Q3-something was needed for "work."
We're heading into 2025. I'm not sure what to expect but I'm pretty certain it will all be both different; completely different, but also more of the same.
More to come. Thanks for reading. Enjoy shooting with what you have. It might even be revelatory. It was for me this season. And this year.
Kirk: There isn't always a reason to photograph. Not always a reason to document everything. . . . Life goes on whether we document it or not.
ReplyDeleteCouldn’t agree more! I will dutifully sit still while someone else snaps those apparently compulsory posed cellphone pictures at family gatherings—usually with the shooter expansively distorted in the far corner of the frame in order to be included in the “selfie”—but after the initial cellular transmission does anybody ever look again at those group photos of the same cast of characters smirking into the lens with only the background changed?
My grandchildren all have asked me for cameras at one time or another, and I have happily obliged. But I have used the occasion to offer my opinion that the photographs they will cherish as they get older are the candid ones of family and friends interacting with each other (or the photographer) in their regular, day-to-day environments. Especially, as happens to those of us who survive long enough, when those images eventually serve to jog the memory of loved ones who are now gone.