Everyday People

The Artist, 2012

I guess it was inevitable as I got onto this jag of photographing people that I would eventually be compelled to turn on my friends. It had occurred to me some time ago that there are all sorts of people in my life who have interesting looks or other aspects about them or their style that make them interesting. But because they’re people you see all the time you never think to actually photograph them.

For example, while driving to a client meeting recently I happened to look over into a field of flowers adjacent to our local farm market. Carolyn, the woman who runs the flower section of the market was walking into the field. I immediately saw the potential for a photograph, as they say, “worthy of a painting.” The color of the light, the shadows, the lines, the colors of the flowers, Carolyn’s shape; everything about the moment screamed for documentation. But I had a meeting to go to, was not dressed to go tromping in the field, didn’t have the means to achieve the elevation I would have wanted to compose the picture and, perhaps most importantly, didn’t have my camera with me.

Since then I’ve had it on my list to start photographing the people in my life. People like the flower lady mentioned above. The café owner, cook and waitress at the place where we have breakfast on Sunday mornings. The kid who waits on us at the neighborhood restaurant where we’ve been going every Tuesday night for years for cheap burgers. We all have people like this in our lives. They all have stories. There are interesting visual aspects to each of them. Why not photograph them?

One day last week I happened to be having lunch with the eminent illustrator Walt Taylor. We ate in a café where the walls are covered with his drawings. I suppose you could say he’s their resident artist, though I noticed that resident artist status apparently doesn’t confer free lunches.

Walt’s famous among his friends for pulling out a camera and shooting quick candid photos. You never know what malicious use he’ll make of them. You might end up on Facebook as the punch line to an embarrassingly obscene joke or, as happened to me, have your earnest portrait put into Taylor’s Photoshop grinder and come out looking like an axe murderer who can’t keep food from dribbling out of his mouth. I’m sure he had something suitably devious in mind when he pulled out his camera at the cafe and started snapping pictures. It was only the arrival of our friends Sue and Freda in the midst of this little episode, I’m sure, that spared me from some grotesque Taylor-esque depiction.

I, on the other hand, seek only truth and therefore choose to portray my friend as he is, in all his megalomaniacal glory.

Respect the Ink

“I got these in prison,” 2012

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In my limited experience trying to become better at photographing people, I’ve learned that the easiest people to photograph are people with tattoos. Really, they’re the photographic version of shooting fish in a barrel,

People with lots of tattoos may look mean. But relatively speaking they're easy  to approach. They’re not reticent. They want to make a statement. They’re flattered if you ask to photograph them and will go out of their way to show you their best sides.

Case in point: When I approached the young man shown above all I could see was the trail of tattoos down his arm. Before I even got close I'd already worked out the framing of the arm and the t-shirt. When I asked if I could photograph him, though, he immediately pulled the t-shirt off so that I could see the full inked tableau.

“I got these in prison,” he proclaimed proudly.

I didn’t get the story of his friend, below. He was just pissed that I hadn’t asked to photograph him first. So you can be sure I didn’t miss him before I moved on. I didn’t even have to ask. He just thrust his hands out and turned them over for me to see.

 

Good as a Dollar Bill, 2012

Embrace the Flash

Made in Roanoke, 2012

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I have never been a big user of photographic flash units. I’m never happy with the ones that come built into cameras, and the Speedlight I bought to attach to the top of the camera upsets the balance of carrying the camera.

Having said that, I have been fully aware and respectful of the value of using flash units, especially for providing infill light for low-light settings and backlit portraits.

I’ve just always preferred natural light.

But after taking the workshop this past summer, I was reminded of how much I miss by not having a flash unit handy when I’m out taking pictures. I was also reminded of just how untrained I am at using a flash unit.

This past weekend I pledged to start 1) carrying the flash with me and 2) using it. This is harder than it sounds. Having a flash unit attached to the top of the camera really does change the weight distribution, and if you’ve been carrying a camera for one way for forty years you don’t embrace that kind of change rapidly.

But I put the flash unit onto the camera and stepped out of the car to photograph people at Roanoke’s downtown farmer’s market.

I should mention here that I didn’t stay at the farmer’s market very long. The place was teeming with photographers. Every third guy, it seemed, had a camera in his hand. Three or four stopped me to say, “Nice camera.” What do you say in such situations? I didn’t make the camera. I was just fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy it. 

The light at the farmer’s market was just right for using a flash for infill. That is, the foregrounds were dark and the backgrounds were extremely bright. You could expose for one or the other, but not both successfully without some kind of supplemental light.

Nation and World, 2012

I hesitate to show these feeble efforts of mine. But as you can see, using a flash unit for fill light isn’t as easy as just clipping the flash onto the camera and firing away. The poor guy in the photo above looks not only stunned, but also like a one-dimensional cutout. (And let's not mention the bright vegetables.) The lady with the red glasses was a little better, but still too light in the foreground. 

Just something more to learn.

 

A Country Auction

Country Auction, 2012

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Sometimes when I don’t have a specific photographic destination in mind, I look at a map and pick the name of some small town I don’t know anything about and head in its direction. The actual town isn’t important. I might take pictures there or now. It’s merely a random starting point for the day.

The name I drew this past Saturday while out in the Roanoke Valley was Hardy, Virginia. On the map it appears to be a small village in rural Franklin County. In reality, it’s barely a “wide place in the road,” as we say in our family. There’s no village to speak of, but there is an old steel bridge across the Roanoke River with boat launch sites on both ends.

I hung around the public boat landing long enough to determine that there wasn’t much to see there and then took off to see what else Franklin County had to offer. I drove along country roads that twist and turn and rise and fall along river bluffs in the Blue Ridge foothills and it was in doing this that I came across the auction shown above.

I didn’t want to stop at first. I immediately saw the photographic potential of this gathering of country folk. But I was wary of being the unknown guy who walks into the crowd with nothing more than a smile and a camera. So I drove on. It bugged me, though, that I’d let the opportunity pass, so much so that after meandering ten or fifteen more miles down the road I turned around and made my way back to the auction.

I was still a little wary. I didn’t want to be the guy who was mining the photographic potential of some farming family’s misfortune. But it turned out that the field of debris—and that’s about all the credit you could give most of it—had belonged to a recently deceased man. He’d lived with his wife in the little hardscrabble bungalow just off the road. She’s still there.

 

Country Auction, 2012

The deceased was one of those guys who didn’t buy just one of a thing when he could buy a whole case of it. The side yard where the auction took place was full of cartons of oil, transmission fluid, plastic irrigation nozzles, furniture, tools of all kinds (dozens of each, most never used), tillers, old pumps, a tractor, feed tubs, lumber, two automobiles completely covered in vegetation and a pickup truck camper shell that looked like it had most recently been occupied by a pack of badgers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I can’t imagine the auction brought much to the widow other than the joy of getting rid of a lot of stuff she’d probably been after her husband for decades to take to the dump.  Much of it was too worn to use or rotted from never have been used. Most of the lots sold for just a few dollars.

 

Checking Out the Merch, 2012

Perhaps most perplexing in this field of debris was the collection of saddles, bridle hardware and other horse supplies, most of them in brand new condition. There was no barn on the property and no sign of horses. One of the neighbors explained, “He didn’t have no property to speak of, and he only had two horses in his whole lifetime. One died of a broken neck. He got another it took a virus. He was so heartbroke after that he just couldn’t part with none of that stuff.”

A Good Deal on a Crown Vic, 2012

The Boys of September

Shriner Daredevils, 2012

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If it’s September in Virginia Beach and there are lots of old white men running around the oceanfront in funny costumes and wearing fezzes on their heads, it must be Shriner Season.

I’ve written enough about these guys in the past that they hardly warrant additional explanation. I’ll just say that this year’s group included only groups from the Mid-Atlantic region and that each year their numbers seem to get smaller and smaller. If this gathering is any indication, masonic life appears to be like bowling: you can find it in most any city, but it’s biggest in smaller towns where blue-collar fraternal organizations remain strong.

This year’s parade was replete with the usual mix of colorful costumes, rhythm bands, “Orientals” brandishing swords, honor guards with colorful pointy-toed shoes that curl up at the end, elderly “nobles” trying to get through “God Bless America” and remember the words to songs like “Ain’t She Sweet” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” clowns, hillbilly jugs band, go-karts, antique cars and other trappings of masonic brotherhood and Americana. 

Shriners on Parade, 2012

 As I’ve observed in the past, it’s easy to dismiss the cornball humor and jingoistic patriotism of these guys.  But I give them a pass because Shriners have raised billions of dollars over the years to support a network of hospitals around the country that provide care for severely burned children and, more recently, children with advanced orthopedic issues without regard to race, creed or their ability to pay. Recessionary times and greater competition is making it harder for Shrine hospitals to stay viable. But local temple members get out and parade most anywhere they’re invited if they think it’ll help raise awareness and a few bucks for their cause.

Their slogan, “Strong legs run so that weak legs may walk,” may be a little exaggerated. I didn’t see any running at this year’s parade and more than a few of the heftier marchers were winded after just a few blocks of walking in Saturday morning’s hot and humid weather. But for their families and curious tourists caught up in Saturday morning’s parade, it was all in good fun and all for a good cause. 

Khedive Temple Beach Boys, 2012