Straight Edge Life

My eyes will not close. The room is dark, the hour is late and I’m due to wake up on only a few hours. I shot film this week and as always when I shoot film, I’m going nuts waiting to see the chromes developed. it’s going to be at least another week before I can see the images. How I’m going to make it, I’m not quite sure. Maybe a whole lot of work. I’ve got enough of it piled up from my negligent vacation in Arizona this week. Hopefully it can tie me over until I can see my chromes.

Shooting film is an entirely different world for me… a beautiful and inspiring world.

I think when I shoot digitally I have a much better chance to get an image that is technically accurate than when shooting with film. You can review your images right there on the spot, make adjustments, and reshoot. But it’s not all roses and tea time. For all the marvelous things about digital photography I still have issues with it. Simply put, the technical convenience of digital photography get in the way of the flow of my shooting and can stand as a barrier between me are my subject. It also stands firmly in the way of my Vision.

As most digital things are for me, digital photography is an intuition killer. It makes it way too easy to use my brain instead of my gut. The safety of image review is overpowering. It removes all the risk from photography. It removes the incentive to listen to your heart. And I don’t think that’s a good thing.

My vision comes from my instinct and my ability to listen to that part of my soul that is willing to take risks. It does not come from my ability to precisely interpret feedback from an lcd histogram. It also relies on a delicate relationship between my subject, myself and my camera. The damn interruption of digital feedbacking (as I will call it) is very effective at destroying this relationship. It’s too easy to pay attention to the lcd than the subject itself.

Also on a more fundamental level, my “vision”, whatever it may be, is a mystery. It is something that I want to experience but it is not necessary for me to quantify it. Nor is it necessary for me to understand it. It just is. And it is usually the result of an emotional need in my life. It could be my path to sorting out a problem I’m having, like how I use this website as a sounding board… it could also be my way of simply expressing my sexuality, or my angst, or my pleasure and fear.

Digital photography is known. It’s quantifiable, verifiable, repeatable. There are few happy accidents. There are few mysteries. And it has little to do with emotion.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve been shooting almost entirely with digital cameras, and loving it, for 5 years straight. I’m finally finding the absolute newest models of DSLRs to be competent machines; worthy of replacing even medium format equipment. I’ve been there for some time and struggled through the growing pains as digital cameras moved quickly up from 2 to 16.7 megapixels. I’ve been there both out of necessity and a geeky pioneering spirity. I know that it is the future of photography, my photography.

I guess I’m just saying that one of the things I love about photography is the visual language of it and the relationship between a photographer, the subject and the equipment. In the analog world it is simple enough to learn some basic rules and let the technical aspect of image making become completely second nature. Excuse the pun but it can fade into the background. Because of digital feedbacking (reviewing the lcd while shooting) I think this is much more difficult with digital photography. It’s like dropping a right-wing republican into an Earth First meeting and telling them all to accomplish a common goal. It takes a very fundamental aspect of a creative process (the relationships) and injects a highly technical and logical element into the mix.

I don’t want photography to be about my ability to ignore the LCD. Discipline isn’t something I’ve ever found to go hand in hand with my image making process. I like it when I don’t have the option of verifying my images along every step of the way. It’s more dangerous and forces me to confront that in a more mature way by making more images, and trusting myself and my decisions.

It will be interesting to see the differences between my digital and my film images from this trip. If I like my film images more I’ll try taping over my lcd with a piece of black paper or something.

I’m sure there’s a way this major earth crisis will work it’s way out. Have no fear.

There I was on a couch in suburban Phoenix looking around at all the fine things decorating the walls, listening to the crystal clear audio from the 6 mid-range, high and low-range speakers… watching razor-sharp images radiating from the widescreen hd tv, feeling the custom cut stone beneath my feet and realizing that I wouldn’t want any of it if I could have it. The most comfortable thing in the room were my dirty and grubby clothes. Stinking from the sweat of carrying a loaded camera bag in the sun I sit and I sweat and I fight the recycling power of the central air conditioning. The gunky grit from sunscreen in my hair, the sunburn on my neck, like 300 count cotton sheets. The strap rash from my nikon slr on my collar, a dip in the pool.

When I think about the future, whichever one I may choose, I do not think about lexus, audi and bmw. I do not think about a 600mm lens, granite counter tops or swimming pools. When I think about the future I think about long days wandering in the sierras. I think about scanning film and processing raw files. I think about cutting wood by hand and sanding miters. I think about the feeling of mat board through cotton gloves and the smell of glass cleaner as I prepare to encase a print in it’s permanent home. I think about being fit because my life and my job have made me that way; not because I have forced it to be so out of sheer will power and stubbornness.

In upscale corporate suburbia Phoenix there are comforts and there and distractions. But there is nothing I can imagine so disquieting as to watch my passions being silenced by golf courses, planned malls, cloned corporate tract homes, and home owners associations. A quiet death of dehydration in the desert would be preferable. At least there you would know the hallucinations are illusions. In suburban hell the hallucinations are made real by a board of planning and an army of inexpensive mexican national carpenters. I wonder what they are singing about when they work? Getting paid to build hell on earth in a place that until recently was considered hell on earth. I wouldn’t want that job. The desert is no place for a house.

My trip to California fell through. I would have liked to go, It just didn’t work out. Now I’m here for the second part of my vacation and I am both loving and hating every minute of this experience. My need to shoot and my care for most everything else in my life are growing and dissolving respectively. There is nothing like seeing yourself in 15 years and realizing that you’re heading in the wrong direction. It’s so easy to lose perspective. I hope it doesn’t happen to me. Or if it does I can get back on track and learn something from it.

It is extremely good to see the people I am staying with and I do not judge them for an instant for the life or location they have chosen. It is indeed comfortable and impressive in it’s own right. More importantly it’s giving me inspiration.

Enough for now, up early for more shooting.

I’ll be heading down to Monterey on Wednesday to visit friends, family and a few of my favorite oceanside spots. Hopefully I’ll have a few photos to share either along the way or when I get back. Stay tuned.

“Now George was a good straight boy to begin with. But there was bad blood in him someway and he got into the magic bullets that lead straight to the devil’s work. Just like marijuana leads to heroin. You think you can take them bullets and leave ‘em do ya. Just save a few for your bad days… Kid you’re hooked, heavy as lead.” Tom Waits

In high school I made a pact with my best friend that we would kick the crap out of each other if either of us started drinking or doing drugs. It wasn’t a straight edge thing, we didn’t know about straight edge back then… it was just a health thing.

Already we were watching a good majority of our friends go the stoner route. At first the two of us had fun messing with their heads at parties; telling them they did shit that they didn’t the next day. Embarrassing them, making them feel stupid for getting drunk. Soon enough we didn’t have to tell them anything, they were drunk enough to do the stupid shit all on their own. Reality quickly replaced our fiction.

It wasn’t long before people began to die. First a house fire, then a car crash. Then another car crash. Finally the overdoses came and snuck their way into the scene.

I guess I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who willingly increase the probability of accidental death, especially with the diminishing returns so typical of drug use. I have anger more than sympathy. A few of my friends were killed by drunk drivers. As the years go by, my anger increases. But I digress…

The saddest part of those years in high school and those following was simply that we lost so many friends. Far more friends than those that died because of drinking and drugs. We lost friends to a lifestyle that we would never understand and would never relate to. A slow suicide of common sense, mind, body and spirit. It was heartbreaking and only strengthened our resolve to stay clean.

Through all that time my best friend and I kept our pact. We maintained real conversations and handled whatever the world threw at us by staying strong physically and mentally.

Well, college came along and we went our separate ways. He immediately went to Europe and then college in the fall and I stuck around for a year to climb and work before I started college. The next time we saw each other was in the spring on a climbing trip out at Smith. He had started drinking and I guess I should have expected it. We weren’t able to stay in touch very well and we both lost this connection. We all know exactly how shitty it is to be alone in a strange new place. I was at home essentially, many of my friends still nearby. My best friend went to a school where he knew nobody. He started to fit in.

Alcohol lead to Pot. Pot lead to something else. And something else… finally that something else lead straight to heroin. There was a day when he was in Eugene and he came to me for help. Even then I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years. I know it’s not my fault that he relapsed, the brutality of withdrawl sickness is something nobody should ever have to see or experience… but I always feel guilty because I had no fucking idea what to do or how to help… He broke the hearts of everyone who knew him.

He eventually stopped using heroin.. and in that way I guess I didn’t lose him. He’s still alive, living somewhere far out of this state, but I haven’t spoken to him in years. He doesn’t know that my mom died. He doesn’t know I’m divorced. Shit, I’m not sure he even met my ex-wife. He doesn’t know where I am or what I’m doing. I don’t know what he’s doing. I stopped trying to find him a while ago.

The thing that brings all of this up today is that I am happy. I’m extremely happy these days. A lot of hard work is slowly starting to pay off and I want to share it with someone who understands how I got here. Two years ago I was in the pit of hell. And prior to his using drugs I think he would have understood what I’m talking about. He might still today but I fear the patronizing effect of tracking him down just to tell him how well I’m doing specifically because I didn’t do drugs. So I am writing here instead. Hopefully you guys get it. It would be nice if a few of you were in Eugene so we could get together for a climb or a hike, or a show or something. Thanks for reading my blog. You all mean more and more to me every day.

There’s something about an empty room. I think when I buy a house I’m going to keep one room in it totally empty. Nothing at all on the floors. I’ll put photos on the wall, of course, but nothing else. I can put myself in this room and that will be enough. There’s a peace to it. A calm. A big window might be nice.

I never thought I would turn into an organized person but as the days go buy I want to spend less and less time dealing with stuff. The more stuff I have, the more time I spend caring for it. And the more messy that stuff is, the more