I’m terrible with New Years resolutions. Remember how I promised to write my blog every week? Yeah, that was fun. But I’m returning to it now with a vengeance, only this time I’m resolving to un-resolve a resolution I made last time. Hear me out, you might like this. There’s madness to my method.
Let’s step into the way-back machine, shall we? A couple of Januarys ago, I had resolved — solemnly promised, I seem to recall saying — to stop making excuses about the iPhone as a less-than-perfect camera and use it unsparingly and unapologetically in my daily rounds and walkabouts. And that, my friends, has worked out remarkably well. It’s a zen thing, really and truly, since the iPhone seems a naturally reflexive part of my eye and brain. It’s impossible not to take pictures, and it’s always gratifying to look at that big, bright screen.
And yet, and yet…
There’s a part of me — the old-school photographer part — that sometimes misses the mechanics involved in creating the fine photographic image. Oh sure, I can run the software perfectly well, but I’m talking about something more visceral and tactile. More eye-to-the-viewfinder sort of thing. More camera.
Calla Lily 2019
In an iPhone era, I’m still an unrepentant camera-and-lens gearhead. And I’ve had them all, even some nice large-format view cameras. Fiddling around under the dark cloth and tweaking the focus and exposure on an image you’re looking at reversed and upside-down on the ground glass was all a part of a grand, albeit ephemeral experience. I came of age, as did many of you, when practicing the craft of photography was an inescapable part of producing its art. It’s a muscle-memory that even today sets my fingers a-twitching.
I don’t have any of those great old film cameras anymore; my last nice medium-format camera was a cranky old Bronica with a lens of pure magic that I traded for some Canon lenses (photographers are notorious horse-traders.) But here’s the deal: I’m going to make sure to walk around a lot more with my Fuji mirrorless camera, for which I own several good lenses and absolutely zero excuses not to use them. And I won’t rely on the air-cushion of RAW exposures, either. Nope, I’ll set color or black & white jpegs, maybe even set one of those virtual film styles (remember Velvia?) and shoot with the same focus-and-exposure exactitude that was required with film. There’s little forgiveness for forgetful or absent-minded mistakes in photography, but of all the things I have looked for in this photographer’s life, absolution isn’t among them.
Quite honestly, I don’t know if it will be the same meditative zen experience of losing myself in the moment that the iPhone has afforded me in these late years. I doubt that it really matters all that much. Being creative needs neither a point nor a rationale, yet this is where so many of us get hung up. Enough! I say. We are awash in moments if we keep our eyes and hearts open to them. Just fiddle with some damn f-stops while you’re at it.
And my resolution to keep to my blog every week? Yes, certainly. Absolutely.
See you in April.
The intrepid author and his trusty Fuji 2021