One of those days when I don’t go to work, get in my beater Honda with a camera or two, and drive randomly in some direction.
I used to do it a lot in undergrad. My university was pretty close to a lot of state parks. Skipped a lot of classes I had no business skipping, just to drive along swamps and under massive oaks and everywhere in between. Cameras which were worth as much as my car. I sold them all eventually. Decided not to pursue a career out of pressing shutter buttons. Too expensive for me to have as just a hobby. Most of these pictures go straight on an external hard drive, only to be looked at my be, some years later, trying hard to remember where I took it. Gave a few pictures away as gifts. People love a gifted picture. They’ll rarely, if ever, buy one, though.
Not long after high school, a professional photographer offered me a job five minutes after meeting me. Can’t help but wonder where that trajectory would have landed me. And I couldn’t tell you why I said no, other than that kids are just dumb.
Now I just have a few old film cameras, one of which is older than me, and is the very same camera I first learned with as a ten year old. A Canon T50. No settings, no aperture or shutter priority. Just on and off, manual focus. The other is one I got not too long ago, and is the same model camera I first bought with my own money.
Film fell out of favor with professionals and enthusiasts alike when digital got pretty good 5-10 years ago. Now it’s just me and other sentimental bastards who don’t feel like shelling out two grand for a base model digital. Not that film is cheap. Buy the roll, pay to have it processed, pay to have it shipped off to a film lab an hour away. Better make those 36 exposures count; I’m going to pay over a dollar a piece for the final product.
When people ask me what my dream job is, I generally tell them it’s as a novelist. But it was (maybe still is) to be a wildlife photographer. Until I win the lottery, I won’t be dropping fifty grand on a full setup so I can spend another fifty grand to travel to Patagonia or wherever the fuck to wait 35 hours to get three frames of some rare mammal. It would be something, though. I think I’m okay with some dreams just staying that way. I’ve traveled enough for work already to last a lifetime.
The hurricane is blasting through Florida and the east coast, and is making for nice overcast weather. Good diffuse, gentle light. Rolling through one small town after another, with long stretches of nothing but pasture between them. They’re all more or less the same. There isn’t a lot to see in much of Alabama unless your forte is abandoned buildings or longleaf pines. I love it just the same. Beautiful mountains and beautiful warm water beaches in the same state. Don’t think you can really get that anywhere else.
I’m paying attention to the road just enough to not crash. Watching farmland fade into scrub, into cracked and weed-covered asphalt, and back to wilderness again. Much of it long-since forgotten by everyone except the few who still scrape a living there. Service industry folks, gas station attendants, paper mill employees. More pines than anyone could ever know what to do with. Enough to build a thousand arks to float people somewhere “better” or more prosperous or opportunity-laden. But they don’t want to leave. And neither do I.
I look for beauty or some other ancient, unnamed sentiment in every road curve beneath an ancient magnolia, or some pasture that convinces me it’s always looked just as it does. It’s always there. I don’t take any pictures this time. Didn’t even lift a camera from their bag.
Maybe I’ll do the same thing tomorrow.
Ah, the American wilderness. I find roadtrips fill me with bizarre wanderlust.
How do you do it J.L.? How do you make a seemingly mundane thing like taking pictures beautiful?
Another great read