Throwback Thursday

Still digging…

One thing about saving everything is it’s very hard to remember where to look for something. I spent hours yesterday looking for an image and couldn’t find it anywhere. However, I did find these which brought back fond memories of days I spent wandering with my camera…

Throwback Thursday

Been working on a deep dive into the archives for another project that’s been percolating in the background for some time now. That’s what I like about having several projects going on at the same time, I can work on whatever my moody self feels like doing.

Of course, it might be nice to actually finish one, but I don’t worry about that either.

After all, it’s the journey, not the destination…

Until I decide what to share from that stuff, here’s a few instant souvenirs from last year.

Throwback Thursday

Ok, I promise, this will be the last contact sheet post (at least for a few weeks…).

Once again, a few rolls of film shot while aimlessly wandering…

Contact sheet #14

Unfortunately, I’m not sure of the date on this one but I believe it would have been the fall of 1978. The first several frames were shot at Buff State in the student union. A violinist accompanied by a guitarist were giving an impromptu concert, I was somewhat surprised to find these. Most of the images I made in college were on rolls of film shot mostly for the yearbook and are now lost to time.

The next couple were made on a bus ride downtown and in the main library. I was asked to leave by security shortly after taking the (terribly underexposed) image of a library patron. This is a scene that will play itself out many, many, many times throughout my career.: Ray puts his camera up to his eye and is immediately confronted by someone demanding that he leave. In this case, in my defense, the man asked me to take his photo. How could I refuse a kind request?

Then we see an image of City Hall, followed by the remainder of the roll shot while walking down Niagara Street in the Black Rock section of town. The last image is of what was a restaurant directly across the street from my childhood home.

Contact sheet #56

Contact sheet #98

Again, not sure of the date on these two but they would probably have been made sometime in the early 80’s. These were also made with far more intent than the first roll. In each case I was recording something that was about to disappear.

Roll #56 was of the Chamber of Commerce building and the bank on the corner. I believe these were made because the Chamber building was slated to be torn down. If I recall, the bank building was supposed to be protected from damage by the contractor but suffered so much damage that it was demolished as well. The remaining images are just street scenes with people from a time when you still had people downtown during the work week.

Roll #98 was shot at War Memorial Stadium just before the demolition there began. I spent many a Sunday afternoon there as a youth with my dad watching the Bills play. During the demo I was able to procure several chunks of the stadium concrete that I used in a framed stadium collage piece. I still have some left…

One back story from the stadium shoot: While making the images in frames 33 through 37, I was standing in an empty lot across the street and stepped on a large nail that went all the way through my boot and about an inch or so into my foot. That really hurt.

After removing the nail from my foot I could feel the moisture from the blood soaking into my sock, but being so close to the end of the roll I just had to finish it before heading to the hospital. And if that wasn’t silly enough, not wanting to spend the remainder of the day sitting in the emergency room at Buffalo General (only a few minutes away), I drove all the way to North Tonawanda to DeGraf Hospital. I was in and out with my tetanus shot in practically no time. The drive there and home may have taken longer than the emergency room visit!

Throwback Thursday

I’m lovin’ these older contact sheets. Like the two from last week, these are from my earliest days as a photographer. Before I even stumbled into a career. Who knew?

Like most of my early work, the images feel freer, less inhibited. If something interested me I photographed it. My only wish would have been to be more deliberate in how I photographed. There are many things that are no longer there that I might have photographed if I was more thoughtful in my approach.

contact 0008

The images on the contact sheet above were candids shot at the first wedding I ever photographed which I discussed in more detail in the post from August 1, 2019. Anyone looking closely at frame 22 will see my co-conspirator, Joe, enjoying himself. Considering that we were paid for our work with a bottle of Jack Daniels and all the food we could eat and drink, I would say they received just about what they paid for.

That being said, there are several images here I really like (6, 12, 17, 25-28, & 36) and they are a glimpse into the documentary style that would define my work in the years to come. It took me a while to realize that this was the approach I would need to take. I spent a long time trying to be someone else because I thought I had to do what everyone else did if I wanted to be as successful as they were.

In retrospect, this was bad strategy. I didn’t understand that what I needed most was to find my own voice. Part of that reluctance to use my own voice was, I think, an inferiority complex I carried around because I was completely self taught. I had never taken a class. To be a “real” photographer you had to go to school, didn’t you? On some level, I still carry that with me. If anyone has ever wondered why I refer to myself as a Visual Anthropologist, this is one large reason why.

contact 0012

This contact sheet has images from several of my neighborhood walks. The images here are a great glimpse into the kinds of things that interested me and grabbed my attention. They really tell a story, more about me perhaps, but a story nonetheless. Not much to note on this one except #26. This is one of my all-time favorite images which I discuss in greater detail in my post of July 18, 2019.

The nighttime images on the last negative strip are from a late night trip to Volkers, a neighborhood bowling alley, game room and bar we frequented quite often. I believe it is now closed. They had a great neon sign outside that I always had intended to photograph, but in color. I had several plans formulated for how I would do it. In my mind, they would be great photos. Sadly, I never did. Another miss among many.

Speaking of misses, the owners opened a disco in an empty building just across the street that had at one time been a drug store. Unfortunately, the disco craze was coming to an end, and the club didn’t last too long. If only the music had met the same fate…

Throwback Thursday

Henri Cartier-Bresson once said that your first 10,000 images were your worst.. Of course, this was during the film age and long before the digital age, so for mostly digital photographers, the math should look much different. In other words, the 10,000 images you made at the wedding you shot last week won’t make much of an improvement in the 10,000 you make at this weeks wedding. Just sayin’…

Nevertheless, there is, I think, something to love about the work we make very early in our careers. Long before we get bogged down in all the “rules”, we make work for the joy, for the fun, because it satisfies some innate need, and we can’t say no. (For me, the need was to get out of class, but that’s another story…)

The two contact sheets here are from some of the first rolls of film I shot with the first camera I ever owned. (A Yashica 35mm that I got as a kit with three lenses and a camera bag!)

Contact sheet 0001! made sometime early spring 1979

This first contact sheet is of the very first roll of film I ran through my new camera, images made while walking back and forth to school. Because I was working on my college yearbook at the time, I believe the missing strips are from frames that were shot for yearbook use. Like all the work I made in high school, those images are lost to time.

contact sheet 0006, made sometime in the spring of 1979

While there are certainly some technical issues and the framing for many of these is a little loose, there is no denying the joy that’s apparent in their creation. In those days I took my camera everywhere, photographing whatever I found interesting, and I was having a great time doing it.

And maybe at the root, that’s why in some ways, I like a lot of my early work better than some of the work that followed while I was learning the “rules”. This work seems freer to me, less formal, less constricted. Or maybe I’m so fond of my earlier work because I was so much younger when I made it. Who knows?

But looking back, it should come as no surprise that my client work as well as my personal work became much more satisfying for me as a creator, when I worried less about making work the “right way” or the way everyone else made their work, and just made work “my way”. And also no coincidence that right about the same time my career started to take off. Not everyone “got” what I was doing, but in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was the people who did “get it”, loved it. Just as it should be.

Long time and sharp-eyed viewers of this blog may have noticed that the first contact sheet made an appearance on the September 19, 2019 post, and frame no. 24A from the second sheet was discussed in detail on July 25, 2019. Check them out!