Thank you everyone, you may never know how much your support has meant to me, but let this acknowledgement of your help in the completion of my 20-year journey in photojournalism be the beginning of my expression of sincere gratitude.
No dust or scratches, unless you want them.
p.s. If you’ve never physically spot-toned a print (omg) or used Photoshop to touch up a scan, please take my word for it: Total pain in the butt. Express gratitude for digital every day.
Ok, I’m getting a little nervous again. Welcome to the roller coaster that is my photoj class.
I haven’t heard back yet from either my big organic subject, who I thought was a done deal. And the head of ForageSF, who I’m sure is a very busy guy and just hasn’t seem my email yet, hasn’t contacted me since he told me to email him once I got the letter for the next dinner. Which I did. So I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen here.
What I do know is that it isn’t happening here, in Merced. I won’t be photographing either of my remaining two portions of the essay anywhere near here, so I’ve decided to pack up everything I need to finish the class, some clothes, my web cam (not see Kamila’s face for 2 weeks? I’m tough, but I’m not that tough), and stay in Sacramento with my sister Beth and Ryan at the Hurley Farm.
Sure would love to hear from my peeps.
Finally, after a long time with no movement on my photo essay, things are finally coming together!
I got an email yesterday from ForageSF, a group that serves a foraged meal (the menus are mouth-wateringly awesome) once a month to a small group of people who are fast enough to sign up. Which I just happen to be this month, on Friday 7 May. The founder of the group has already agreed to give me access to the foraging, preparation, and consuming of this meal. Access has been the most challenging part of this essay, as it often is with any in-depth, long-term photojournalism project. So except for the photos, the “foraging” portion of the essay is waiting for me in San Francisco next week.
This evening I made pictures of a family going out to grab a fast-food meal, take it home, and eat it. I’m feeling pretty good about how it turned out, so that part is done.
And I’m probably leaving tomorrow to stay at my youngest sister’s house in Sacramento so I can photograph the “big organic” portion of the story when a subject is ready for me. While I wait for a subject, I have plenty to do besides making photos to wrap up my class which include, but aren’t limited to: Book reports, putting a portfolio together, and going through my exit interview (via Skype or phone). On Wednesday. I’ll take Amtrak and then BART into San Francisco, and check into the youth hostel near the city center, which is the closest one to the Mission district, where the foraged dinner is being held.
Then on Saturday, I head back to Sacramento, and if I haven’t made the photos for the “big organic” section yet, I’ll stay there until I do, or until 14 May, when I give David’s fantastic Nikon D200 back to him (THANK YOU DAVID!!) and head back to Merced.
Then I begin my victory lap around the west coast. You think I’m kidding?
As a very good friend of mine just said about my lack of progress on my food-related photo essay since we were in Santa Cruz much earlier this month, “Your project is kind of stale.” I don’t think she was trying to be punny, but she’s got a very playful sense of humor, so I don’t know.
That was yesterday, today is a brand new day! I’ve got access and an appointment for the “fast food” section of my photo essay on Thursday evening, kind of a naturally perfect situation. It’s a family that I met soon after I moved here (Merced, Calif.) that is very physically active (the father coaches soccer, the mother is a yoga instructor, their sons all participate in one sport or another), and like many families, they are busy, so they often grab some fast food on Thursday evening, which is their busiest day of the week, after they all get done with their soccer practice/yoga class/whatever. And there I will be, bearing witness to their meal, from discussion about where to go, to going, pickup, and partaking.
Huge load off of my mind.
And I have access, at least verbally, to the other two sections of the essay: big organic and foraged. Just waiting for the other two shoes to drop from this 4-legged creature. Stay tuned!
I made this photo from the kitchen in the Branding Iron, a restaurant that’s been in Merced for more than 52 years. When I was a kid growing up in Merced, it was the best place in town (probably still is) and when my grandfather gave me a choice of any place in town when I turned 9, I chose The Branding Iron.
Wow, that sounds really familiar!
So that was day 1 of my first 30-day series. This is day 30 of my second 30-day series. Besides having a much better camera this time (thanks to my brother-in-law) than than the one I started with, I’m also feeling much better about the photos I’m making under any circumstance, even in this dark environment. And it’s not just the higher ISO. Moments are better, expressions are better, rapport is better. I had A LOT of catching up to do with my classmates, but now I feel confident I only have a lot of catching up to do with my classmates.
My mother was quite determined to get the last of the chocolate transferred into the fondue pot. The fondue was good.
My family has a fever, and the only prescription is more ice cream. Fortunately Gunther’s in Sacramento scratches our near-constant itch.
My dad had mocha almond fudge, my mom had baseball nut (vanilla ice cream with raspberry swirl and peanuts) and Swiss orange chip. I had baseball nut and peanut butter cup, on a sugar cone. My sisters weren’t there, but they sure wished they were.
This may look familiar. Yes, I made pictures of my friend’s sculptures for an earlier daily assignment.
Kamila liked my detail of the mermaid sculpture and wanted prints for her birthday, but she also wanted to see the entire sculpture. Because I wanted the light to match for all of the pictures, when I made the overall picture, I re-made the detail, plus a couple of others I hadn’t seen before. She is happy with the results, and so am I.
I used to choose photo subjects based on how interesting they were, not on how interested I was in them: The young playwright with a new play in production; Columbia’s last street sweeper; the large, amiable, and expressive veterinary student. My inability to work myself up to make better pictures or to finish these stories for class felt, and in some ways still feels, like a curse. Whether or not I become a professional photojournalist, I consider my failure to do justice to these stories to be just that, a failure. Mostly I think my intrusion was a waste of my subjects’ time, and to them (in a very empty gesture at this point) I apologize.
I’d like to say I’d do better with those particular subjects now, that I could justify their trust in me, their willingness to let me into the parts of their lives they did allow me to document. But that isn’t necessarily so. What I can do now that I couldn’t do before is be very honest with myself and with my subjects, and in some cases I’d find other subjects that were a better match. The closest analogy I can think of is being faced with the possibility to have a romantic relationship with someone who you know deep down will not work out, no matter that they’re a good person, intelligent, visually attractive, and interesting. No need to give it shot, right? Better to wait for a better match. But class assignments have deadlines, and so I did what I thought I needed to do. It wasn’t the fault of the assignment, the fault was mine, and the remedy was to wake up, which was, and still is everyday, my responsibility alone.
Before (before what? before who? Yes, it was a who, but that’s another story), my heart wasn’t yet awake, nothing set me on fire, and while I didn’t really know this, the way I expressed it was by getting into relationships (photographic and romantic) that I shouldn’t have. And so the failure was mine, but I failed because I didn’t know myself first.
With all this talk of failure and fault, it may seem like I’m being rather hard on myself. To adapt and bastardize Anne Lamott’s metaphor, I am not using the club of truth to bludgeon myself, but to point toward the warm sun breaking through the clouds. I do regret the inconvenience I caused, no matter how slight, and it does sadden me that those subjects, having given access without anything to show for it, may deny the right photographer access in the future. Mostly I rejoice that I can love deeply now – myself, others, humanity, life – and that love makes me honest with myself and others in ways I could never have imagined. I’m profoundly grateful.
While I don’t know quite what possessed Shakespeare to put such wise words into the mouth of a duplicitous windbag like Polonious, I think his advice to his son, at least as I interpret it, is some of the most compassionate I can imagine:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.