Summer Vibes

I prefer summer.

At least, I do right now. It’s funny to me how living with all four seasons in their full glory spoils you to the core. The full impact of each season in its extreme becomes cumbersome and unpleasant over time. Example being that winter is great for Christmas, winter sports, and having an excuse to not leave your house and drink peppermint hot chocolates everyday. However, when March rolls around, the sight of snow makes me feel sick. Like a clingy ex, some seasons just don’t know when to move on.

It physically pains me to think of winter in August.

Summer is in full force right now in Western, NY, and it is fantastic. My fondest memories growing up revolve around days spent mostly shirtless and chasing ice cream trucks. Beating the heat by pool hopping from house to house or catching strange wiggling creatures down by the creek. Staying busy building structurally uncertain treehouses and starting small camp fires that grew proportionally larger with my testosterone. Relaxing by taking local strolls to the store to get buzzed on sugary sodas and sitting in handmade teepees with friends chatting about the complexities of life.

All that to say, these memories come with emotion. There is a tangible sensation that comes from certain smells, colors, locations, even with warm breezes that press against your face while walking a local shoreline. I feel it and it brings immediate joy to my heart. It is a beautiful experience and it largely comes during the summer months. When people comment on the heat, I recount the times running barefoot through crispy grass lightly seasoned by a sprinkler. My desire as a photographer is to revive these feelings for not only myself, but others as well.

Trying to create these feelings is the challenge.

At times I am highly motivated to capture an idea with my camera. I often think of or can imagine something very specific that motivates me to get out to a location and try to create what I imagined. I wake up one day and imagine a highly textured image of a gravestone with lightly colored green vines encompassing it on a bright blue sky and puffy white clouds backdrop. However, driving to the local cemetery will ultimately deliver disappointment. I will try and force an image to happen and it will never satisfy that initial inspiration. The blue won’t be the exact hue I desired, the clouds aren’t puffy enough, and the perfect gravestone has a last name as distracting as mine.

Being inspired to take that photo led me to getting out with my camera. This is a good thing. The only catch is I walk away disappointed, even feeling like a failure in many respects. I failed because I was unable to recreate something in my imagination, something that didn’t exist in reality. If I’d simply learn Photoshop then I could create that image. However, even then I have created an image, not captured one.

Capture versus create.

Going back to my unfortunate last named gravestone scenario, the hangup for me isn’t that the idea was bad or not possible. It is all the potential photos I missed in an attempt to force an idea. If you watch any kind of football, there is a concept that is spoken of often with the catchy phrase of, “Take what you are given.” My boy Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills has gotten a hold of this concept. Quarterbacks are given options of who to pass the ball to and often there are passes that are more dangerous with a lower percentage of completion. Then there are the shorter passes to an open receiver that the defense is intentionally leaving open to guard the longer plays. Less yards, but yards nonetheless. #billsmafia4life

The idea translated for me is that instead of creating the photo that I imagined, I take what I see in that moment. It is those photos that end up meaning the most to me, the ones I look back on with emotion and story. I am reliving the event, the time, the weather, the seasons, because I was able to successfully capture the reality of what was around me.

Too often I beat myself up over the photos I take. Why? Most people look at a photo I take and say, “Wow, that's pretty.” Not the most flattering compliment, frankly. And I can quickly recognize that the photo is “pretty”, so what causes me to be so disappointed in it?

I tried to create something that wasn’t there.

When I visit a spot for photos, I’m already thinking of lighting, conditions of the weather, compositions, textures, colors, and beginning to paint images in my head that would be ideal. The ideal is not always present. The ideal often requires a different time of day, time of year, a literal aligning of stars, things that are difficult to control. But isn’t that the fun of photography? You don’t have control over the environment, and all you are left with is capturing it. 

The capture of a moment is the most precious outcome for me. It is what drives me to take so many photos, and at times very odd ones. I’m ok taking photos of a radiator in a bathroom, of chickadees running on fences, of stunning sunsets, of my wife who tries to run away when the lens is pointed her direction. It speaks to that day. It conjures up emotions from those times. It tells a story of that environment. And these captures are successes for me.