my favorite photo

a quarry in wisconsin. 120 film.

well there it is, my first photo (below) and my favorite (above)... end of blog.

i guess the question is why is this my favorite? the most real answer i can think of is the one that sounds the lamest: almost every part resonates inside me. it plays all my chords. and beyond that, on the "technical" side... it came out exactly the way i saw/felt it, which i think is usually the aim of every photographer from the pro to the tourist.

quite honestly the more digital photos i take the more i long for film. the chemical reaction. and i hardly ever print out digital shots because the idea is ridiculous in my mind. the medium is light and numbers. a print out is a thin layer of ink translated from that code onto paper. and as soon as that happens it is the same as a print of a painting. film is chemical, even in the print.

this photo was also important because it was film. when i started getting into photography, it was with a digital camera. But as a painter i couldn't stand how instantly gratifying or how non touchable it really was. again, that chemical reaction. so i dove back into film cameras in order to get the "feel". i bought every old camera i could find from brownies to broken polaroids, which i would convert to working order (brownies shooting outdated 160 film could be bent and pried to fit a 120 spool if careful enough) just to see what sensibility each little box would reveal.

my first photo

why not start with the first photo i ever took. i was probably 7. hell yes it was a polaroid. i fell in love instantly (get it?).

this is mom and dad. we had been given this camera for free if i remember correctly... for going to look at a timeshare opportunity. It was an "incentive giveaway". It had a rainbow strap and i thought it was the most high tech thing there ever was. I remember being honored to be given an opportunity to actually take a photograph. Such responsiblity. You can measure that responsibility by the look of uncertainty on their faces.

I'm six and i'm holding the incentive, aiming it at my parents, trying to prove to the world that i am capable.

It would be another 20 years before i would even recognize this pattern...