I'd considered ignoring the 200th post mile marker, much like I ignore milestone birthdays. After a while, it's all of a piece. But with my 65th birthday fast approaching as well, significant numbers suddenly loom large.
"Memory is a stranger, history is for fools…" Or, so I've heard.
Don't take this as a 'best of' list. Rather, it's a necessarily non-inclusive selection of images that proved important to me. For instance, the repurposed gas station at the top taught me I really could be a proper, large format architectural photographer.
You know, had I wanted to.
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Headed from someplace to someplace else, I booked one night in Houghton.
Prior to check-in, I planned on working S-63, a dirt/gravel road also known as 'Covered Drive' because a great arch of forest blots out the sky along stretches of it. That done, I'd head west and maybe finagle my way down to the lakeside ruins at remote, mysterious Freda.
The afternoon came and rolling thunderstorms with it.
In danger of being rained out, I ventured back and forth between Houghton and the sodden forest at least twice. That means I passed the scene below three times before at the very last I thought Ah, screw it.
Plainly put, it wasn't part of the plan so I didn't 'see' it. Nor was the place abandoned, in which case I'd have reflexively jumped all over it. Now the image is among three fine art prints of my work that'll hang on any wall of mine.
Likewise the pair of dead geese I dared shoot backlit, as they wavered in a slight breeze.
I once witnessed a woman enter a packed gallery, scan the room, then cut through the crowd to stand directly in front of this and stare.
She didn't buy it, which is why dead geese hang in my office today. First print I hung. Glad to have it, expertly framed. Thanks, lady.
During my initial trip with the Linhof, I exposed six sheets of film. It was vacation and I was uncertain about the new format, so went at it cautiously. Four days after returning home, I'd three keepers. My career large format shooting ratio of roughly 2:1 was set right from the start.
I thought, Okay, maybe I can make this work…
As with the Houghton trip, rain played a serendipitous role with this next. Heather and I were hunkered down at a waterfront restaurant in Bayfield, hoping storms would soon pass. Had it not rained, we'd have been on our way back to Bessemer by then.
In the middle of a fine whitefish lunch, I looked out the window and bolted. There was just time to set up and rip off three quick exposures. This one's the best:
There's a spot on the Presque Isle River along US-2 where the river feeds a wetland. One spring morning found the spot bathed in glittering light. I knew it'd be a challange, for transparency film.
Nonetheless, I stowed the car off the road and mindful of traffic periodically flying past @ 70 mph, walked out and captured this:
Returning to the car, a State Trooper idled beside it. He posed the single most inexplicable question that I've been asked multiple times, while hauling around 50# of large format photographic gear.
"What're you doing?"
To which I could only point to my burden and shrug.
"Well, be careful" the Trooper helpfully added as yet another speeder sped by.
"Always," I said. "Thanks."
Perhaps the most confounding thing a fellow shooter's ever said to me came in the parking lot of Hunter's Point at Copper Harbor. While gearing up the Mamiya, a woman lugging a high end digital outfit came off the trail.
The only digital I'd shot by then was with the Toy Canon. I was sore impressed by her gear.
"Light's awful out there," she said. "Good luck."
"Thanks," I answered. "Guess we'll see, eh?"
No farther in than at the trailhead, I captured what'd become the third fine art print of mine that'll always hang on my walls.
When I happen see it there, I still sometimes wonder What was she seeing?
Occasionally I shot what I knew needed to be writ large, so it could truly seen. This one is called Rebar Roots:
No single image of mine exposes the mad juxtaposition of the real world eating our failures than that. Had I ever gotten around to striking a fine art print of it – say 30" long dimension at the very least – it'd hang on my wall too.
But, alas.
Streams big and small replenish most all the northwoods lakes. Much of that flow is seasonally gifted and during those times, in some places wood sprites might live.
Visible from the road through the woods only at select times of year, a little stream helps feed my beloved Bobcat Lake. This creek and others give the best they have, at the far end beavers pile the water high for safekeeping and voilà, a relatively stable little gem of a lake.
Some say the U.P.'s state bird is the mosquito. Generally, marsh marigold's and mosquitoes hang together. The first year I lugged the Linhof in here I fled back to the car like I'd been bit, as pretty much every square inch of me was.
The second year I again took my chances and failed.
Third year, I prepped as if for war. Donned chest waders and boots. Protected my upper body with impenatrable layers. Wore fingerless gloves. And on my head, mosquito netting covered by a canvas cap pulled down tight.
I slogged in, stood firm against the marauders and came away victorious.
Now, I'm not telling you wood sprites definitely live there. But should you insist on insisting they don't, then you'd best come prepared to impossibly prove the negative.
Yes, we live in that sort of time.
We must welcome possibility, even when remote. When we refuse to embrace opportunities amid hard places and times, then they're only hard. Dreaming big is better.
Even when I do get the shot, returning to certain sites has been particularly rewarding. Different seasons make fresh light and in a sense, that remakes the subject. Not to mention the passing years inevitably alters all things.
I worked the well-hidden gem below for nearly a decade before the Mamiya finally liberated me to simply throw film at it. So this one grey and nondescript day I didn't care that the world wasn't still to infinity, and the scene came alive.
Our best days together were yet to come, as the old Ford lasted well into the digital age. But that day I knew I was right about it all along.
Now, it's gone. The record I've made remains.
When time came to spend my last 4x5 transparency ever, I chose a nondescript portion of the Presque Isle River near Bobcat Lake to spend it on. Honestly, the day ran short and that's where it caught me.
Then I was done.
Months later, Heather suggested I transition over to digital capture. I traded the Mamiya and two lenses to defer the cost of a spiffy new Nikon.
And here we are.
Digital capture prompted in me a creative growth spurt not entirely dissimilar to what the Linhof did, in its time. That evolution and this revolution alike required that I learn to see the world more fully, on the fly. In the process, opportunity flowed forth.
Now I shoot botanicals. Like I did with my 1st six sheets of 4x5 back when, then didn't much again after the dark mysteries of abandonment caught and held my eye.
The nimble Nikon paired to great glass also drew me to what at a glance seems small, but on close inspection is foundational life thriving all around us, no matter our many grievous sins against it:
Bereft of majestic Superior and the northwoods during this year of the plague, rather than mourn my sight has refocused to what's in arm's reach. I see the ground better now than ever. My goodness, it's alive.
Spun of numerical magic, digitally translated light is at inception divorced from light itself and thus is in no way shape or form necessarily beholden to any truth. We must never again expect it is.
Remember that when evildoers flood the ether with credibly faked fake news.
But that same deceitful dexterity also readily translates and portrays ecstatic truth. More readily and often better than large format film ever did. That's no mean feat.
Like the sparkling day - directly opposite that dark place where a few marigolds swarmed by mosquitoes are maybe visited by wood sprites - I dove in chasing light and mere minutes later, emerged with this:
I could almost sorta kinda have held my breath for so long as that took to capture. Probably, for some of the time I was in there, I did just that.
It never occurred to me when I started this project that it'd reach 200 posts. Things change.
We change with them, or are eaten. Onward toward 200,000 total hits.
Hope to see you all there.
