Day 21

Spent a large chunk of today staring at my kitchen floor -- small sections at a time, in great detail == because I gave it a desperately needed scrubbing. Noticed this basket casting its shadow as the afternoon shadows lengthened.

Day 20

These flags are the image I referred to missing a few days back, when I ventured out sans iPhone. TOday I finally got back to the shopping center where a newly opened store is celebrating with flags. Once again, not at all the shot I meant to take -- but this time I was more hampered by my fellow shoppers, who blew through the parking lot like it was the Indy 500 start line. Since the shot I wanted involved standing in the middle of the lane, looking up instead of at traffic, the two I grabbed were well let's just say rushed and wrong. A taxi whipping around the corner nearly rendered my children motherless so I retreated to the semisafety of the curb and just did what I could from there. A busy day today, fully loaded with ongoing life disasters (I seriously suspect I must have accidentally wronged some extremely primitive and extraordinarily punitive deity who is now busily delivering major vengeance) but it helped to know that I'd be making a picture at some point.

Day 19

What a difference a day can make. Yesterday I had the pleasure and privilege of going shooting with my friend Brigitte, one of my favorite mamas. She's also trying to re-claim photography into her life, having had a similar experience to mine (and of course to that many other creative women) wherein the essential generative work of mothering very young children crowds out so much else we used to enjoy with our higher minds: reading. Keeping up with current events. Showering.

So, we had a terrific time -- or at least I did, and Brigitte seemed to be enjoying herself too but was too busy framing images to keep exclaiming, "OMG this is so great! Isn't this fantastic?!" like I seemed unable keep myself from doing, oh every 90 seconds or so. We spent a couple of hours exploring a particularly apocalyptic corner of extreme southeastern Baltimore City known as Fairfield, where there are refineries and tank farms and even, as was strongly evident on the hot and aromatic breeze, a rendering plant. After an overcast day -- cloudy is fine with me, I took my Diana camera and flat light is usually best for what I like to do with toycamera pictures -- as the sun sank toward the horizon there was some really lovely, though often fugitive, evening light breaking from below the cloud cover. Light so nice it makes me want to break out the fancy adjectives: aureate. Pellucid. Then we went for sushi.

By the time shooting and dinner were done it was late and even though I was excited to review the iPhone shots I'd done I knew lacked the mental energy to edit my photos quickly or even well. But I've passed another pleasurable hour this morning looking through yesterday evening's take, and I'm really pretty happy with the one I settled on. Who knows why all four tires on a giant skid loader would have the word "freedom" scrawled on them...but I've recently been very intrigued with "found" language, words appearing in unlikely and unexpected places (as in, see day 9). Beyond the happy finding, though, I have been enjoying the serendipitous composition of this image: the way the slant shape of the loader's front end is mimicked by the fencepost beyond, and both in a kind of call-and-response visual tension with the frame edge.

All this was totally accidental -- I simply cannot frame that intentionally with the iPhone, because it moves as I press the shutter and the photo I get is seldom the photo I was meaning to make. Like Arbus said: "I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better, or worse."

(An aside about Arbus: Two days ago, July 26th, was the 40th anniversary of her suicide -- a day I quietly mark each year. Arbus has been an extremely important influence on my own work, of course aesthetically so but more in the bravery and forthrightness with which she approached making pictures. Her unflinching way of looking, which I have never found to be exploitative or denigrating: Arbus looked, because she wanted to see. Not to judge or look down on someone she approached as subject, but to build a bridge between. I often see great empathy in her work, though undeniably her own great alienation is powerfully within as well.)

I think I've taken so seamlessly to shooting with the iPhone because, as I've mentioned before, it's so similar in process to shooting with plastic cameras -- the unpredictability. The utter lack of control. When I began shooting intensively with plastics I eventually began trying to control them -- trying to adjust the shutter springs to make reliably uniform exposures, taping the bodies to prevent light leaks, using filters. Then one day I happened to look at my highly modified camera and suddenly i just *got* it -- the whole point of using a toy camera is to GIVE UP control, not exert it. I peeled off all the tape and now just take the toys as they come, with all their quirks and foibles. I want predictability, I've got cameras that will do that in microcalibrated microdetail. I want surprise and the possibility of delight -- even with the equal risk of disaster -- then it's time for toys. Or, to a certain extent, the iPhone -- mine, anyway, seems to have a mind of its own. Make that an eye of its own.

day 18

This photo makes me so sad I cannot bear to write about it.

Day 17

Here's a first: posting a photo the same day I made it. I'm going to try for this to be the way things go from here on out. Though life does get in the way sometimes.

I have walked past this storm drain cover before and always something tweaked at the hem of my vision -- something about how it looks recalling fire circles. Dolmens and druids. I don't know how to put it -- this seems like such a random incident of modernity, but for me it speaks to something older. Tribal.

Day 16: The Inevitable

Yesterday, all day, it was my intent to get back to the place where I'd seen an interesting picture possibility, but it turns out I never left the house. Lots going on and the moment to put picture-taking in my day just kept getting put off. So once again 11 pm rolls around and I realize holy heck, I need to take a photo!

When I first began this project someone teased me about how long it would take before I did the inevitable self-portrait-in-mirror gambit. "All photographers do it. It's like it's required or something," he said. "It's all Lee Friedlander's fault," I retorted, but he'd already wandered away before I could tell him about Friedlander's "Self Portait" book from 1970; I remember very vividly my first encounter with the work back during my intro to photography classes. It was funny and human and self-referential without being self-obsessed.

I really didn't mean to fall back on a 'here I am in the mirror' shot so early in the project -- I wasn't after me at all, I was trying to do something low light with two lamps and one mirror but sometimes when one-handing the iPhone trying to line up a shot, I accidentally trigger its "shutter". So here's an unintentional self portrait, since the shot I didn't mean to take was much more visually appealing than the ones I intentionally made.

(iPhone, Hipstamatic, John S lens, Kodot XGrizzled film)

Day 15

I began Day 15 by spying a compelling image possibility I could not exploit because I, very uncharacteristically, had left the house minus my Device. I plan to go back to this place with my iPhone, from which I never again shall be parted, but could not do so yesterday.

Because yesterday I actually had to shoot a photo yesterday for a more-or-less monthly food column I write for the Baltimore Citypaper, and so found myself in the back yard setting up little tableaux involving tomato plants and mason jars of gazpacho -- and shooting them with my iPhone. (I'm still waiting to hear back from the art director on the images I filed to him this morning. A bit nervously: the photos looked good, but they are on the very small side for publication repro standards. The paper goes to press this evening).

I must say that before undertaking this project, I never would've had the nerve to hand in an actual photo assignment shot on my phone. But it was fun, and while I was at it I spent some time making other photos of random things in the yard I'd noticed. So now I have the happy conundrum of having to choose today's 365 image from two that I like quite a bit, images I enjoyed taking time to work with and compose. Both of them speak to a loose theme of my earlier plastic camera work, though it's sort of difficult to articulate: pathways. Openings.

Here's the second photo, which I think ultimately doesn't work but there's something about it that I can't quite let go of. I dunno, is it cheating to post two pictures for one day?

7/28/11 Addendum: the day after I made and posted this second image I started reading an advance copy of "The Unconquered" by Scott Wallace, an account of finding yet-uncontacted tribes in the Amazon. The introduction talks about following footprints on a path through the jungle and finding a single small sapling cut to lay across the trail -- unmistakable symbol saying, go no further. It turns out this image is in its own way a suburban equivalent. Leaving me musing about paths, both actual and metaphorical, and what an uncertain and meandering one mine has been for the past couple years on both fronts.

Day 14

Eek. So today was the first day I almost blew my commitment to a daily photo -- it was a long, emotionally and physically draining day with lots going on. Dropping off the boys so they could depart for a week at the beach with their dad -- I've never been away from them for more than 96 hours, and that only once -- and that time the heartache of missing them nearly killed me. Thus this even-longer stretch is going to be long and wide and very very hard to get through, and I am so very grateful to have this project as a positive distraction.

So after saying goodbye to the boys I went to the gym for a couple of cathartic hours, and then got home and thought, 'I'm already sweaty, why not work in the garden?' -- at noon, in strong sun and 99 degree heat. Not surprisingly I ended up with heat stroke, failing to notice in my distraught state the attendant headache, dizziness, etc. until I literally almost passed out amid the okra. It took me literally nine hours, plus a quart of Gatorade, to stop feeling downright feeble. I was finally feeling semi-human again when it occurred to me it was 10:30 pm and I had yet to make a picture. So I got out of bed and practiced a little low-light iPhone photography. (Very little -- 3 frames, my knees were weirdly wobbly and I had a residual ice-pick-in-the-skull headache that still hasn't totally gone away, 36 hours later). Resultant photo not exciting, but the feeling of accomplishment to be undergoing such an arduous day and still able to fulfill my commitment, however feebly, was a life-saver. A little light in the darkness is always a good thing.

Day 13

I am starting to realize the value of this undertaking, to me specifically, is that it's forcing me to make room in my jam-packed life for something that was once essential to how I met - experienced - processed the world. Once the boys showed up, my existential furniture got a deep rearranging and making pictures was shoved down the list by other essential things like dinner and diaper changes. Photography could always wait while these could not. And so it waited, and waited, and eventually got sort of lost in the hubbub.

The 365 commitment shifts my metaphorical furnishings once again. We were driving home from West Virginia and I'd noticed several intriguing photo possibilities fly by the car windows as we flew down the road, but everyone was hungry and cranky and I just didn't feel like stopping. After an hour we did take a lunch break, then got back on the road again happier (and sleepier) with bellies full. The same propulsive imperative -- home still two hours away -- nagged at me, but shortly after we started driving I spied a parking lot with a stairway to nowhere; apparently there had once been a business there, now long gone. We were stopped at a traffic light in Berryville, Virginia and I sort of sat there staring at this set of concrete stairs, climbing upward to nowhere in particular, feeling totally dazed but also mentally composing a photo. Then the light changed and the weight of habit pushed my foot down on the accelerator.

As we sped away I felt a stab of regret at passing up this odd ziggurat of a stairway -- and then it suddenly occurred to me that I had an obligation. I had yet to make a photo for Day 13, and here was a potential good one waving at me from the side of the road, if only I would stop. So at the next traffic light I pulled a U-turn, boys asking what the heck. "Mama has to take a photograph, guys. We're just stopping for a second," I told them.

And here's the photo. It looks really different from the one in my head. It's nothing very compelling. But at this point in the process it is for me more about making a picture than the picture itself.

Day 12

Back at the swimming hole. Cole more interested in catching crawdads than swimming, today.

Day 11

Actually had a different photo for this day, but it didn't feel right -- visually I liked it better than this image of a brush pile on someone's backyard lot, but the original image I'd picked felt...harsh. Jangly. This image feels more tranquil and in keeping with the week we've been enjoying here at Lost River.

Day 10

The pleasure of early summer apples.

Day 9

Still out of town enjoying an extremely remote, and relaxed, week in the Appalachian mountains.  This has been a week badly needed:  uninterrupted time together, quiet, calm, and sweet.  We've evolved an immediate ritual of going to a nearby swimming spot on the south branch of the Shenandoah River nearly every day, a deep hole at the base of some cliffs.  An alluvial fan of lovely, worn river rocks spreads out from shore, creating a surprisingly pleasant beach.  Someone who came before us left this message on one of the rocks.  This week we have been blessed - I do not use that word lightly -- with a few perfect summer days, the kind that do feel like they just might last forever.

Day 8

Day 7

Getting ready to go out of town for a week, crazy busy. Part of packing the pool toys noticed this float blowing away across the lawn.

We are in a pretty far off place, so I will posting when I can. Photos will be made, but not sure when I'll be able to show them to you. Watch this space...

Day 6

I specifically chose to present this 365 project in blog format because I want to write about the images. This project is as much therapy -- giving me a kind place for my brain to go on dark days -- as it is an attempt to get my head back into photography, or maybe that's photography back into my head, as an indelible everyday part of how I move through the world.

Today has been a fairly tumultuous day, at the end of an incredibly long and difficult week. All kinds of hellfire is raining down on my head right now, and I'm struggling mightily to remain upright. So today's photo is a simple snapshot of my vegetable garden, because my garden is one place I find a bit of peace when my wheels are running off the road. Also because both powdery mildew and squash vine borers have afflicted my big, bounteous spaghetti squash plants, and I know they'll be kaput soon. So today's image is a little moment in time, my garden when it has just begun feeding us abundantly -- okra, eggplant, squash, greens, beans, cucumbers, the first tomatoes. Something simple to be simply grateful for when life anything but simple.

Day 5

Day 5: the first day I forgot all about my 365 commitment until late in the afternoon, then thought, 'holy crap, I have to find a photo!' This was squeezed into a busy day, the pier on the pond in the back yard of the farmhouse I rent. The first photo I've had to search for, and I don't especially love it. I know going into this that some days are just like this, overfilled with work and obligation and little room for enjoyable generativity. On the other hand, I can see this photo in a tastefully austere gallery frame on the wall at Crate + Barrel. Which I guess makes a case for its boringness. Ah well, 361 more days of possible inspiration and brilliance await!

Day 4

Something else I've been looking at for a long while, each time I pass this corner thinking what an amazing photo these two cock-eyed concrete picnic tables (provided for your Finksburg Jiffy Mart al fresco dining pleasure!) would make. I have actually photographed them using a Diana, but I never seem to get around to processing film so I haven't seen the photos.

Same iPhone, same settings. It annoys me that this particular Hipstamatic combo attempts to make images look like an old square Instamatic print with the date ("June 81") fake-stamped on the edge. I've been cropping that part out in Photoshop. I never saw one of those square prints that had vignetting and rough borders -- it's inappropriate faux effect piling on, if you ask me.

Day 3

I've been driving by Reese Volunteer Fire Company most of my life, located as it is along the highway between my mother's house and the closest town. One week each year the fire co. throws a marvelous hometown carnival -- ferris wheel, funnel cakes, bounce a pingpong ball into the fishbowl and take home your very own goldfish in a plastic bag. The Reese Carnival was always the highlight of my childhood summers. The remainder of the year the carnival grounds stand empty, bereft. For not quite so many years as I've been attending the carnival I've been driving past admiring the strings of light bulbs that hang there, waiting for the time to pass before they once more light up the midway. I always noticed them,always thinking what a striking photo it could make. So today I stopped.

That black speck in the center of the frame isn't noise or schmutz -- it's a bird. I like it a lot, the accident of it appearing in all that sky at just that moment.

A lot of trial and error with the iPhone Hipstamatic app. I feel guilty about how much I like this app, images from which come surprisingly close in appearance (on the computer screen, anyway) to replicating the actual plastic camera film photographs I used to print right down to the rough filed-out neg carrier borders. I'm always going on about how digital images ultimately lack the soul of analog film pictures, and how if Kodak finally stops manufacturing 120 film I'll devise some way of making my own (until that day, though, I'm simply stockpiling Tri-X).

I always enjoyed the lack of control when shooting with toy cams, how when you opened the processing can to get that first look at your film the images rarely looked how you'd imagined they would. And I am discovering that what you see in the Hipstamatic viewfinder tends to be only a small sliver of the photo you'll actually get. So I do feel like it replicates a little bit the crapshoot of using fifty year old toy cameras, my weapon of choice for the past two decades.


(iPhone, Hipstamatic app, set to Kaimal Mark II lens and BlacKeys B+W film settings).

Day 2

For much too long now I've been occasionally seeing things I once would have stopped to photograph -- most often, something alongside the road catching my eye as I drive by. Once upon a time I would have stopped, exposed a few frames on the plastic cameras I always had with me. But then I started to forget to bring the cameras along (they didn't fit well in the diaper bag). After awhile all my film expired. But old film, no camera, it didn't matter -- in the mad headlong rush of everyday parenting, always on the way to somewhere and usually 10 minutes late getting there, I had simply stopped stopping. Figuring I'd come back. I always meant to. But I never did.

But on Monday, I did. Driving to my mom's house from the gym, in a rush to run get Cole and take him to a pediatrician appointment for a sudden and severe ear ache, I passed a farm field where a plastic bag was caught on a wire fence, twisting lazily in the hot summer breeze. Before that moment I would have seen it, thought 'that would make a great photo,' felt the usual twinge of regret as I kept going. But not this day.

Late or not, ear infection be damned, I turned the car around. Parked. Ran across the busy highway and spent a moment just looking, gathering myself. How to make this photo. And here it is. (iPhone again, Hipstamatic app).

Day 1: Away We Go

Welcome to the very first day of Lulu's Big Undertaking: my 365 photo project. As in, I hereby commit to making a photograph for each day of the next year and posting it here. Thanks for joining me!

Been a long time coming; I first heard about 365s from my friend Beth back in, I think, April of this year and I've wanted to start my own project ever since. Ever since I first picked up a camera with serious intent in 1990 photography has been how I approached the world, how I made sense of things. It was what I did but also who I was. Nearly nine years ago, however, I stepped most of the way out of my photography career to be home with first one and then two children, happily living my lifelong wish of full-time motherhood.

At first, with only one baby, I still made pictures as a matter of course, it was so deeply ingrained in me. But the passionate tedium of life with small children grew and gained momentum, and photography slowly receded in the balance of my life. Along the way I discovered that the energy and creativity necessary for being a present and engaged mother drew from the same well as the energy and creativity I relied upon for making pictures.

More about all this later. I spent a long time wanting to make pictures, but not making them pretty much at all ever. Beth's description of her 365 photo year sparked a longing in me to begin again, and I genuinely meant to. But then I got tangled up in all kinds of process-oriented issues: which camera to use. How to present the pictures. Whether to write along with the images or just put them up to speak for themselves. So for some months the 365 was something I chased around in my head without actually getting around to actually doing.

And then this past Sunday, as I was packing the boys and me literally out the door for a few days at my mom's house, I spotted this spent paper airplane on the floor. It caught my eye, even though it's not at all the sort of situation that used to ring my visual bells. Something in me heaved to life, turned over, insisted: I made the picture -- on my ever-present iPhone. And so it begins. Away we go.