After School

I went back to the beach yesterday. Last Days of Summer. School has started, and it has its effect. The beach was less crowded. After Labor Day, I think the crowds will be even thinner. September. Rhythms. Seasons.

Surfland

Joni Sternbach has a new book called Surfland. It is a collection of her tintype images of surfers around the world. You can order the book here.

Unique

Not all the photos I take are posed. As I walk about this stretch of beach, I realize how unique it all is. Where else, for instance, could one find an image such as this? I'll be including some of the non-surfing photos in the next few posts.

The Artists

Many of the people in the photos I've posted so far have written to me. I'm happy that they are enjoying the project. It is a truly collaborative one. The artists stand both before and behind the camera. To everyone--Thanks!

I have many, many more photos to post and many more still to make. Check back as often as you like. There is much more to come.

Sand and Sea

While my original idea was to photograph surfers, I was naturally drawn to the other activities around me. Skimboarding seemed a natural extension for this project.

Best, I didn't have to wait for them to come out of the water.

Sand and Sea.

A Little More Paradise?

There is a hardship in working just now. I've awakened each morning to cooler air and robin's egg blue skies. I must drive in the direction of the beach to get to work. I was sorely tempted yesterday to simply keep driving. I had my camera and a pair of shorts with me. What would I have found, I wondered? Who would be there? Others who played hooky, too, looking for a little more of Paradise?

Getting Addresses

The first day that I photographed at the beach, I had not thought to get the email addresses of the people I photographed so that I could send them a copy. The next time I went, though, I realized it might be a good idea. I photographed this surfer entering the water when I thought of it. I told him I had a pen and notebook in the car. Good, he said. My girlfriend can write it down.


And so I began to collect the addresses, if not always the names.

The first day I was there, I saw a blonde women walking toward the water. I wanted to ask her if I could photograph her, but she was too far ahead. Thinking it best not to run toward her waving a camera, I snapped a photograph of her from the distance, a lone woman on a blank stretch of beautiful beach.


Fortunately, I saw her again and was able to get her email address. Turns out she worked this summer at a surf camp for kids. I'm hoping to get her to teach my girlfriend to surf. Paid lessons, of course.

The Camera

There are difficulties inherent when photographing with the little toy camera, of course. It is not very adjustable. The focusing, for instance, is approximate. There are four settings on the lens--one person, a couple, a crowd, and mountains. You do not get to see the focused image in the viewfinder, so you must remember to reset the lens. Sometimes, it is not so accurate.

The camera also has light leaks, so the film sometimes has bright streaks around the edges of the images. This, of course, is part of its "charm." I've modified my camera quite a bit to reduce the leaking, but I have not eliminated it totally. It does give the pictures, though, the feeling of being taken with one of the old Brownie cameras by someone who wasn't quite sure how to load it.

The camera has no settings for exposure, either. You must simply match the film to the conditions. I take a variety of films with me and figure out which one I need to use when I get there.

I think, however, that the simplicity of the camera with all of its limitations and flaws adds to the appeal of the final product. Camera. Film. Analog. Looking at the images is like remembering something forgotten.

A Few Days One Summer

For a few years now, I've wanted to do some large format portraits of surfers using the old Polaroid 55 film. I could see the images in my mind. They would be big, handsome pictures of heroic types holding their surfboards on beaches and jetties, bold testimony to the simple, natural good life.

But two things happened before I acted. The first was Polaroid's announcement that they were no longer going to produce that film (and later that they would not produce instant film at all). The second was Joni Sternbach. I came across her work when I began to get interested in the old wet plate collodion process of photography used during the Civil War. I was devastated when I first viewed her beautiful tintype images of surfers. It seemed to me that she had done it, and now she owned it. There was no sense in trying to top what she had already done so beautifully.

And so I contacted her and arranged to take a workshop at her studio in New York. I sent her some jpegs of the work I was doing at that time and she agreed to let me come. But way led to way, and much to my regret, I was not able to go.

This summer, I went to a section of a Florida beach which I don't usually visit, where an inlet dissects the land and the waves are well-shaped. My girlfriend was wanting to learn photography and so we had taken a couple of cheap, plastic toy cameras with us for fun. It was a cloudy day, but there were still beach goers and surfers all about. As we walked along, I saw two surfers coming out of the water, a father and a son as it turned out, who looked magnificent. Thinking about the abandoned project, I said to her, "Why don't you ask them if you can take their picture?" And she did. And while she arranged them together and stepped back to make the photograph, a jealous desire drove me to walk over and ask, "May I take one, too?"

And that is how it began. When the negatives and proof sheets of the day's efforts came back, I was knocked out by the images. The little toy Holga seemed a perfect tool for making this series. While the images are contemporary, they seem timeless, too, like something taken during the '40s and '50s and 60's.

I want to thank everyone who allowed me to impose upon them in my subsequent trips to that little stretch of beach. I do not know all of their names, but I have seen many of them there again and again. It is a wonderful place full of generous people. I will continue with this project as long as I am able.

There will be many more images uploaded here over time. If I took your photo and you do not see it here, you will eventually. Until then, I'll see you at the beach.

Photos to Come

Photos to come.