My favorite camera, a Nikon F3, it’s my jam. I’m using it more and more. It’s a film camera and it is replacing my telephone as my camera. I like my iPhone but plain and simple, I don’t want to use it to take my favorite pictures.
Nope.
…and I’m not going to.
I had literally driven here from a club just down the road, a two minute drive. There, at the door, they put a wrist band on me, “How much is the door fee?” Photographers are free, go ahead, they are setting up on the patio.
“No, I want to support the bands, please let me pay.”
Music and I started out pretty young, my Mom blasting rock on her record player. She had a bunch of friends over, they were painting their inner tubes for a float down the Salt River. They didn’t call themselves anything man, but they were hippies. It was the late sixties and the sounds of those songs were my first exposure to music, Deep Purple was the band (I think.)
Ten years later, I’m holding on to the coping, my right foot presses down on my skateboard, I’m in an empty swimming pool with a couple of other skaters. I’m waiting for a break to push off and start my run, a big boom box blasting out DEVO on the deck and I’m ready to snake.
Next decade I’m getting my underground music from a friend in Texas. I’m introduced to the staccato of Cabaret Voltaire, rhythmic pumping grooves broken by switch up beats from a cassette player through my upgraded speakers in my truck, I’m driving to the highest mountain and flying off it only to do it again and again and again and again…
Now I’m trippin, no, not like that. On the couch, iPad early morning and all is quiet. The animals want to be feed and I really can’t sleep. I don’t want to plug into current events or mindless doom scroll social media. Holy hell waits for me there. I want to create, exactly what I want here at this toodee platform. I’m going back, connecting the dots… reviewing what I’ve done but the emphasis is on the now.
I’m driven by my photography.
My family, my life within takes precedence, but my creative, by design is I make adventure in my capacity. I fuck up sometimes and that’s where I live, in some times. I have these ideas, how am I going to do it and I just stick my foot out and push off. That’s how I’ve done a thousand carves on my skateboard and hundreds of flights in my gliders and how I make my photojournalist aspirations. No, no no no not for media money influences power working for the machine, photojournalism of my mind.
I dream up and write, photograph, put together, post and do it again.
This makes me happy, I do it for myself and if you enjoy it, great, if not, go do your thing because I’m doing mine here, now.
Film cameras struggle with the darkness in my hands, they need an accessory, much like I do to navigate, to get things done. How do I do that? I want something that makes sense to me. My cameras are old (like me) so I decide where I want to start looking back but those pictures are all looking forward back then. Not many photographers got covered by other photographers. Usually they were loners, in getting the job done, the exclusive. Sure there are those White House press conferences where you caught glimpses of the mass of them, no, not much in the way of descriptions so I go to the period correct product catalogs of my camera, choosing what it is, honest pairings of flash and bracket mounted flashes. Researching down the rabbit hole, searching and finding and purchasing and cleaning and assembling and experimenting and now I’m ready.
“You can’t bring that camera in here.”
Dude, everyone has a camera, think about that.
“No, they don’t have one like that.”
He bent his head to the side reaching up to the microphone on his collar, I was being watched.
Mines just old, way older than you, it’s just big before all those smartphones, I can’t even post what pictures I take. It will be weeks before I generate anything from using it.”
“Oh, do you have the white wrist band?”
I tuck the F3/MD-4/SB-11 under my L forearm and pull up my R sleeve.
“Wrong color, are you with the press? Let me see your credentials.”
The door opens and the next tier of scrutiny comes out, “…can’t come in here with a camera like that.”
Definitely not cool, I was listening to the music that came out of the door before you were born. Taking photographs with cameras like this back then too.
”Ok, no problem.”
“Do you have press credentials? Do you want them from us?”
Yeah, that would be cool.
He goes back inside.
I didn’t even want to tell him I’m a blogger. I hate that word. I hate it when people make fun of people who, “He has a web site.” I’m not that person. I can’t help it if I’ve been making web sites since before it was stupid. It’s just what I do to have fun after I have fun.
Fuck you I thought, while I was polite to him.
Mister earpiece says, “You can’t bring the camera in, you are welcome, but you can’t bring it in.”
Ughh.
I don’t have any credentials except my age and knowledge. I don’t care about credentials and if I had any, it’s the date of my birth on my drivers license. It’s the color of my hair, the sun beat skin, the fact that I’m probably going to be the oldest person in your fucking nightclub trying to hang on to the little piece of me that’s just like you.
“Go put your camera in your car and come back.”
Thanks, no problem, I turn and I’m gone.
I was there for the music, I had been in there before listening to the DJ stir up all these memories. This dude has the same eclectic backlog of music he chooses from. Same same, mighty cool, all over the place but the beats often retreating to old Jamaican dance hall music mixed with old English industrial punched up with regular hits from his electronics.
I wanted a drink.
I wanted to listen to the music and give him the little thumb drive with a big whack of vinyl recording, anyone that enjoys this type of music would be astonished at the focused collection. I didn’t want anything in return, I just wanted to say thanks for choosing periods of sound that I enjoy. It wasn’t supposed to happen…
I turned around and left.
I don’t want to do what I don’t want to do. Everyone has an iPhone. Even I do too but I don’t want to use it to create this evening. I will use it to serve me but not that way.
My wife is a beautiful person but she is normal. She watches football, likes a couple of beers, loves family, is a caregiver for old people dying, a hospice nurse. We are an opposite couple. Married plus twenty years.
“Adam, you are a gawker as far as the management is concerned, you aren’t like everyone else in there.”
Gottdamit, she’s right, I’m not a gawker, but I am. I am the same but I’m different and not because I want to be. My life flows smoothly but it takes its own course and I am ok with that. I would tell you who I am but I already did.
She knows I’m not gawking, they don’t.
I want to listen to music, have a drink, record some images, write, do it again.
This is what I do.
Am I done?
Hell no. But I’m done trying to get into this bar with a film camera. If they knew they would know. No attitude, no hate, no nothing. It just doesn’t work for me. The clubs where my son plays have zero problems with my cameras. I’m welcome, my big press camera is welcome, my presence is welcome.
“No, I want to support the bands, please let me pay.”
I gave the gal working the door my money.
“Thank you, have a great evening.”
I did.
“Thank you, have a great evening.”
I did.
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| Entrance, daytime, in an alley. |
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