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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday February 19, 2001 Volume III Number 8 |
FOCUS - Photographs and Memories
The camera’s gone. Disappeared.
I haven’t allowed myself accept the fact that I’ll never see it again. We’ve been good friends for a long time now, my 35mm Minolta with the 28-to-105 zoom lens and me.
It’s just been misplaced. It’ll show up. Carolyn will come around the corner of the hallway with a smile and say, “look what I found.” That’s what I keep telling myself.
But that’s becoming less and less likely. We’ve turned the house upside down, looked under every pillow, in every drawer and closet… behind, under, around every piece of furniture. The trunk of the car. Under the seats. All the usual places. Nothing. Nada. It’s gone.
We’ve called the people who just may have found it after I left it behind. Nothing. It’s not labeled, so if a stranger picked it up… even a well-meaning stranger… he would not know what to do, other than consider it his lucky day.
There’s a roll of film in the camera, too. That’s the only evidence that I am the owner. I’m in a couple of those pictures, smiling into the lens. Pictures from the night we celebrated my birthday and a LAX to Europe send-off party at the Claim Jumper several weeks ago.
We were there with Kevin and his pal Mike and Mike’s parents (our long-time friends Nick and Colleen) the Sunday night before we put the two boys on a jumbo jet bound for Zurich where the two will complete their college sophomore year studying abroad. Those pictures remain, undeveloped, in the Minolta’s body.
Hope also remains. I want to believe it’ll reappear. The thought that it might not, well, it just plain hurts. So I’m not gunna think about it.
Us tough guys learn early on to live in airtight compartments. I’ll just move on to something else.
* * * * * *
The concert in the college auditorium was packed out.
The headliner had a couple songs on the national billboard hit list so even in this sleepy Southern college town he drew a sizable crowd. His songs, many of them ballads, were stories of life in the city, and blue-collar working class neighborhoods in South Philadelphia. Everyone agreed, they were distinctive and entertaining. The curly headed, mustachioed singer-songwriter connected with his audience at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He worked through his song list as he had many many times before, spinning stories of trucking, and operating heavy construction equipment and jockeying jack hammers and found then lost loves and doing gigs in smoky bar rooms and spending endless nights in cheap hotels playing his music and picking his guitar.
It was Friday night, September 20, 1974.
By the next morning, the audience of college students collectively wished they could re-run the concert. They’d been given a gift that night. At the time, they had no idea how special a gift. They liked the songs. They laughed and cried through the stories. The performance was brilliant. Live concerts delivered a vibrancy and tonal depth that could not be duplicated on a long play vinyl stereo album. When it was over, the soloist took a bow. The applause was polite.
His closing remark was, “See you later.”
Sometimes college kids just don’t get it. It’s just another Saturday night. Just one more concert. There was no standing ovation. No hysterical applause. No plea for an encore.
It was Jim Croce’s final concert.
* * * * * * *
I took my first photography course in the eighth grade.
Mr. Roberts taught us the basics. The three factors in determining just how much light you want captured on your film: first the film speed. The film you put in your camera has a speed (ASA) rating. This is a measure of the film’s responsiveness to light; how quickly it will collect the light from an image and record it. High-speed film is handy when you are in a low light situation, but an image can appear grainy. There’s the trade off. Low speed film requires more light, but it captures a sharper image.
The second factor is the aperture setting – or how wide the opening in the lens to allow light to come through. The larger the opening (f-stop) the more light hits the film. The aperture setting also controls your “depth of field.” A tiny opening in the lens (closing down the aperture) will bring just about everything in the frame into a clear focus. But a wide opening will require a sharp focus on your subject… everything else in your frame that is either before or behind your subject will blur into fuzziness. It’s a nice effect.
The third factor is your shutter speed – the measure of time your shutter remains open. The longer it is open, the more light hits your film. If your shutter is open for a long time, you can capture those dim specks of light in the night sky. If you put your camera on a tripod and aim it at the heavens and leave your shutter open for a few minutes, you’ll trace the rotation of the earth in the circular movement of the stars across your frame. Or do the same at the edge of a mountain stream tumbling down the rocks back in the woods on a lazy afternoon and with a properly timed exposure, the foaming water will turn into a milky white blur as it moves over the granite. A high-speed shutter setting, on the other hand, will stop the action. Get a close up of that same running water, and with a split second shutter speed, you’ll see drops of water suspended in space.
A photographer combines all three variables with every shot. He thinks about his lighting situation – then his film speed, and his shutter speed and just the right aperture.
Then he thinks about framing his shot. How to draw attention to his subject. His depth of field. That’s why you need to be patient if you are the subject and your photographer is thoughtful. Be patient. He’s making important calculations. You’ll be pleased with the results.
Mr. Roberts taught us eager thirteen and fourteen year-olds the basics. When we brought back our exposed film, we carried our assignments into the dark room. There we learned about the chemicals and the properties of photographic paper and the red light (which allowed us to see in the dark room, but did not expose the sensitive paper). We’d first develop the film in an enclosed canister. And then we would transfer the image of our negatives to the paper, and like magic our pictures would appear. We’d set them up to dry – and then we’d show them off. Trading our photos in the class, we’d critique each other’s work looking to see how successful we’d been in our control of light and composition and focus.
That got me started.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a camera handy. I do believe I have recorded most every decade on film.
Just this morning, as I write, the sun has painted a wide sky-scape of flaming orange and magenta and maroon and plum glowing bright across the blue-gray clouds stretching from north to south on the eastern horizon. It’s a magical sunrise. This moment of brilliant color will only last a few minutes. I walked outside in the crisp morning air to catch the wonder and beauty of this morning’s wake-up call to a sleepy world and on the way out the door, reached out for my Minolta.
It’s gone.
* * * * * *
When
Jim Croce left the stage that night to a mediocre crowd of distracted
collegians in Natchitoches, Louisiana, he decided to go ahead and take the
small single engine airplane on to Dallas that night rather than wait until the
next morning as planned. He
instructed his pilot to prepare for departure.
He made a routine call home to his wife Ingrid.
Jim and three of his band members and their pilot jumped on board.
The airplane, perhaps overloaded, lumbered down the runway, and with difficulty, slowly, grudgingly, left the ground. In the darkness of the night sky, a tall pine tree at the end of the runway reached just high enough to catch the wing-tip of the aircraft barely taking flight, tearing a gaping hole in the fuel tank and knocking the plane into a short fatal spin and a terrible fiery crash.
All five aboard were killed.
* * * * * *
When Grandma Dorothy died in 1994, we discovered that she still had grandpa’s collection of thirty-five millimeter slides in the same metal boxes Grandpa Charlie used to preserve them for posterity.
I suppose you might say that grandpa’s posterity would be we.
So my brother Roger culled through the entire collection and on one memorable night, the whole clan gathered in a living room where Roger set up a tall silver screen on a flimsy metal stand and fired up an antique projector. That night, we all rediscovered Grandpa’s artistic know-how. And what a journey it was.
Maybe it was a combination Mr. Roberts and Grandpa Charlie. But a good portion of my life I’ve seen through a single-lens reflex camera. When we travel down the winding back roads of a mountain range or along a rugged coastline or through the skyscrapers of a big city, I’m thinking about the shot. I’m attaching a wide-angle lens to the camera body and thinking about how one might capture the grand majesty of it all.
And then I want to contrast the wide shots with some close ups. I want to get the detail. Not only the wide field of blooming color in the springtime, but the close up of the flower, pedals opening up to the sun and a velvet dark green backdrop sharpening up the image of natural gradations in bloom - whites and reds and blues and yellows on my subject filling the frame.
My favorite shots are the faces. I confess - I am intrusive with my camera. I want you to look at me. I’m gunna get close with my 105mm portrait lens. I want your eyes bright, and looking directly into that circle of polished glass, and I want that natural easy smile that draws people to you and makes them comfortable. That’s the one I want. There. Hold it right there. Here comes the flash. Got it.
And what a collection it is. My friends. Our children. The people I love. Changing through the years, and I’ve got ‘em all.
Some of my subjects have been less than co-operative. I’ve had people turn around and walk away from me and ignore my invitation to pose. They turn the other direction. Their refusal is absolute and final.
I want to sit them down and tell them to trust me. I will capture that part of them that the world loves to see. I want to tell them how unfortunate it is that some careless picture taker caught their bad side, or caught them in a sorry pose, or because they didn’t understand the camera or take time to work with them to make a good picture, left them with embarrassing images that ought to be shredded, destroyed. Damaging pictures that tear the heart out of one’s esteem.
Let me do it right, I want to say.
But they won’t listen.
My Minolta and I have known rejection.
* * * * * *
In September of 1974 I had just graduated from the seminary and was a twenty-five year old senior pastor of a church in a California beach town. News of Jim Croce’s death at age thirty hit me hard.
While Croce didn’t share my theology, as far as I know, his music touched me. Maybe it’s because he was a street kid with a college education. (He had a degree in psychology from Villanova University.) His blend of human insight and street smarts intrigued me. His lyrics packed a ton of meaning into a single phrase. His characters – Big Bad LeRoy Brown – You Don’t Mess Around with Jim – Rapid Roy the Stock Car Boy – they all rang true in the world I knew.
If I could
put time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do, is spend every day
like a treasure and then - again - I would spend them with you.
Photographs and Memories. Even today, when I hear the songs, I get this funny feeling that this old world filled with quirky people is really an OK place. The memories are good. I guess that’s what nostalgia is about.
In San Diego’s Gas Lamp District, Ingrid Croce opened a restaurant. The neighborhood brings back memories of a time when the city drew people in. Crowds of eager laughing folks on the sidewalk, window shopping and holding hands and stopping in at whatever eatery strikes their fancy. Open-air sidewalk cafes. Italian cuisine. Thai. Chinese. Japanese. French. American. Beef. Fish. You name it.
Croce’s is long and narrow, classic red brick and high ceiling and steel beams, urban charm just around the corner from the Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood. Tablecloth and candlelight. Jim Croce memorabilia on the walls and a discreet soundtrack of Croce music through the sound system. There are two stages, each dedicated to nightly live music – rhythm and blues and jazz.
Last week, Wednesday, Valentine’s Day, Carolyn and I wandered around the San Diego’s Gas Lamp District in and out of antique shops and art galleries and a classic car show room and then finally a long wonderful dinner at Croce’s.
We raised two glasses of bubbly Champaign as Croce sang “there never seems to be enough time to do the things you wanna do once you find them. I’ve been around enough to know that you’re the one I wanna go through time with” and we smiled and toasted photographs and memories and the thirty-two years that have passed since I asked “will you marry me?” on a snowy night on Valentine’s Day in a little town in Northern Wisconsin.
Thank you, Ingrid. Thank you, Jim.
* * * * * *
Well, it’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Me too.
My camera’s gone. But my pictures aren’t. Jim Croce is gone, too. But not his music.
Photographs and Memories. They add a certain richness to our lives, don’t you think? They make us who we are. They’ve prepared us for today.
Go ahead. Let them fill your mind for a few minutes. Let them touch your heart. The pain of loss is an OK reminder that we need to embrace the things we have. More important, the people we have.
And don’t forget to record the events of today, this week. Journal them. Photograph them. Videotape them.
These are days worth keeping.
My Minolta... Where are you?
I miss you already.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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