Sometimes you're driving home from a few days in Auckland and you get round Lake Taupo (if that's the way you've come) and head on south trying to ignore the fact that dusk is falling on the Desert Road and that you're getting hungry. So in some town you stop and hope to find someplace open for dinner that isn't takeaways. Being a Monday you could well be out of luck. Down a side street you spot a cafe/restaurant masquerading as a delicatessen. You're confused, but seeing as it's well after 5.30pm and they're still open, albeit without any staff out front, you guess they may be open for dinner. Indeed they are. You order something off the blackboard (probably the pasta) and follow that up with dessert and coffee - you've got to sustain yourself for the next 4 hours of dull, and dark, road ahead - before leaving. As you head to the car (parked across the road from the cafe) you notice what you parked in front of. You look at your watch and figure it's not too late so you can spare the time. You open the boot, pull out your blad, your lightmeter and a jacket (it is the middle of winter after all). While the patrons you left in the cafe stare out the window wondering what you're up to, you wander around the 'park' and size up the best angle remembering you've only got an 80mm lens which somewhat limits options (but not necessarily in a bad way). You find a spot, set up the camera, take a meter reading, open the shutter (once again cursing the fact that you left the cable release in the 4x5 case, which this time around is buried under all the gear you're bringing down for a colleague) and stand holding the shutter release in for 4min while the film does its thing trying not to move cos your tripod is, naturally, buried with your 4x5 case, and trying to ignore that fact that you're getting cold. When you've finished that exposure you realise that there is more to this 'park' than you thought, so wander around more and find a better spot for a shot. So once again you set up the camera, take a meter reading, open the shutter (this time only for 30sec) and stand holding the shutter release in while the film does its thing trying not to move cos your tripod is, naturally, buried with your 4x5 case, and trying to ignore that fact that you're getting colder. After 30sec you say quietly to yourself "thank Christ for that!", and head for the car. You notice that the patrons you'd left in the cafe have gotten over staring out the window wondering what you're up to you, though they do turn and look when they see movement near your car, but turn away again when they realise it's just you. You put your gear away and jump in the car, turning the heater up, and putting on the new Sonic Youth album you bought in Auckland the day before - partly cos it's really good, and partly cos it's the only decent driving music you've got. Sometime after arriving back in Wellington and getting some sleep you drop the film you shot into the lab and sometime after that get the prints back. Flicking through them you find 4 or 5 out of the 12 aren't too bad so they get thrown in a pile of other shots from other trips, while the rest go back in their envelope and slowly get buried under more envelopes and random bits of paper, before some months later being rescued and 'filed' in a more correct place (a box full of envelopes). Sometime later you go through that first pile of shots and pick out a dozen to be scanned. Sometime later, a couple of years later, you find those scans in amongst all your dissorted CDs and figure it'd make a nice shot to go on your blog. Sometime later still, a couple of months later actually, you finally post it on your blog along with the story of its creation - as best as you can remember it anyway.
Have you ever noticed looking through your photos all that extra information about the where/when/how of the moment gets recalled just because of a single image that was (generally) a split second in time? Sometimes I find that very surprising. Sometimes I find it wonderful. A photo truly is a memory. And even though I've got probably over 10,000 shots in my personal archive I can probably recall shooting 75% of them, have vague recollections of maybe 20% of them, and no recall whatsoever of the rest. Weird, eh??!!! But cool.
6 comments:
i have soo many unorganized photos, but since i use a digi camera, they are all in random folders on the computer....
where abouts in taupo is that? we've driven past taupo so many times, but never really seen that...
there's a good reason you haven't seen that in taupo. that's because it's not in taupo. it's further south, one of those towns you tend to drive through and ignore - until you need dinner or coffee or a toilet!!
Tena koe ehoa
Totally know what you mean about masses of memories and the connection to the moment in which they were shot!
I associate the same thing with music. I used to buy tapes, now CDs, from places I had visited, I used this as reference to the time and place of the music I purchased. Something like 200 CDs which is a very small collection and aprox 600 tapes that date back to the very early 70's.
Film prints from my earlier Yashica days number about 6-700. Digital images are well over that number in a very short time period. But recollection of place and time is still associated for about 70% of the total film and digital images. Music is more like 90-100% That I kinda find really weird now that I think about it?
BTW Where is this place Andy?
It is strangely familiar to me, But I can't recall it at the present.
Hmmm, got me too.
From your description(s) there's only two towns this can be, and I don't think it's Hunterville. Yet I just can't picture this picture (so to speak), despite being a regular stopper at the other one. Maybe I'll have to keep my eyes open when I pass through there tomorrow. Funnily enough The Motel doesn't help narrow things down at all.
yes well my description is proving somewhat accurate it would appear. and cos i'm such an arsehole i'm still refusing to name the place.
and i could now start a rant about how we are largely unobservant people and it's often only when confronted with an image that we start to observe. but i'll refrain from that.
suffice to say that this place looks different during the day, and although i had noticed it previously it was only really that night when it stood out to me.
there could be a moral there.
Aha, thought so!
I had a memory of the clock tower being in that town, (but it was not quite where I was expecting it to be) but I had never noticed the memorial before. I guess it helps spotting something when A) you're actually looking for it, B) it's covered it bright flowers because it's a war memorial on Anzac Day, and C) helps to know you've managed to make it look about 3 times actual size. No I didn't cause any accidents by veering across SH 1 while thinking "there it is", and no I won't spoil your fun by naming "that town".
On the subject of memories and photos, as far as us recreational photographers go the whole point is of a photo is as a memory prompt (though we might not conciously think of it that way at the time). Case in point when I was working on the nut farm, one day The Italian and The German (shit I'm doing it now) turned up from working the notorious swampy block covered in "war paint". Despite everything else about The Italian being ingrained in my memory, I'd completely forgotten about that day until I got a film developed and was presented with this lovely image of two mud caked faces. A good laugh!
Post a Comment