garrison beau scott

Photography is equal parts faith and voodoo. Faith is knowing the picture will come, voodoo is turning around in time to see it.

Or something like that. I came up with that thought in 1996 after I made this photo. It was on my first trip to NYC and I had been shooting for a few days when I wandered past this wall with all of these square openings fronting the sidewalk. I thought it could be an interesting shot if I were to position myself on the dark side of the wall, wait for a person to walk past the opening on the sidewalk side of the wall, and frame their head in the opening.

During the wait, I began to wonder about the ideal subject. Who would make the most interesting image, who would be able to pull off the image? Maybe it was having just been to B & H Photo, but I almost immediately thought about a Hasidic man as being the most iconic of people and began to wait. There were a few close calls, but both times my would-be subject crossed the street literally right before the opening.

After about 45 minutes and a few frames of other subjects in front of the openings, I was about to call it quits when I heard someone walking behind me. It was this gentleman. Voodoo.

I met Jeff Engel when I joined the Boston Photography Center and quickly realized he was one of the better photographers in the group. And one of the more diverse, as well as one of the more informed and more enjoyable. He’s also one of the rare breed for whom information, process and effort was meant to be shared and not horded. You couldn’t ask for a better ambassador for photography than Jeff. I am stoked to know him, count him as a friend and share his imagery with those of you who pass through here.

As I said, Jeff is one of the more diverse photographers I know. It’s almost as if as soon as he gets a new camera (he’s got quite a few) and masters it (which he will) he moves on to another. Toy cameras, digital rigs, Polaroid Land Cameras, IR modifications, Lens Baby, if it’s been built, chances are Jeff has shot with it. The thing is though, the images, no matter the camera or lens, are distinctly Jeff’s.

His most recent work was done with 4 x 5″ Type 55 using a Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic and as usual, the results are beautiful. You can view more of this work by visiting his Tabblo page or his other, equally amazing work at his site.

I joke that I’m a photographer because I can’t paint or play the guitar. There’s only a small bit of truth to that, and occasionally I’d like to point out a few things I’ve found in other mediums that blow me away. When I first came across Mark Ryden’s work I had to pick my lower jaw up off the floor. There’s a realism to his paintings that I’ve just not seen before, yet they exist in a world of fantasy that is so original, it could only come from the mind of truly unique artist.

There’s something to be said about immediate gratification. Some might argue it’s one of the things that’s wrong with the world today, but that’s a discussion for a different blog.

I used to think that my photography would be pure, void of pixels and digital manipulations. I also used to believe in the Easter Bunny. My trip to the dark side began somewhere around 1995 when a friend showed me what could be done with Photoshop. I bought my first Mac the next year and it’s been Darth Vader ever since. But only in that I’ve used the computer and digital imagery to help me obtain my vision of what I want the image to be.

The area where digital photography has helped me the most is with color photography in commercial or advertising situations. It’s only recently that I’ve started to mess around with a digital camera to take the kinds of pictures I might take with a film camera using silver gelatin.

My first foray was shooting the parking structure at the gym I belong to. I was there late one night and was walking out to my car and decided to call a friend. During the conversation I lost track of where I had parked the car and walked around not really paying attention to the fact I was 3 or 4 levels above where I needed to be. At this point, all the cars were gone and I started to take notice of the potential for imagery.

I had recently purchased the Nikon D50 and thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to mess around with it and “make some art.” So I went home, grabbed the camera and a tripod, returned to the parking structure and began to walk around. Here’s one of my favorites.

When I finally made it to New York, after stops in Kansas City and New Orleans and an excruciatingly long turn through the south, I was quite literally the wide-eyed kid in the big city. Everything around me was bigger and I was much, much smaller.

But it didn’t take long for me to start working on getting the balance a bit evened out, though no one, save perhaps Sinatra and a few other choice people, could ever hope to equal this city. Now, I said “working on” getting the balance evened out, not actually doing any balancing, there’s a difference. But none the less, I tried.

I was the guest of some very gracious hosts while in Gotham, the ideal kind of hosts for a trip like this and an explorer such as myself. They pointed me in directions, told me how the subway worked and set me on my way. And at night after a long day of walking and taking snaps, they took me out for beers. Bless you Tim, Wally and Whit, bless you. And so I walked, and walked, and rode plenty of Subway trains, lamenting as I write this the loss of tokens for the switch to those plastic cards.

I spent so much time on subway platforms that I began to see a pattern in the exposure. On the Greyhound trip I used only one camera (OM-2) and one lens (35mm) and just one emulsion (TMZ). And then, about two days into my stay, as I was about to descend onto the platform, it dawned on me that whenever I was down there, I needed to shoot wide open at 1/30th of a second. And if I was going to make good on my photographic education, I should probably put this revelation to use.

So here I am, about to walk down to catch a train, the light bulb having just popped on over my head and I stop to make the adjustment. As soon as I look up from my camera, I saw her.