garrison beau scott

I was on my way to the lab to pick up some film, taking a new route, when I passed this gas station. The first thing that caught my eye were the flags, and there’s a whole mess of them you can’t see from this view. I kept driving but the scene stayed with me.

On the way home, I continued to think about the irony of a gas station bedecked in more American flags than VFW outpost on the Fourth of July.

But then again, it seems, more and more the American flag and oil are becoming one and the same. Maybe it’s not that ironic.

Geometry. It used to be that the mere mention of it would send me straight to the fetal position. Now, I almost seek it out.

One of my favorite images from the festivities surrounding the redHallway parties. That’s maxxx making the dapper exit, I’m the blazed and goofy one and that’s Binky just off maxxx’s right shoulder. Waaaay in the back is Dan, checking out one of that party’s images.

Of the 4 identifiable people in this Polaroid, I’m still in contact with 3 of them. And if that blond is Vera, and considering who’s in the hall at that moment it’s a pretty good bet it is, then that’s 4 out of 5. It’s Dan and his wife Tiffani, by the way, who have opened their home to me while I am in Los Angeles. Dan is helping me take what I hope is the very next step in my photographic career. Which just goes to show that making true friends in life is what living is all about.

When I turned the corner in this little used court yard, I couldn’t help but feel as if this scene were waiting for me. That the storm drains had been placed just so in anticipation of some yahoo coming through with his camera to take their picture. When I find stuff like this, I immediately realize that a single frame of film needs to be dedicated to it, as it’s just begging for exposure.

I would think that for other photographers who practice their craft on a daily, or even weekly basis, the feeling is the same. For some it’s a street scene where all the people in the photo have converged to a particular street corner just so that they may be photographed, or for others a field of wild flower whose seeds have been sewn just in time to coincide with the arrival of the camera.

Bresson referred to it as the decisive moment, and I won’t attempt to take a thing away from that concept, except to ask if it isn’t a little bit more like the divine moment? Now I’m not saying that stumbling across three storm drains is akin to being touched by the finger of God, only that sometimes I can’t help but wonder if all of our photographs were meant to be and that the forces of divine intervention have placed all the major players in front of our camera to make it so.

This was from my first outing with the Holga. The shot was made a few blocks from my home from a section of street that has a lot of crap going on. Driving by in a car you lose track of any given spot’s potential for containing that which you think is beautiful and disregard it as unworthy of photographing.

Walking by this scene, the light busted out from behind the clouds. How it fell on the fence and what was obstructed changed my preconceived ideas about this stretch of concrete.