garrison beau scott

Walking around at night has a way of illuminating things one might normally walk past under the bright light of day. I offer this as a prime example. Street light can shake up subject matter that would normally fade into the background, and the fall-off can add a drama to an otherwise boring scene.

I’ve since walked past this particular guard rail during the day and there’s no way I’d burn any mega-pixels, let alone a frame of emulsion on it under those conditions. But at night, I had no problem hanging next to my tri-pod for the five minutes it took to make this exposure.

While at Brooks, we got the “rules” of photography pounded into our heads. And after a year and a half of that bludgeoning I think I began to burn out on the whole photography by numbers thing. I value the education and the emphasis on mastering those rules and by extension, understanding the intricacies of controlling the variables that photography presents, but I still needed a break.

It was then, that I departed Santa Barbara for a summer of escape in Door County , Wisconsin in an exercise of breaking the rules. And I’ll only admit to the photographic ones. Here is what could be considered my very first attempt.

I dig taking pictures of window displays. All the work has pretty much been done for you, it’s lit and you don’t have to worry about anything moving around, or the situation changing on you.

This was taken on the way from a friend’s opening in San Francisco to the dinner he threw afterwards. I didn’t normally take my camera to openings back then, but this shot, and another I’ll post soon, changed that.

Survival. If you want a prime example I guess you could travel to the Gobi Desert, or the Arctic Circle, or maybe even to the Galapagos Islands and find some amazing example of a living thing surviving against all odds.

Or you could go to New York City and study some of the trees that carve out a meager existence among all the concrete.

…while walking around is one of my favorite ways of spotting photographs. Granted, it means sometimes I veer into the path of an oncoming pedestrian, or teeter perilously close to traffic and depending on which city I might be in at the time, an argument could be made for one or the other being the greater danger.

But those are the lengths I go to take my snaps. Besides, it’s a great excuse when someone comes along and blames you for having your head in the clouds. If only I were a photographer in high-school.