garrison beau scott

I have a love hate relationship with parking structures and garages. I hate that they’re needed in today’s society. I can’t think of a bigger waste of land than a huge concrete block meant to house hundreds of cars. Worse are the ones that charge insane amounts of money for mere minutes of use. But, in the world we live in, they’re a necessary evil.

So I might as well quit my bitching and make a use of them. Which covers the love portion of my feelings for these things. There are some great pictures to be had walking the levels of your local parking mammoth. The symmetry and repetition of pattern is mana from heaven for my camera.

This was done digitally. I know, I know…

One night in Budapest, I was walking (they call it promenading) down by the Danube. Looking to the river, I caught site of a couple sitting on a bench, silhouetted by the light of a bridge against the darkness of the water. It made for a very nice scene, and I thought about walking closer and seeing if it would look just as good in the viewfinder as it did to the eye.

Nope. Besides, I felt just a bit skeevey sneaking up on a couple intent on making the most of their secluded privacy and snapping a picture of their intimate moment. So I began to return to the walkway that follows the river when I noticed this little nugget just waiting for me and my camera.

Tripod down, exposure approximated, cable release attached and one of my very favorite images that I’ve created was born.

I don’t make it a habit to photograph graveyards, though I am eternally intrigued by them. They’re all over the place here in Massachusetts, and there’s a stately quality about them that almost transcends death itself.

Now, you may be wondering what in the hell was I doing at a cemetery at night, and I can assure you I have a perfectly good answer. I was on a road trip, exploring Western Massachusetts on my way to the Rhinebeck Valley in Upstate New York. Not wanting to just hop on the Turnpike, I decided to take the scenic route, and as I usually do when driving at night, with no idea where I am, or how to get to where I want to go, I got lost. So I pulled over to consult the map and discovered this scene.

The way the trees mirrored the headstones was what caught my attention, and prompted me to get out and explore. This is with the Holga, rigged with a rubberband to keep the shutter open, and just a wild guess on the time. I think I counted to 60.

I think this was the very first image of mine that delved into the world of music for titular inspiration. The dramatic lines and texture combined to invoke, in me, the song from the band Phish, entitled, “Chalkdust Torture.” The chalkdust part coming from the texture, the torture coming from the lines.

Now, through the years, Phish has gotten kind of a bad rap regarding their lyrics. Granted, they delve into some pretty far-off subject matter and ask for a certain suspension of disbelief in some of their stories, but when you can say something along the lines of…

“But who can unlearn all the facts that I’ve learned
As I sat in their chairs and my synapses burned
And the torture of chalk dust collects on my tongue
Thoughts follow my vision and dance in the sun
All my vasoconstrictors they come slowly undone
Can’t this wait till I’m old? Can’t I live while I’m young?”

Well, damn it, isn’t that all that matters in a song? Can you really ask anything more from a lyric?

Having practically grown up on Balboa Island, I’ve been all over that chunk of man-made land. Most, if not all, of my memories are bathed in the golden sun that shown down on my childhood. The sand and warm concrete of the bayfront, droplines off the public piers, and shaved ice rivers running down our arms, staining our forearms an alien blue to match our tongues.

Back then, the camera was just something that my dad carried around. Now that it is my camera, when I take it back to Balboa Island, I have a hard time finding those memories, so I’m making new ones. These however aren’t awash in the glow of day, rather they’re cloaked in the shadows of night.

This is a Balboa Island I rarely saw as a snot-nosed kid. No matter how far we were allowed to travel on our own, even as 8 and 9 year olds, we always had to be home before dinner, that is to say, before dark. The Island is a completely different place at night, one I look forward to exploring.