things that happen

january / february 2001

things that happen, while you're not looking

maybe you know how it feels when certain things happen to you and you start to question yourself about the 'hows' and 'whys' and if this all is (perhaps) an age thing
well, i'm a photographer, so i am especially concerned, when i seem to miss the mark picturewise a few times in succession. let me tell you about it:

curtain up, first scene, graz/austria, schlossberg, noon, sunny with clouds
i trot along, assisted by a fellow stranded designer and look about to see something exciting to photograph. we walk past a memorial, a sculpture of the person that redesigned this vandalized fortress (napoleon and his buddies came sightseeing in the early 1800s) to a city park. it's the usual heroic flattery, but at least without lions and cannons to his feet.
no reaction.
we walk ahead. then i suddenly turn around and there is some marvelous music playing. looking straight into the sun the sculpture and the surrounding bare trees were silhouettes singing in the sunlight. there was no question anymore. camera out and up! i tried to capture the real thing, pointing the lens straight into the sun, but as development has shown, the negative was (predictably) flawed by dust specks on the lens. the other more quiet version, made as a cloud softened the light, is technically clean - but not of the same impact. well, sometimes you can't have it all...

second scene, downtown graz, the cathedral, sunday morning 8:30 a.m.
during a former visit i was fascinated by the solid structure of the cathedral/mausoleum buildings – both just separated by a narrow passage. i started out with a stone carved wall inscription and had the camera already up - when the preacher hastened by, mentally busy with matters ahead. he barely answered my greetings and i deduced from his expression that something was wrong. he came back a few minutes later, so i asked him about it - obviously relieved, he started smiling and mentioned that sunday isn't the best day to photograph around the church. aha! there i paid the dues of the heathen. of course i saw people in their sunday best passing, of course i heard the choir practicing inside (beautiful voices) but i just assumed that this building is so old, that it's just not used for service anymore - just a well maintained historic site. wrong of course. even though it's amazing thinking of the many generations that prayed within these walls.

interlude …

following saturday, about 8:00 a.m., same location
i continued were i left off the week before, working on the structure of cathedral and mausoleum.
architecture is just one more thing that can be pictured in every way imaginable, but i cherish the geometric exactness most of all. there is law. everything is manmade according to drawings, calculations and measurements. this is somewhat different to nature, where the harmony is in the chaos. the basic forms are the same of course, but at first look unruled and unpredictable (after all, men copy the forms they find there and use them simplified to surmount most of their insufficiencies. creating nothing new on the way but a [still] budding brunch on the old tree.) interestingly, the landscape photography as i understand it is nothing more then a reprojection of those rules of men onto nature via a camera. (there wouldn’t be much sense in going into the woods, putting up the machine somewhere and making a random exposure, hoping in the accidental creation of a masterpiece. there has to be some thought going into that beforehand. thought that is schooled and brought up within simplified structures…)
anyway. i spent about an hour going about my ideas of these orderly placed rocks, when i considered myself finished and packed up to leave. backpack and tripod shouldered i turned around and saw again something much more photographic then the ‘imperfections’ like misplaced windows and rooflines that i dealt with the past hour. so the familiar game began anew and it turned out, that this setup was by far superior to the prior arrangement.

following sunday, slovenian border area, about 9:30 a.m.
looking up the mountainous area of austria/slovenia that was called 'austrian tuscany' in one of the travel guides, i had to plow through some serious morning fog. fog is nothing cheerful - it makes me feel cut off from life and is - worst of all - nothing but 18% (zone v) kodak gray! the weather forecast for the rest of the day was rather nice though, so this promised to be getting a decent ride at least. just in case i loaded all the film holders i got - rather unlikely to use them all, but you never know.
first stop was a willow framed river, but a quick check didn’t reveal any prospects. next to it i saw a sign pointing to some castle somewhere forward, lost in the gray stew. so i thought i could give that a try. said and done – up on the hill i went and there was finally the sun breaking through in all of her glory. first a big smile and then i went about business. but as it turned out, i didn't like the building at all. it was another ancient structure all right, but one of somewhat bizarre appearance. while the origins date back to roman days, every self assigned architect since decided to get a few bricks laid there in his fame. all of this would have been forgivable, had not the guy from the 60s won the game. there is something very unbecoming about cheap office buildings of any time period, but i can’t help feeling most offended by the work that was done in the 60s and 70s. more so if you bear in mind that a delicately hand chiseled arch and a float glass office window aren’t what is commonly referred to as a marriage made in heaven. the whole mess looked a lot better from the outside, even if it was just for some simple nature phenomenon.
each photographer has his/her own pictures on the 'things to do list'. so do i of course. one thing that escaped me so far, are shafts of light appearing when the sun is in the right angle to trees or cluttered structures, so that the light source is broken into several beams. this never fails to amaze me, but i could never capture it successfully. and exactly this was, what i saw on the outside of the office-castle. the sun was standing about 45 degrees over a towering tree and produced some magnificent beams. but too far away and too hazy, so i just stood there and was happy for a few more minutes. but what now? fog perhaps? i'm not especially intrigued by the subject to start out with and i think i have expressed myself already in a few satisfactory images – so is there really any need for more? but i noticed on the way up some dense patches and … it’s always good to nourish a rudimentary curiosity about things in general. so i grabbed the gear and went for it. down on the spot i saw (of course) nothing new and exciting but toyed with a set up for a few minutes nevertheless, decided against it, shouldered everything again and was about to leave when ... you guess it ... i turned around and saw all hell break loose. the sun was shafting and beaming through the trees, fog was swirling around and slowly devoured by the warmth. these are the impressions of fractures of a second that the brain immediately recognizes. luckily for me it managed still to transfer this sensation to my bones, because experience has shown these apparitions to be of the very short lived kind. now this was turning into a rather universal problem. photographing a building you got all the time in the world (save if you are straight above andreas fault). in nature everything is fleeting: the fog in the sun, the sun moving relative to the tree and me satelliting around that all on a pile of dirt shuttled by an 8x10” camera that seemed to be very much alive.
… well - i managed to expose three negatives that each required different framing, focusing etc. (because of the moving sun) within three minutes. after that the fog effect was nearly gone and i was soaking wet, even though it was still below freezing.
so dear readers. regarding all this i wonder what lies ahead. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . well, actually that's what i thought myself.
so i better stop wondering and be happy that i still managed to get something home, even if it was as an afterthought.

sincerely
joerg