It was earlier this year that Macfilos contributor David Babsky put the following note in the Comments section of Macfilos:
When in Mexico a few years ago I had this ..we-ell, more than an impulse.. this compulsion to take a photo of a Mexican dog crossing a road(!) ..not that I could see any dog anywhere, but I knew that that’s what I wanted to take a photo of ..goodness knows – or knew – why!
Well, here’s one for David from Outback Australia, seen on an outback track. Cattle dogs of this red colour are often ironically called “Bluey”. In fact, humans with this colour of hair also get the same nickname.
However, David’s comment made me stop and think a little further. Did I ever find myself having an odd compulsion to find an image or a set of single topic images? Especially when travelling? That is, single-themed images outside the standard set of eclectic travel photos that are generally easy to find?
Hot shoe photography
Certainly, travel images are somewhat easier in Asian locations. There’s just so much that can appear exotic and unusual to those of us from other parts of the world. Choosing a focus is a good idea, and why not umbrellas? It’s good exercise for a rainy day.
However, more generally when travelling I like to photograph shoes upon having a day absent from tourist images. Good fun, but what would my therapist think? Perhaps it’s a case of the Imelda Marcos syndrome but I’m remaining shtum on the subject.
Here are some from Japan and Hong Kong to start the ball rolling:
In fact footwear opportunities are everywhere. The next pair of shoes were spotted at nearly 5.000 metres altitude in the Himalayas. Our guide suggested that a yak herder likely finally gave up on them. I didn’t get near enough to smell the veracity of the theory.
Even in outback Australia footwear presents opportunities:
The genesis of hot shoe pics
“So when did this weird fixation emerge?”, asks my therapist. Answer: Probably about 50 years ago in this image of a much younger me taken by either Lt Miels or Lt Kelly (I can’t remember which). I wasn’t into photography at the time, but I do remember idly thinking that the composition and perspective made for an unusual and unexpected photograph.
In fact, I suspect that I didn’t even know the terms “composition” and “perspective” as they applied to photography at that time. I simply saw it as being a bit different. It might have even been the trigger for developing an interest in this crazy and enjoyable hobby called cameras and photography.
Homework
So, at this stage here’s an exercise for you, dear reader: Can you remember what triggered your interest in photography? Or was it a slower, passive and triggerless stealth that hooked you? And if we want to get really philosophical, why do we do what we do?
And what subject matter and interesting light can be found as a new focus for off-beat travel photography? Maybe shop window displays, there can be interesting photos to be found there too…
Images in this bit of whimsy are a mix from the Leica X Vario, Leica C, Fuji XE3 and Fuji X100, and something else way back then. Nowadays, good glass in front of any sensor is fun.
Read more from Wayne Gerlach
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Thanks Dave. We are happily heading back to a new normality. It should be just a few more days to a level of 80% vaccination in our state, at which most restrictions are eased.
And me having a shoe fetish? You should see my 👞 👟, my better half would tell you that I don’t have a shoe fetish! 😁
Who’d have ever known you had a shoe fetish – whatever next will I learn on Macfilos.
For the record my photography journey started with a 110 point and click that belonged to my mother, that I used on a week long trip to London. I remember my mum being unimpressed by my composition, and the number of shots that were usable, I’m sure she mentioned more than once the cost of processing the films.
In fairness, my film image catalogue is massive, but mainly family shots until the digital era – where I bought a small Nikon coolpix camera and rediscovered my love of photography – but without the backside ache of dealing with complaints about my composition and the cost of processing.
Anyway Wayne, I am grateful to see the Oz contingent being released from lockdowns just in time for summer. Enjoy your new found freedom and let us know how it goes.
😄
Lighthearted, absolutely, Wayne.
Thank you Farhiz, for clarifying. I was 98% sure that you were joking, but not always easy to catch 100% humour on the ‘net.
In fact, having coffee with Mr X1 this morning he said that he was tempted to follow your first comment with a message that I wrote the article while I was out on bail…….ah, Covid times, humour is a coping mechanism. 😁
Cheers, Wayne.
Picking up on the ‘why’ I describe it as Discover, Record, Share. I started as a child in the early sixties when I was given a Kodak Brownie as a birthday present. The first photo that sticks in my mind is one of friends at a (my) birthday trip to Richmond Park near London.
Hello Kevin. It’s great that you can remember that first photo that impacted you. A special moment, embedded in your neurones forever.
Now Wayne, whatever did the girls think of you pointing your lens at their feet!
Hi Farhiz. Now I know that your comment is lighthearted…….I think.
But to reply semi-seriously I’d say that no one notices shoe subject street photography. Identities aren’t compromised. No eye contact is necessary. And women’s and children’s shoes are much more interesting than boring men’s shoes, mine included 😎.
Come in Sigmund, your time is up!
Brilliant observation.
Thank you, Wayne, for your delightful whimsy! And thank you, Jean for your reference to that book of the intriguing title which I have looked up and shall undoubtedly buy! My second “photographic birth” (as distinct from teenage enjoyment of a Brownie E box camera) was comparatively recent. I bought – on the persuasive advice of a local dealer – a Leica D-Lux 4 to take on a trip to Syria in 2009. I bonded more or less instantly with that camera, in the amazing surroundings of Syria – not least Palmyra before its wanton destruction – and several years went by before GAS entered my mental world. Your article prompts me to take the D-Lux 4 out of its drawer again and see how its images look to my present eyes.
Gday John. Interesting to see that your Leica D-Lux4 enjoyment was possibly primed many years before by a box Brownie camera. Once the technology (magic chemistry?) infects us we are caught by life.
Also good to see that you have found the book mentioned by Jean. I will be searching online in a few minutes).
Thanks Wayne for a really interesting article. I enjoy working on series as well. As for why I started photography that’s a long story. I remember I had a Halina dux small camera when I was 10 or something like that. I got seriously involved in photography when I was 18 (1976). I bought my first “serious” camera then, a Minolta SRT 100X with a 45mm lens. My parents were retired, living in the centre of France at that time. There was a small record shop managed by a former member of the resistance during WW2. I spent long hours in the record shop speaking with him and he talked me into photography. He was doing stereophotography; I was quite amazed by his images so one day he told me, come on you’re going to buy a real camera. Once I got the camera I’d take pictures and he’d advised me about framing, colours, contrast and why that image worked and that one did not. A few years later I discovered the darkroom and started processing my B&W images at the local lab. I eventually had my own lab in the kitchen but the birth of my daughters put an end to my processing years. Baby-bottles and processing in the kitchen did not get on well… I don’t know why I still take pictures. I guess it must be an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I just enjoy freezing a moment and framing. One of my daughters offered me a book entitled “petite philosophie pratique de la prise de vue photographique” by Jean-christophe Bechet (a photographer) and Pauline Kasprzak (a philosopher). I don’t know if it has been translated into English but it is a really interesting book about photography and why we take pictures.
Jean, maybe you’d like to get a copy of Robert Adam’s “Why People Photograph”. Here’s an excerpt from the back cover:
“At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honour what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect—a sense of inclusion.”
Thank you Farhiz
Hello Jean. Thank you for sharing your memories. My first SLR was a Konica Autoreflex TC because I wanted shutter speed priority. But it was triggered by my father-in-law who had a Minolta SRT101, a relative of your first camera. He took some great images, using it carefully for many years.
I will search out the Bechet/Kazprzak book and see whether it is available in English. Ias you suggest, could provide an interesting insight.
.
I have an almost identical photo – taken in Japan – of the three women in kimonos with umbrellas, Wayne! (Cheap, or free, entry into temples, I seem to remember, if you were in traditional dress!)
As for why I started..? I liked to fiddle with my mother’s Vest Pocket Autographic camera (..cue William Hagan..) and I hated having to sit on my aunt’s dining room table while my cousin Merton set up his photofloods (very hot, very bright lightbulbs for indoor photos!) to take pictures of me when I was about four ..but when I was seven (in 1954), to make up for that, Merton showed me how to develop and print photos (..in their ‘wash-house’, round the back of their house).
He put a red bulb into the double-socket above the washing machine, and put a roll-film negative into a ‘printing frame’ on top of a sheet of photo paper, then turned on the white light for a few seconds – or, in summer, you could go outside and into the sunshine with the printing frame for maybe half a minute – then swap to the red light, take out the paper, and slide it into the swishy tray of developer and watch while the b&w image appeared, and the blacks went dense black, then slip it out and into the wash tray, swish it around so more, then out and into the fixer ..and then the white light could be turned on again ..or the door opened to let in sunlight.. and you’d see what you’d got.
I enjoyed developing and printing ..that came before I ever actually took a photo. But knowing how to develop and print them – and enjoying fiddling with hardware, and looking at images – I started borrowing cameras, and then got my own at age thirteen. (That’d be 1960 ..not long ago!) ..and went on to teach photography to pupils who didn’t want to go to school, sold hardware in camera shops, wrote about – and made radio (..weird, huh!) programmes about – photography, and then taught again, starting about fifteen or twenty years ago ..except for the last eighteen months or two years of lockdown and ‘social distancing’.
(Incidentally, that “..compulsion to take a photo of a Mexican dog crossing a road“, I later realised, came from having seen (but not consciously remembered) a photo by Magnum’s (not the ice lolly) Sergio Larrain of a Mexican dog crossing a road. When I saw the original, a few years later, I saw that I’d shot a mirror image of it! ..It really must have made a deep, subliminal impression, without my fully realising it ..phew! That’s what great photos do!)
Whoops, sorry; typo: Willian Fagan! So sorry, William!
P.S: I lurve the shop window photo, Wayne!
Hi David. Japan is a special place for photography. Kyoto especially so.
I too like the last photo of the store window. Indoors in an arcade, it had lighting that was intriguing, and subject matter that I couldn’t fathom.