Dear Photography,
I miss you.
I miss the smell of chemicals, the magic of seeing images slowly appear in the developer, the surprise of seeing how something looks photographed.
When I was learning about you, our teacher told us to put our cameras away and just learn how to see light. We spent hours with our light meters until we could tell the difference between half stops of light without the help of a meter. We were told to close our eyes and understand our cameras better. We had to know how to set our aperture and shutter speed by feel. It became so that I stopped seeing in color. I saw stops of light. The world was grey, black and white.
Do they teach photography like that anymore?
I went to visit my former school and everyone was sitting in front of computers, learning software. Do they feel the magic? Is there a sense of surprise? Do they work with large format cameras? Do they learn to see upside down and backwards? Do they experience the meditative act of looking?
I first became interested in you because my boyfriend in college was taking a class. I would go with him to the darkroom and I was enchanted. I loved it more than he did. I was incessantly curious and that annoyed him. He told me just to take the class myself, so I did. The next semester, I fell even more in love. My teacher was a magician. She embodied the alchemy of learning to see in a new way. I developed a sixth sense of when that right moment is to press the button- what Cartier-Bresson calls “the decisive moment”. I became confident with a camera in hand, whereas before I felt nervous and slightly shy. It felt like home.
Photography gave me entry into a world I had only skirted. Like a person outside the fence with my fingers on the chain link wondering if maybe someday… All this is to say, I miss you. I am feeling my way back. In a world that feels like it has moved past the very things I fell in love with, I will find you again.
Love,
Jackie
I miss you.
I miss the smell of chemicals, the magic of seeing images slowly appear in the developer, the surprise of seeing how something looks photographed.
When I was learning about you, our teacher told us to put our cameras away and just learn how to see light. We spent hours with our light meters until we could tell the difference between half stops of light without the help of a meter. We were told to close our eyes and understand our cameras better. We had to know how to set our aperture and shutter speed by feel. It became so that I stopped seeing in color. I saw stops of light. The world was grey, black and white.
Do they teach photography like that anymore?
I went to visit my former school and everyone was sitting in front of computers, learning software. Do they feel the magic? Is there a sense of surprise? Do they work with large format cameras? Do they learn to see upside down and backwards? Do they experience the meditative act of looking?
I first became interested in you because my boyfriend in college was taking a class. I would go with him to the darkroom and I was enchanted. I loved it more than he did. I was incessantly curious and that annoyed him. He told me just to take the class myself, so I did. The next semester, I fell even more in love. My teacher was a magician. She embodied the alchemy of learning to see in a new way. I developed a sixth sense of when that right moment is to press the button- what Cartier-Bresson calls “the decisive moment”. I became confident with a camera in hand, whereas before I felt nervous and slightly shy. It felt like home.
Photography gave me entry into a world I had only skirted. Like a person outside the fence with my fingers on the chain link wondering if maybe someday… All this is to say, I miss you. I am feeling my way back. In a world that feels like it has moved past the very things I fell in love with, I will find you again.
Love,
Jackie
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