If you look in the comments under my blog entry called "Origins" you'll see a note from my friend, photographer Wijadi Jodi. He says:
...Bridges, lakes, frozen boats, they can wait. Dynamic situations, when time is pressing, I think, are more interesting. It's when you blinked and you missed a great image, that's where I want to be, where I need to be on my toes to make sure I catch that one memorable moment.The phrase "frozen boats" is a kind of in-joke between Wijadi and me. We actually went and photographed some frozen boats this past winter near Stillwater, Minnesota, which is on the St. Croix River. They tie up river steamboats there in the fall, and by the time we went to see them last January the water was frozen solid and covered in snow. We stepped off the shore and walked out on the ice, taking pictures from all angles.
It was fun in one sense, because there's something a little spine-tingling about walking on a big frozen river - the St. Croix is probably a mile across at that point. But when I got home that evening and looked at my photos on my computer screen, not a single photograph stood out. They all bored me. My images were completely lacking in drama or originality. To this day, I haven't seriously photoshopped or publicly posted a single one.
Days like this happen to all photographers sometimes. But knowing that doesn't make it less depressing. You go out and shoot and come home with a bunch of images you hate - man, that can really have you wondering whether you have any talent with a camera at all. But it's easy to forget that even the best photographer in the world isn't going to produce good images if they don't remember the fundamentals. And the most fundamental fundamental of them all is this: you have to be engaged with your subject matter. In my case, it's no good me going out and snapping various angles of a bunch of ice-locked paddlewheelers if I don't find some point of view that makes me tingle, or gasp, or my heart skip a beat. That day in Stillwater, I didn't. And so my subject never came alive. The pictures were dull. A bunch of still, boring frozen boats.
The longer I take pictures, the more I accept that having a bad day can actually be a useful part of the maturing process. A photographer, IMHO, cannot be 100 percent chameleon. It's not humanly possible to find every single subject in the world engaging. There are always going to be some things that you think are worth taking pictures of, and some you don't. Maybe a young brand-new photographer should consciously try new things; but in an older artist like me, I think developing a fondness for certain types of subjects isn't a rut, but a sign of maturity. Photography is an inner voyage as much as an outer one. And every time you shoot, you learn a little more about what you love.
In the last 2-3 years I've particularly noticed that I've been moving more and more toward photographing people. I haven't completely given up on landscapes or cityscapes, mind you ... I still think there are interesting - and if you work at it, original - subjects to be found there. But for the moment, I'm content to let these things wait while I focus on other, much more dynamic topics. In the summer months I photograph baseball, and in the winter months it's roller derby. In the past two years, in other words, I have somehow become a sports photographer.
If you had said to me five years ago that I'd be primarily a sports photographer by the year 2009 I would have told you to go jump in the lake. (Preferably the one I was photographing at the time, to make pretty ripples.) No, seriously ... I never saw myself as the sports type of guy at all. I'm an artsy-fartsy type. I've spent all my life surrounded by theatre and music. When I rediscovered photography in 2006 and began shooting seriously, I thought the road ahead would eventually lead me back to the theatre, where I would photograph plays and musicals. I still think that someday this will become a part of my life somehow. But for the moment, it is roller derby and baseball that rule my passions.
Why? What's so great about sports? The best explanation I can think of is that sports are people-centric, unplanned, revealing, and real. The world of sport is one of the few places in the world where you can find real people, engaged in dynamic activity, revealing their feelings in a completely unconscious way.
The theatre couldn't be more the opposite. In the theatre, you are photographing performances. They may look quite convincing, but they are performances all the same. If an actor looks at another actor in anger, it's not real - it's a performance. Likewise, it's not real fear, or sadness, or joy, that you're seeing on the stage or film. It might be very similar ... the best actors can pull some pretty amazing things out of their psyches. But at the end of the day these emotions, displayed in the service of a story, have strict limits imposed on them because, obviously, they have to. An actor who fights with another actor isn't seriously trying to hurt him. The whole thing is staged. And if you're taking pictures of it, during a theatrical photo call, and you suddenly think that it might look better from another angle, it's a simple matter to ask the actors to stop the fight and wait for you to change position. And then start over again from the beginning.
Not in sports. Sports is real life, and real life doesn't wait for anybody. The clock is ticking, things are happening, and you don't get a chance to back up and do it a second time. When you shoot sports, you really have to be on your toes ... and I find this wakes me up in a way that I doubt frozen boats ever could. The whole energy of a sporting event, after all, is centered around uncertainty. Athletes, unlike actors, don their uniforms and equipment and then go out into the arena without the faintest idea of what will happen in the next two hours. I find the sheer freedom of this idea tremendously exciting. And, after years as an actor, tremendously refreshing too.
Sports wait for no one. They are definitely not frozen boats.
My current passion, as you probably know, is roller derby. I'm one of the Media Team photographers for the North Star Roller Girls of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am completely over the moon about this. Not only am I immensely proud of my association with this league, I am completely enamored of the women who run it, and the women and men who volunteer for it. And I am completely nuts about the sport of roller derby itself, which, though tricky to shoot, is full of wonderfully dramatic photo opportunities.
Take the photo above, a portrait of Kili St. Cyr of the Violent Femmes as she circles the track at the lead of the pack. She's her team's pivot for this jam, indicated by the striped 'panty' on her helmet. If you don't know derby, a pivot is kind of like the quarterback on the track; she doesn't score herself, but she directs what everybody else is doing. But this isn't about derby rules. You know what I love about this photo? Look how absorbed Kili is. She's watching the jammers approach the pack. They're probably moving at pretty high speed. She's getting ready to react - making way for her team's jammer, while blocking or bashing the other team's. In just a few seconds this scene will be totally different - complete chaos will break out. But for the moment, things hover, waiting. Kili is oblivious to me, and to the crowd behind her, and to everything else. Her strength is gathering, coiling.
I just love shots like this. Capturing a little fleeting moment of drama. I'm not sure it's every photographer's dream. But it is certainly mine.
Here are a few more photos that show what I love about shooting derby. To me, these are all like stills from a very, very exciting movie.
The 2008 Travel Team, just moments after pulling off an upset win in Chicago:
Apple Smacks, out with an injury, tearful because she won't be playing in the league championship:
And last, for now ... Stalker Channing, knocked down, rises up like one possessed, to rejoin the action:
Like I said, these shots are, to me, kind of like frames from a very exciting movie. One that hasn't grown stale for me yet. Are you kidding? With these sorts of characters and drama going on? Not by a long shot.
And just listen to me, will you? The way I talk about this sport ... expressions, faces, characters, drama, tension ... it's no wonder I feel so at home. It sounds like I'm shooting theatre and not sports after all, doesn't it?
Maybe I am.
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