HERE WE ARE AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME

1966: An early attempt at an “atmospheric” scenic, complete with the kind of light leak that a five-dollar plastic toy guarantees. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

WE OFTEN MANAGE TO SUCCESSFULLY EXPORT AN IMPRESSION OF A PICTURE from our mind’s eye into our cameras, and ofttimes the result is reasonably close to how we originally envisioned it. Of course, there is always a gap, small or great, between conception and execution, and the life work of a photographer is learning to negotiate that gap, and sometimes, to do battle with it over and over again. Our first tries at a picture may be immortalized on a sensor, but the germ conception remains in our heads for a lifetime.

This means that certain images, consciously or not, periodically re-assert themselves into other “takes” further down a person’s timeline. We actually may take many versions of a “type” of image over years, seeing its design as a kind of baseline, like the chord progressions in Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which act as a steady foundation for an amazingly distinct number of alternate realizations, each unique unto themselves, each anchored by the same central spine of changes. I am now far enough from my earliest pictures to realize that certain pictures demand a return or a restatement as I move through time.

2023: Different path, different time, different camera. But a different result overall?

One favorite theme from my first days with a camera, the old “sunlit path winding back into the forest”-type composition, recently came back to visit (haunt?) me in a stop by almost the same space where I first tried it in 1966. The top image seen here was shot on 620 medium-format ASA(ISO)-rated slide film  on a plastic toy camera with a fixed aperture, a plastic lens, and a single shutter speed. The man pausing with his dog on the footbridge was the kind of cue that your brain (and all of the classic how-to manuals) tells you “might make a good picture”, and so I took it. Luckily, the path and the woods got enough light to save the shot, something which was not the case in 99.99% of my woodland tries at the time. The second shot was taken just weeks ago in the same metro park system in the same city, and this time, as I was armed with a Nikon Z5, the decidedly lower available light did not spell defeat, although I confess to having goosed the luminescence of the path a bit afterwards.

Why do some compositions and conditions urge us to repeat, and perhaps, refine our approach to a familiar subject? Is it merely a pang for a do-over, or do we believe, on some level, that we can actually bring something new to an old subject at different times in our lives? I suspect it’s a little of both.