AND NOW, BACK TO OUR ORIGINAL PROGRAM

By MICHAEL PERKINS

YOUR FIRST YEAR IN A NEW PLACE, as far as your photography goes, is a lot like being on vacation, in that a firehose of sensory information is coming on so quickly that, in an effort to not miss anything, you shoot very much on instinct. Everything is new, and therefore fascinating in a way that it won’t be after you’ve logged enough time to regard your new world as your standard environment, instead of just the latest stop on the tour bus. And that changes the way you make pictures.

Snapshots, by their nature, are reactive, and they make perfect sense when you feel like something very fleeting is whipping by you, never to be recovered if you don’t act (snap) immediately. You are not slowing yourself down to make a shot do all that it can do; you’re just making sure you get something in the can, now. And so, in my first year in California, I’ve been shooting like a tourist, as if I soon have to rejoin the rest of the group back at the ruins, so we can move on to the next attraction. I haven’t been approaching scenes or situations with any intent or contemplation. Instead, I’m shooting largely as if I’ll never be here again, or. as if I have to fly home in five days.

I have to rein it in.

I’ve now been to a few locales out here enough times that I am reverting back to my regular program of slowing things down, seeing them from different angles, wondering if I have the right idea for a picture, or, most importantly, whether a thing is even worth a picture in the first place. One such case that I noticed in particular is the Ventura County Fair, which I attended last year in the heat of my first summer along the central coast. The pictures are colorful and bright, but they are merely pictures of masses of people walking by funnel cake and burger stands, and not much more.

This year, in returning to the midway, I stole away from my wife, who had accompanied me for last year’s visit, and started looking for stories, things that might reveal or imply other things. After a ton of walking and waiting, I finally got several images that I felt had been approached with at least a modicum of forethought. Masterpieces? No, but a kind of proof-of-theory revelation. I have to reclaim a more investigative method of framing images. I have to get off the tour bus, and back to real life.