By MICHAEL PERKINS

I’M SURE THAT I AM FAR FROM UNIQUE in having dreams in which the departed appear; clear, real, close enough to touch.

I’m not certain why I get these visits, as they are random in nature and don’t follow any coherent narrative. All I know is: the dead are back again, and they seem to have something to impart, some issue that they are weighing in on. There seems, in these dreams of those who’ve gone ahead of us, some unfinished business, some cosmic curtain call that poses questions, teases at the prospect of answers.

Of late, for me, many of these dreams involve my late father. Let me clarify by saying that I am personally unaware of any issues between us that still remained to be settled. On the contrary, our relationship. in his final years, seemed to move very satisfactorily toward a clean finish, our chance to say everything that needed to be said.

And yet, he comes to me, and the sightings have sent me back into the last few opportunities I had to take his picture. Some of the images, like the one seen here, let his inner light and miraculous energy shine forth, making him, in the best way, immortal. Others revealed his frailty, the collapse of his outer envelope. Both messages were sad and happy and true and beyond price. On his weak days, he was a flickering candle. On his strong days, he was, as he had always been to me, a beacon.

We all lose people. That’s a universal experience, but the specific way that loss registers is infinitely personal. Grief is not a brief twinge, like the spasm that results when a doctor hits a knee with a reflex hammer. Instead, it is a long, drawn-out process, as the loved one does not vanish all at once, but in flashes. They’re gone! They’re back again! We are all haunted, but not in predictable ways; we experience, instead, a million little gratitudes and sorrows, making the photographs of our dear ones the most poignant document we will every create. We pray we get it right while these essential people are here, since our take is eventually the last echo of their lives.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHY WAS ORIGINALLY ALL ABOUT TECHNIQUE, a necessary mastery of basic procedural steps that had to be followed in order to get any result at all. Scientifically, at first, making a picture was all about rules.

That changed as soon as manageable, predictable systems for taking photographs became commonplace. From then until now, technique has taken a back seat to creativity. And that’s as it should be. There are no stone-engraved commandments for art. What works works. Technique is about control. Creativity is about casting it away, of arcing toward the unknown.

Of course, you’d never know it to read marketing materials, or watch tutorials, on photography. They contend that there are right ways and wrong ways to get the image you’re after. Rules. Always do this, never do that. And then there is the main mission of manufacturers, which is not to help you make better pictures, but to sell you the gear that you can be made to believe will make better pictures. The on-line reviewer Ken Rockwell, himself the source of no little controversy, takes issue with any talk of “rules”, especially the biggest bugaboo, sharpness, and the photo industry’s insistence that it truly matters:

Sales and marketing departments fuel this misconception because it scares people into buying new lenses. Sharpness is easy to test and analyze, so magazines oblige less experienced photographers with reams of colorful charts and graphs. People would make far better pictures if they spent time learning how to make great photos with what they already own instead of worrying about their tools.

Many of us instinctively know that rules like sharpness and exposure are not rigid but rubbery, that they are, at best, guidelines or reference points. The image above is illustrative of something we recognize as “reality”, and yet it’s un-anchored from any strict rule about, among other things, sharpness. Art is not codified: something is either true or untrue in the moment. Can I use this color instead of that one in painting a tree or the sky? Why or why not, and who the hell says so anyway? In our greatest moments as photographers, we regularly subvert any ideas that are supposed to be “standards” or “benchmarks”, and, the further along in our development we get, the more regularly we stray from any hard and fast regulations about just how we get to the finish line. The picture is complete, or justified, or right when we say it is. Those who were among the first haters of photography accused picture-takers of merely activating a machine, something soulless, cold, inhuman. In fact, it’s only slavish devotion to rules that can truly render a photograph mechanical or lifeless.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

FOR ME, PHOTOGRAPHS WORK BEST, NARRATIVELY, when they don’t give away the store. Or perhaps, more precisely, the stor-Y. In my experience, images convey ideas best when they limit themselves to simple means, spare tools. Pictures that provide more information than needed to get their point across are like eating birthday cake with a birthday cake chaser; too much of a good thing. We can all be entertained by an occasional visit to places that resemble a scene from Where’s Waldo?, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

For one thing, a photo that is cluttered creates a problem for the viewer, i.e., where am I supposed to look? Or to look first? What in this grand mess is supposed to be the thing that argues best for my attention, and what, if anything, serves only as a distraction? I realize that the term minimalism has been hammered flatter than a roadside cow pie through overuse, but when you’re talking about the economy required to tell a story lean and clean, it seems to be the right word. Build your tale up in layers, like a pyramid, heading up from the foundation and adding only as many extra floors as you need to get the job done.

This image is an accidental example of what can be done when you stop just as soon as your narrative task has been accomplished. The young woman seen here was taken with an extreme telephoto as she faced a small group of kid campers. A part of one child’s face was actually captured here, with the rest being hidden by some obstacle. And yet, what real information about her role is missing? We can see that she’s positive, happy, welcoming. We can see that she’s addressing someone, and that her expression if open, full of energy. With just that much data, we can supply the rest of the story. It might have been cute to see the faces of her audience, but it’s far from crucial. The story, admittedly a chance catch, is pretty much told already.

I approach the amount of information in a shot in the same way I approach how much light I need to get the job done. Working up from total darkness, I add just enough light to make the exposure work, and, even then, I might deliberately under-expose to give the viewer a bit of a role in shared storytelling. Build up from nothing just far enough to make the picture work, and stop. Photographs are always better instruments when the taker and the received are both in on the job of determining what’s what. Giving away the story-y robs your audience of a role in determining what a picture is about.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT MOST CONSISTENTLY MARKS THE EARLIEST PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS is the uniformly dour expressions on the subjects’ faces. People sitting to “have their picture made” in the 1800’s and early 1900’s express many things….gravity, intensity, purpose, discipline, but generally nothing that indicates any joy at undergoing the process. Much of this, we understand now, was due to the technical limits of cameras and recording media at the time, which dictated long exposure times, meaning that a flat expression was simply easier to hold than a happy one. Any technique which necessitates resting your head against a rigid rod in order to keep it stationary is not conducive to goofy grins.

But what else made early photo portraits seem so stern? I have heard that the very act of smiling in public in the 19th century was, in the minds of some, an indication that one was not serious-minded, even a bit of an idiot. And then there was the fact that, for some, the act of having a photograph made of oneself was the one and only time their life that their identity would be officially recorded. This was not a casual or everyday occurrence, then, but an occasion….not dissimilar to the portraits of great men who posed on and off for months for painters for their one shot at immortality.

Now jump forward to our time, when photography is an instantaneous thing, and the default for facial expression has gone to the other end of the scale, meaning that we don’t even have to be told to “smile for the camera”, since it’s such an ingrained, instinctual thing. Of course, we’ re delighted to be here, happy to pose for a picture. We’re actually scorned a bit when someone points out that we didn’t smile. But where is the best middle-ground for a portrait pose, given that we now have thousands of opportunities to present ourselves over a lifetime?

I have done a lot of self-portraiture in my day, and not because I particularly like the experience. On the contrary, I keep taking additional cracks at the task because I seem, always, to be getting something wrong. For one thing, in anticipating the click, I simply cannot bring off a plausible smile, as the idea of pretending that I’m giddy with joy in the moment seems stupid to me. And so I wind up with many, many frames in which I appear to be everything from mildly annoyed to moody and withdrawn to outright pissed, rather than “austere” or “serious” as I’d rather appear. It occurs to me that I seem to pose for selfies with a 19th century mindset, as if I will never be photographed again, as if I’m making a document of myself. What version of me should be authentic, most official? And why, when I labor so hard to nail candid work directed at anyone else, do I force myself to overthink the making of my own image?

At the end of the day, it’s just easier, and a lot less stressful, to head outdoors and snap a sunset. I won’t make the ultimate statement doing that, either, but it gets me off the hot seat. As the cartoonist Bruce Erik Kaplan captioned in one of his drawings, “I just don’t want to end up being me…..”

By MICHAEL PERKINS

CALIFORNIA IS HISTORICALLY THE BUTT OF JOKES launched by the rest of America, mostly, I think, because it is a land of many firsts. Some of these innovations, from politics to entertainment and back again, are accurate forecasts of what will eventually spread like prairie grass across the continent and be absorbed into the “normal”. Others fall into the category of “fads” and merely add to the reputation of the state as “the land of fruits and nuts”. Photographically, CA’s “let’s try this” mentality adds a lot of flavor and not a little fascination. If Oregon now markets itself with the motto “keep Portland weird”, well, that’s just an unofficial franchise. We invented weird.

You’re welcome.

Cali has redefined dining for over a century, having established itself, early on, as the place where car culture met cuisine culture. We not only pioneered the “drive-in” (for both restaurants and theaters), we refined the concept further, later on, as the “drive-thru”, extending the stay-in-your-car ethos to banks, dry cleaners, and who knows, maybe confessionals. But before the drive-in, there was the walk-up, the “stand”, buildings designed almost exclusively for take-away, as the Brits call it. Take an enclosed kitchen and attach a wall of windows and a counter, and you’re in the eats business. Hot dog stands, burger stands, soft-serve stands, many of them sporting bright colors and garish architecture, like billboards with a side of food. Entire mini-libraries and reference works have been created to photographically chronicle these unique and bizarre roadside grub huts, even as many have vanished, only to rise again as food trucks.

B&J Drive-In (but mostly walk-up), Ventura, California, 2026

It’s no spoiler to restate that I adore “joints”, places where the owner is also the fry cook and his kids are working the counter. No chain or conglomerate can compare for sheer quirky individualism. I love the crazy contours, the misspelled menus, the cheesy murals, the unabashed carny out-thereness of them all. When I see signs that start with “since 19—” or “home of the original—-“, I’m already halfway sold. Drive-ins are about distancing the customer from where the magic happens. Stands say, step right up, how’s it goin’, what can I getcha. California is a magnet for new ideas, a laboratory for things that at first seem odd to the rest of the country, but soon become everyday, even invisible, in their universality. From the day in 1924 that a Pasadena joint called The Rite Spot became the first place to put a slice of cheese on a hamburger, we’re all about trying things out. What doesn’t work, we lose. What does work stays on the menu.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

ALTHOUGH I HAVE MADE MANY VISITS TO NEW YORK CITY, both before and after 2011, November of that year holds a near-magical place in my heart, as that most theatrical of towns chose that particular time to stage the most glorious welcome for me of my lifetime.

The old admonition to “never meet your heroes” has never applied to my encounters with NYC, as it has always lived up to the lofty and majestic dreams of my landlocked youth in the American midwest, where I grew up in towns that boated “the” big local skyscraper instead of an entire forest of them, places where dreams had cramped parameters, limits, unlike the Apple, which had its own accent, its own vocabulary, its own Seven Wonders Of The World. As a photographer, I found that many of my visual bucket lists were composed of local Manhattan landmarks, complete with daydreams on just how I would shoot the neighborhoods and boroughs, and all their native must-sees. I visited other places, but I breathed, even prayed, in fluent, fervent New York.

And so, 2011 was something of a mission year, in that it was the first time my wife (born and bred) and myself were to visit the resurrection that was already well underway at Ground Zero, and within that, to experience the Great City for the first time in the depths of autumn. “Autumn In New York, why does it seem so inviting…?” Not only autumn, but the singular transformation in color that could only be seen at its peak in Central Park. However, in the weeks before we were to fly in, weather bulletins were alarming.

Bethesda Fountain Plaza, November 2011.

Just weeks prior to our arrival date, the city had endured a massive low pressure-generated storm called, alternatively, the 2011 “Halloween Nor’easter”, “Snowtober”, “Shocktober”, “Storm Alfred” and “Oktoberblast”, a severe system that, as it cruised up the east coast from the Carolinas, broke snowfall records in twenty cities, covering NYC in a spooky blanket of Halloween white. My heart sank; there went fall color. The trees, whipped by merciless gusts, would almost certainly be bare for our visit. Oh, well, another year…..

In the end, the snow melted before we flew in, and, by early November, the leaves in the park had held, cradling my dream site at the Bethesda Fountain Plaza in explosive hues of red, green, brown and gold. A magical framing of my fantasy location within the bounds of my favorite place on the planet. Living for twenty-five years in Arizona, this transplanted farm-belt boy had lived for many a fall season without the wondrous palette that was a birthright for most of the country. Now, the city had given me Thanksgiving and Christmas in one big, brightly wrapped bundle. That year, autumn was no sign of the end of things, or a season of sad slowing. It was divine, and for that one amazing afternoon, it belonged to me.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IN 2026, BEATLES FANS THE WORLD OVER ARE CELEBRATING the 60th anniversary of the debut of the group’s seminal album Rubber Soul, a record which dramatically re-set the terms of engagement between the world’s greatest pop band and its audience. Long-playing records, prior to the mid-60’s, tended to be composed mostly of songs that were originally released as independent singles, with the priority on reaching the “youth market” placed primarily on 45’s rather than 33’s. By the second phase of their fast-evolving life as recording artists, however, the Beatles were, by ’66, moving quickly from being a “live” band that recorded to a studio to a band that was unbound by either the formal moon-june-spoon songwriting rules of I Want To Hold Your Hand or the limits imposed by what could be performed on the road. Rubber Soul, like Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds from the same year, was a document of that new-found freedom, of the studio-as-instrument, or as an album as a feature-length construct rather than a hits package.

One of photographer Robert Freeman’s original test shots for the cover of the Rubber Soul album in 1966.

Alongside the band’s expanding bag of tricks as musicians was their interest in extending that control to the actual graphics of their album covers, leading, from Rubber Soul onwards, to a mutiny against the record industry’s habit of labels assigning cover design to formal studio photographers. The Beatles truly led the charge in the idea of bands being photographed more “in the wild”, choosing their own favorite shooters and settings as well as contributing directly in the process of the shoots. The title of the album, a bit of a pun but also their way of expressing how “soul” could be elastic enough to embrace a variety of musics…..that is, “stretchable, or “rubber”, was in their mind when they first viewed possible group shots for the album cover.

The accidental distortion of the top image that inspired the Beatles to a trippier approach to the cover.

At the time, photographer Robert Freeman had a set method for helping groups get an idea of what their covers might look like at scale, projecting color slides from his shoots onto bits of white cardboard sized to resemble the dimensions of a record jacket. In showing proofs of the Rubber Soul shoot to the Fab Four, Freeman’s cardboard fell backwards a bit, distorting the image, making the band look stretched, or “rubbery”, in a rather trippy way. The group immediately asked if the finished cover could intentionally be made that way, and thus was born one of the most iconic, if accidental, images of a very psychedelic decade. Soon after, artists began to routinely lobby for their own input on album packaging, but, as in so many other ways, it was the Beatles who initially decided not only to bend the rules, but to chuck the rule book out the window altogether.