Fujifilm X - PhotoTrice

Remembering

The old general store post office in Cleo Texas was important to local farmers and ranchers as a community hub that bound people together. As with many country businesses it was a family affair. The store and home behind were inseparable.

As far as I can tell the store closed early autumn of 1974. At least that is when the calendar behind the glass front display cabinet stopped being turned forward. October 14th is scratched out. I imagine the owners must have felt time had come to an end in some way. Certainly their lives were changed forever. Even so, they continued living in the house and maintaining the property. Old habits a hard to break. Both the general store and residence survive more than forty years on.

I don’t know what happened to the people who lived in the house. There are no community residents left to ask about local history. It is clear they stayed on for some years. Long tended landscaping and a spacious screened porch survive in good order. Whatever happened they are gone now. The two rocking chairs remaining on the porch suggest comfortable habits and settled lives.

Closing Date - Cleo Texas — Closing Date – Cleo Texas

The Past and Future

The depopulation of rural America is well known. Small communities disappear as opportunities draw younger generations to cities. What is left are buildings that no longer serve the purpose for which they were built. These places are endlessly re-purposed to meet current needs but eventually they wear out and are abandoned.

A current fashion in photography is to document crumbling remains of buildings and infrastructure as a world in decline. I can’t see things in those terms. Instead when I visit old places I look for the signs of people who were builders and doers. Their stories are important to me.

Seeing the World

There are two constants in what I choose to photograph. First and foremost my interest is in the road less traveled. The places one cannot see when driving down the Interstate highway at eighty miles an hour. Second I’m interested in the people who live or once lived in small towns and rural surroundings. They are people who see the world in ways that are fundamentally different than average city dwellers. These two things are the reason I spend my time on the back roads of Texas with camera in hand.

My photographic interests are mostly drawn from the region where I live. That is not to say my images are always about the Southwest of the United States. I am a Westerner by birth and inclination but throughout my childhood and as an adult I rarely lived in one place for more than a few years before moving on. For me regional photography is about the place where I currently live. If you move around you learn to appreciate places for what they are or you have lots of unhappy time on your hands.

Bagpipes at the Alamo

Solemn and important ceremonies at the Alamo often include a bagpiper to lend an air of dignity to the proceedings. I’m not sure why the sound of a bagpipe has such an effect on people but it certainly the focuses attention of a crowd. This gentleman played at the dawn ceremony a few years ago.

The ceremony takes place before dawn every year marking the battle which wiped out the Alamo garrison. For Texans there could hardly be a more solemn event. On that morning every year flowers are placed in front of the mission and prayers offered in English and Spanish. Direct descendants of those who participated in the battle are honored guests in the wreath laying ceremony.

While San Antonio and Texas sleeps a small group gathers to remember a pivotal event in Texas history.

Blocked!

You often hear about writers block affecting someone’s creative abilities. It can last a day or sometimes years, causing anxiety and even affecting careers. People try various strategies to get creative juices flowing. Sometimes they work and sometimes not.

I have a similar creative block that affects me from time to time with photography. This situation probably does not occur with professional editorial photographers because they work to a brief. If you are doing independent creative photography either professionally or as a non-professional it could have an impact. So what to do when this happens?

My answer is to keep actively pursuing photography by exercising my creative visual thinking. I am a strongly visual learner. That’s what brought me to photography in the first place. Visualizing a scene in my mind is something I’ve always been able to do. For me becoming a photographer is about learning to capture the image in my mind’s eye.

When the block comes and the creative juices start to ebb I turn to my archive. When I started doing photography around the turn of the millennium I decided to archive my images. This was so I could chart progress and analyze past efforts to continuously improve my work. The concept is common business practice and effective in creative endeavors in a more subjective context. Art is difficult to quantify.

I begin by reviewing work starting with early images moving forward to the present. I’m looking for patterns and anti-patterns. What practices contribute to a successful photograph and what mistakes or tendencies contribute to unsuccessful outcomes? This can be tricky because it is easy to substitute the judgment of others for your own. Once you get past basic technique it is very important to see your work through your own eyes. That is assuming you intend is to produce a body of work that reflects your unique ideas.

Since I’m familiar with my images it’s easy to always see the same patterns. That reinforces past outcomes but it isn’t the point of the exercise. Looking beneath the obvious tendencies in my work there are more subtle thoughts. Often the difference between good work and excellence is in the small details. They are reflected in patterns beneath the surface aspects of my images. I try to understand those thoughts.

I generally process interesting raw images while sifting the archives. There are at least two reasons to do this. First, skills and attitudes change over time and hopefully develop into personal style at some point. Second, it is an opportunity to explore new ideas uncovered along the way. My goal is not to produce finished work for publication but to exercise creative freedom. Occasionally good images do emerge.

This exercise often breaks my creative block. Even while I’m struggling to produce new work I’m able to be productive by seeing my existing work with fresh eyes.