Photographs and Memories

Fisher-Price photo on flight to Miami

I was born and raised in Rochester, N.Y., home of Eastman Kodak. While I always loved taking pictures, I'll be honest, I was never interested in the science or mechanics of photography. I just loved the idea that you could use an image to preserve a memory for all time. When I was a kid I remember not having a camera and just taking pictures in my mind. I thought, if I take a mental picture of this, I will always remember it. And honestly, I still do remember some of my mental pictures.

In junior high school I got my first real camera, a basic Kodak point and shoot. I began to document my classmates and school events with the idea they would be a historic record.

On a Florida vacation I suffered my first camera setback when I got sand in it and it stopped working. I didn't get another until much later in high school, when I again began to record people and significant events. I dropped off several rolls of film at the Yearbook office and was surprised to see so many of them filling the pages of our senior yearbook. That was an early success, but there would be many more failures.

One of the only surviving photos from Fandango.

On "Fandango," the 1999 cross country road trip I took with my friend Kate, our bags were stolen, including 30 or so undeveloped rolls of film. I was very upset, and the incident made me question if documenting so much of my life was a worthy or even noble pursuit. We've all heard the belief that taking a photograph can steal a person's soul. I'm not sure that's the case in a general sense, but if you are photographing someone without their permission, at minimum you are invading their privacy and personal boundaries. You could say you are stealing something. I admit I've been guilty of this on many occasions, particularly when traveling. I began to question if the theft of my film was some sort of karma for "stealing" souls, or if it was just some way to get me to stop documenting and start living.

One year later on a trip around Europe, my camera died and I again fell short in my attempt to document a major life event. When I returned, I didn't bother purchasing a new camera. At the time I was living in San Francisco, where the mindset of myself and many around me was to "live in the now." I was often told not to take photos or record anything, just live in the moment and experience life as it happens. If you are taking a photo, you're missing it. I fully bought into this. For one thing, it made perfect sense when I was high, and it also seemed to mesh with how I had let my photographs define my previous trips, and how I let their loss or destruction affect how I felt about my trip. I didn't take photos for nearly 4 years.

But in 2004 I had the opportunity to travel to China and Japan. I thought about it long and hard, and decided I just had to take photos. You can't change who you are, and to me, documenting is living. You can say taking photos has you standing on the sidelines, but when I take them, I feel an active participant in whatever is going on.

The advent of digital cameras had me hopeful that I wouldn't suffer the same issues I had with my film cameras of the past. I bought a Fuji FinePix s3000, but I was clueless to the technology. So when uploading the photos to my laptop, I accidentally erased them all!! A techy co-worker did manage to recover some of my deleted photos, but this mishap again made me question my photographic pursuits. Why did every trip end with photos lost? Was this all a coincidence? Or something more? Was I subconsciously sabatoging myself? Or was someone or something trying to stop me from taking all these photos? I will never know the reason for sure, but it definitely got my attention. Maybe that's the reason. Maybe it was just another roadblock I had to push through.

I decided that going forward I would keep taking photos despite the setbacks, but I would embrace technology rather than fear it. Many of the problems I had were preventable if I had only taken the time to learn how things work. I also decided to try to be more conscious of who and what I photograph, and why. I now try to be respectful and selective when taking photos.

In November 2010 I took a trip to Iceland and Europe. I purchased a Canon EOS Rebel T1i, and this time, I studied up before going. Believe it or not, I encountered no problems with this camera or the pictures I took. But this was also the first major trip I took with a smartphone. I downloaded the Hipstamatic and CameraBag apps for my iPhone, and had a field day taking all kinds of quirky photos with these apps. Honestly, they were the photos I most enjoyed taking. So what happened? In Berlin I dropped my iPhone in the toilet! My phone was completely dead, and I wasn't even upset by the possibility that I lost a $200 phone. It was that I lost all the photos I had taken for 3 weeks. There was nothing I could do except put the iPhone into a bag of rice and wait until it dried out. I told a friend what happened and she actually said, "Maybe it's because you take too many photos." Wow, really? There was that thought again.

It's a funny word, taking photos. It kind of implies you are stealing something. I have heard my friend Tom Barker use the term making photos. I like this much better. I wasn't stealing, I was creating. I think that's a good thing.

When I returned home to NY, I plugged in my phone.... and it worked! My photos, and my faith, were restored.

Today I press on, recording moments, scenes and memories. Knowing that each time I take them, they too are not permanent. Nothing is.