rlketcham.com
I drive past this place at the very head of Discovery Bay everytime I go to Port Townsend. It hasn’t been open for years, but used to be a great place to explore for fairly odd treasures. It always seemed to catch my eye but I could never quite visualize how I would photograph it. Last week I finally took my own advice and went to take a closer look. Sun was all wrong, it was also 18 degrees out so I drove the 6 miles home and started to stew on it. Finally looked up the exact spot on Google Earth and tried to figure out when the light would be better. Went back made a few images of this and some other old buildings that are next to it. I will now be going back there a lot at different times of the day til I get the image I see in my head. I may even have to drag the lights out for this.
Point is I see the image I want a lot of the time before I try to make it. I have looked at that spot for years with a vague feeling about what I wanted to say and it finally is bubbling up so bad I have to get it out. Previsualize and have something to say in mind first is a help to me, and a lot of things get into the notebook for rethink until I just have to get them out. I keep a note book of things I see and ideas that pop into my head for images and then revise them until I just have to see how they will look in the viewfinder. The notebook is never very far from me and is continually updated and added to. I can end up laying awake in the night for hours seeing images I want to make until I decide to just get the idea down on paper so it will keep til daylight.
Just wondering if others wake up in the night or morning with an image they have to make that day or have images in their head that just won’t go away until it is on film?
I guess I’m not much of a walk around and take pictures kind of guy, I do walk around and take ideas for pictures though. Yes the occasional image comes out of the walking around but I still end up thinking about it and going back a lot to make something I saw in my head. That ‘decisive moment’ for me is more often one I put together than observe.
Of course it helps if the weather cooperates when I get this way.
