Conspiracy of Cartographers

Link to Kickstarter campaign here.

Hello! And welcome back to us all! I’ve been a bit absent, haven’t I? There’s a completely reasonable and logical explanation for this. Writer’s block. I’m sure I have things to say about something, but I just don’t have the words to say them. I don’t know why.

I’ll sit down to write or to come up with ideas, and there’s just nothing there. Nothing in my head. I can talk and talk about various things – I was just on the Negative Influence podcast and had a bunch of stuff to say! You should check it out. It was a great conversation! But when it’s just me and the keyboard or me and a pen, I’m rather empty.

Sure, I could push through it and just say whatever b******t, but I’m not really in the business of “making content,” so when I don’t have something to say, I’d much rather just not say anything.

Which means that I have something to say, doesn’t it?

Well, I’ll say it.

There’s a Book

For the past few years, I’ve focused a lot of my photography on small, often abandoned, cemeteries through the West and Midwest. I’ve finally decided to put together a book of some of these photos.

The book is titled: Where the Plow Cannot Find Them. And right now, if you’re listening to this in mid-November of 2025, I have a Kickstarter campaign going to help release the book.

While I’ve had writer’s block, I haven’t had photobook block. The thing is ready to go to print; I just need it to find an audience. And that’s where you come in. If you’re willingly listening to this, then there must be something about my photography or words that you like or can at least tolerate. Thank you for that. And fortunately, this book has both.

So here I sit, still wracked with writer’s block, trying to come up with something to say that’s more than “hey, buy my book, I bet you’ll like it.

I guess I can tell you a little about the book itself.

This book contains 75 photographs of gravesites and 75 stories about the photographs and the people buried there. I am based out of Washington, and so many of them come from this state. Others come from Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Wyoming, and Oregon. Future books will feature more and different states, but Washington will always likely have a special focus for me (if for no other reason than it’s easier).

It is the culmination of thousands of miles, hundreds of cemeteries, countless photographs, and months of research. It is also (hopefully) the first volume of many.

Over my years of traveling and exploring the backroads and towns of the West and Midwest, I continually came across cemeteries. Sometimes I’d stop and look around, maybe take a few pictures. But as time went on, I stayed a little longer, I looked at the names, the dates, and imagined stories. Finally, I brought along my 4x5 camera, and the cemeteries became my main subject.

My interest started as something on the surface. The stones themselves, as well as their settings, were interesting. The decay, the preservation, the way they lay upon the land, and how they sometimes sank into it, all caught my eye.

When I returned home and wished to share a few, I was at a loss for what to say about them. This is where the research came into things. After that, I had stories, sometimes detailed and sprawling, other times hardly anything more than names.

Why Pioneers?

Most people who enjoy walking, exploring, and photographing cemeteries visit the large ones, the famous ones. Cemeteries like Laurel Hill in Philadelphia or Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles get most of the visits. There’s Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery and Trinity Church in New York, as well. Their beauty as parks cannot be overstated.

However, the cemeteries I visit have mostly been forgotten by all but locals and the few family members that remain. They are small, often unkempt, and along quiet backroads or in farmers’ fields.

They contain the graves of pioneers, poor folks, and the working class. Anyone who could afford to be buried somewhere else usually was. These are the cemeteries of ghost towns and farm communities.

Most were founded in the same way: A few pioneer families established homesteads on various parcels of land. Before long, a family member would die. Maybe it was the grandfather who came along. Often it was one of the children. Then, one of the farmers would give a small piece of their land to make into a cemetery. The community would grow and expand, and the cemetery would expand along with it.

Then, finally, the pioneers would move on, selling their land to someone who was staying, and they’d leave their dead behind.

I frequent and enjoy pioneer cemeteries over those in cities or towns. Many are abandoned and deserve a little recognition. The people who are memorialized on the stones I photograph have stories, and they deserve to be remembered.

These pioneer cemeteries are often secluded and desolate. I live most of my life in a large city full of far more people than necessary. When I leave the city, I search for solitude. Few places provide more solitude than a pioneer cemetery in the middle of nowhere.

The Mission

I’ve spent so many hours photographing these small cemeteries. They’ve grown to be almost a second home for me. I feel comfortable in them, I feel a sort of mission, like this is my calling (if callings even exist).

This writer’s block thing often comes hand-in-hand with photographer’s block (or whatever we’re calling it). I haven’t picked up a camera since August. I’m always okay with this. Creativity comes when it comes, and if I force it, then photography ends up feeling like a job rather than something I love.

While I don’t miss photography when I’m not feeling creative enough to shoot something, I do miss cemeteries. I could go to one of the city cemeteries in Seattle, but there’s just no character to them. There’s no soul there. City cemeteries contain massive and beautiful stone monuments. There are thousands upon thousands of sculpted headstones, each worth its own photograph. The layout, the planning, and the landscaping of these cemeteries are all works of art. But what I long for is that small pioneer cemetery, overrun with grasses, down a lonely dirt road.

There are places that I miss, that I long for, when I’m so many miles away from them. I miss my hometown, of course. I miss the coulees and sagebrush of eastern Washington, I miss the prairies of Kansas. And, maybe most of all, I miss these abandoned cemeteries.

We often take photographs to remember a time or a person. We want to capture a sliver of the feeling we had in the moment. This is one of the reasons I photograph cemeteries. I love them so much - I don’t even have fancy words to describe it. It’s just a raw feeling down in my gut.

I put this book together for me. I understand that a book of graves isn’t really for everyone. These hours spent among the burials might be a source of calm for me, but it might not be easily translatable.

When I photograph a gravesite, my focus isn’t on making it palatable for the viewer. I’m not concerned about what will get likes on Instagram or look good as a print on a wall. My only concern is to capture how I’m feeling. This is true, of course, for every photo I take. But it’s somehow more true with cemetery photography.

I know that most of the other photos I take – the ones of small towns or abandoned homes – can be and are enjoyed by a bunch of folks. Get me in front of an old house with a dark sky, and people will actually pay money for that print (this actually happened). But the grave of some child who died of smallpox in 1890? That’s not such an easy sell.

But that’s where I’d rather be with my camera.

The Stories

When I’m in the cemetery, I have almost no sense of a story. There’s just names and dates. Sometimes I can piece a little narrative together (like when a mother died in childbirth), but the details must come later.

This book contains stories for each of the photos, for each of the graves, and the people memorialized on t…

I took in the Evergreen State Fair in Snohomish County, Washington, last week. I walked the midway, avoided the games, and ate too many fries and too much cotton candy. There’s always some mixed feelings swimming around in my head about the animal exhibits. I avoided the cows, but took in the sheep. Saw a bunch of horses, and rolled my eyes at the dogs. I followed half a dozen “cat” signs with arrows only to discover that the cats were somehow not there that day.

Each of these stalls and pens had various awards and ribbons attached to them. Some won for showmanship, others won for driving; there were ribbons and plaques, banners and rosettes for a dizzying array of categories and classes.

While the baby goats were adorable (I booped noses with one!), and the Clydesdales were intimidating and majestic, the sprawling mass of other things that were judged was a bit overstimulating.

In the Arts & Crafts hall were ceramics, metalworking, various miniatures, and some diaramas. The quilts took up most of the room of the sewing hall, and they were impressive feats of bed-size, hand-sewn artistry.

This sat next to your very traditional county fair food: pies, cakes, breads, and jams. There were also homemade beverages and some of the best-looking produce I’ve ever seen.

Each of these items won some sort of award. Most had blue “First Place” stickers on them, while others had ribbons for “Best in Class.” Some ribbons made no sense at all to an outsider (Reserve Champion? Sweepstakes?), but it seemed like everyone did really well. Everyone got something. Good job!

And finally, an entire side of the huge exhibition hall was dedicated to photography. While I don’t know much about pigs or rabbits, bell peppers or apple pies, I do know a bit of something about photography.

The age groups for the photographers ranged from the youngest (ages four through nine) to senior citizens. There were also categories for Master Level and Advanced, though those designations were vague and essentially unexplainable.

So how do the judges at the Evergreen State Fair judge things like Aunt Ethel’s blueberry pie? Does the rabbit with the fuzziest tail win? The cow with the best moo? And, most importantly for us, how do they judge a photograph?

I don’t want to get lost in the weeds here, but technically, they use one of several systems that take into account expected standards (called the Danish Method). Sometimes they will judge on a curve (this is the American Method). There’s nothing objective or set in stone here. It’s really just the opinion of the judges. It’s a mood, a vibe.

Most of this is pretty low stakes. It’s bragging rights and maybe $25. There are generally no entry fees for county fairs (except for livestock), so the risk/reward is almost nonexistent. Of course, that does make one wonder why we do it at all. The way these contests are judged is nearly random. It’s a lottery. So why do we insist upon it mattering?

The Photography Exhibition

This wasn’t my first time visiting a county fair photography contest. Here, you’ll find photos of every kind taken by folks who are just happy to have their photo up in public, where it can be seen.

Like with the cows, the cakes, and quilts, these photographs had been judged, and ribbons and stickers adorned them all. You could win best in your category (and there are a lot of categories), best in your age group, best in show, and even sweepstakes (which still made no sense to me).

All of this was confusing since it seemed like nearly every photograph won something, and usually, 1st place. I asked the woman overseeing the photographs, but she just explained it to me just as I explained it to you, which solved nothing for me and will now solve nothing for you. But that’s fine.

Competition is nothing new. Our drive to compete for fun existed before humans, neanderthals, and even great apes playing throwing games (where you toss something and see who can toss it the farthest).

I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with that; whether it’s a foot race or drag racing, I get it. Sure, it can be taken too far, but seeing if your ‘69 Chevy with a 396, Fuelie heads, and a Hurst on the floor can outrun the other guy’s on the quarter mile is just good American fun. Hell, I used to watch the Amish drag racing their buggies. As humans, we just love to race stuff.

And the whole thing is very simple: if you are quicker, you win. There’s really no debate; it’s purely objective. The “judging” makes sense. The same goes for most games. From football to roller derby, the team that scores the most points wins.

At the fair, when I asked about the photography judges and whether they were local professionals, one of the volunteers told me that all the photos were judged “by Rick.” "Is Rick a photographer?” I asked.

“Oh, he does many things, maybe he takes some pictures too,” came the reply. She then told me that Rick wasn’t here now, but he’s “probably in the pig barn, just look for the guy in the overalls.”

I did visit the pig barn, but none of the overall-wearing fellows were Rick, but all of this got me thinking: Just what the hell are we doing?

Incredibly Short History of Photography Contests

Judged competitions at county fairs date back to the early 1800s (and likely well before that in some shape or form). When photography became more accessible to the masses in the late 1800s, many fairs folded them into the competitions like so much Crisco into pie crust.

In 1896, Charles Emsley and Dr. Lombard were the “lucky ones in the photography contest” at the Western Montana Fair in Missoula. A local paper reported that “Mr. Emsley will wear the gold medal till next fair.”

But county fairs never had a monopoly on photography contests. The La Crosse Camera Company out of Wisconsin held a competition in 1895, advertising that they were giving away $1000 in gold to the winners. $200 for first place, $100 for second, $30 for third, and so on. [$1000 in 1895 is about $40,000 in today’s money.] The only catch was that you had to take the picture with one of their cameras (the La Crosse camera was a 4x5 box camera). The ad ran in papers all across the Midwest and East Coast (though a winner seems never to have been announced).

Even newspapers got in on the act. In 1957, the New England Associated Press awarded its “Best in Show” prize to Charles Merrill for his picture entitled “But ‘Twas Too Late,” showing two men removing the body of a drowning victim from the ocean.

Since then, it’s pretty much been the same – low stakes, low rewards (apart from the gold that possibly never existed) and essentially bragging rights.

Juried Shows Are Just Photo Contests

Of course, photo contests aren’t the only photo contests. There are also juried shows, which are a little bit different, though still very much photo contests. Typically, juried shows cost money to enter, and the selection process is more rigorous. In the end, however, the awards are typically small, and it still comes down to bragging rights.

Yet, juried shows are held in much higher esteem than county fairs, which is why they’re called “juried shows” and not “photography contests.” Juried shows didn’t start with photography; they actually come from the art world.

Still, they seem to have been amplified by the art schools of the 1920s, and were not always received positively. In 1929, the Chicago Art Institute held a juried show whose jurors received so much ire and criticism over their curation that they considered obtaining police protection since the public was, according to the Chicago Tribune, “sufficiently upset to fall upon the offending members eye, tooth, and nail.”

While the paper was almost certainly speaking in hyperbolics (after all, this was Chicago during the era of Al Capone), the jurors, as today, were acting as gatekeepers, and the artists were fed up with it.

If you ask galleries that put on juried shows, they extoll such bene…

Disclaimer: Even the mere thought of the demise of Kodak makes some folks in the film community have big feelings. I’d like to state for the record (or whatever) that I don’t think Kodak is going out of business. I’m sure they’ll be around for decades to come and will never let us down. They’ll never discontinue your favorite emulsion or raise film prices. They’ll always love us and respect us, and follow us on Instagram forever. They just had a slight financial malfunction. But, uh, everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?

Last week (meaning the middle of August 2025) big news hit the film community and the Wall Street Journal: Kodak was going out of business! Well sort of not really. Kodak was apparently having yet another existential crisis.

Kodak released a statement attached to an earnings report detailing their lack of earnings and highlighting their nearly half a billion dollars of debt. They wrapped it all up by declaring “these conditions raise substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

Now, this may seem like the initial rumblings that Kodak might be on its way to going out of business. But no, that’s not at ALL what they were saying, you stupid idiots, what’s wrong with you?

By “these conditions raise substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” they didn’t actually mean that there was any doubt at all about their ability to continue as a going concern. In fact, it’s the opposite, obviously. And why would you think otherwise?

To be clear, in the business world, no longer being a “going concern” doesn’t mean you’re immediately going out of business. It means that you’re probably going out of business in the near future. It’s night and day, okay? When a company is no longer a going concern, liquidation is almost inevitable, usually within a year’s time.

While Kodak told investors and board members of their financial woes, they really didn’t want the public to think of it in such harsh terms. Also, their stocks tanked by like 20%.

In classic Trump-like fashion, Kodak blamed everyone else, issuing a follow-up press release they called a “Statement Regarding Misleading Media Reports.”

When I first read this real and official press release on some random guy’s Instagram post, I thought it was a parody or hoax. It was so poorly written (let alone conceived) that I figured no multi-million dollar company with a 145-year history would ever release this in any official way.

I was wrong. Kodak is this company. Kodak and their decades of shockingly bad business decisions would absolutely release an official statement where they wander aimlessly between talking about themselves in the third person (as “Kodak”) and referring to some collective “we” while blaming “the media” for reporting that Kodak might go out of business after Kodak said “we will probably no longer be a going concern.” It’s baffling and just so dumb in so many ways that I’m tired of writing about it.

Kodak was supposed to hold a big meeting about this on Friday, August 15th, but as of the time of this recording, they haven’t issued any details about that. Maybe by the time you’re reading this, they’ve reversed all their financial woes, re-released Kodachrome, and given every film shooter $100 just because they like us so much. Who knows? The future is impossible to predict.

Anyway, now that we know for sure that Kodak will be around forever, let’s talk about life after Kodak. If Big Yellow can’t pull out of this financial tailspin, what will we, the film community, do? How will we survive without Portra and HC-110, without Tri-X and whatever they call their TMax developer?

This would be the worst-case scenario. Kodak is gone. Now what?

What Is Kodak?

First, let’s talk about what Kodak is and, more importantly, what it isn’t. Kodak is actually named the Eastman Kodak Company. It was incorporated in 1892 and did their thing until 2012 when it filed for bankruptcy. After that, it became two companies: Eastman Kodak and Kodak Alaris.

For our purposes, Eastman Kodak manufactures the film and chemicals we use. Kodak Alaris markets and sells them to us (except for motion picture film, the sales of which Eastman continues to handle).

If Eastman Kodak goes out of business, Kodak Alaris goes under too. Partially because it’s all kind of one company (sort of), but also because Alaris relies on Eastman for stock. Again, I’m narrowing everything to focus specifically on the film community. In reality, it’s a bit more complex than I’m making it. A private equity firm is now involved with Alaris, and that never ends well. So even if Eastman Kodak stays afloat, we’ll have that shitty s**t to deal with eventually.

So, because of this weird arrangement of Peter constantly robbing Paul to pay nobody, if Eastman Kodak goes under and all of the film they make is no longer being made, that will affect a whole slew of companies directly.

Your favorite photography stores, both local and online, will take a hit. Kodak film is a pretty big chunk of their business, but probably not enough to sink them. Especially the ones who have been smart enough to diversify a bit.

Companies like Cinestill, Flic Film and every other company that re-rolls and repurposes Kodak motion picture film will close. Eastman Kodak isn’t the only manufacturer of motion picture film in the world, but they’re the only ones doing color. Also, if FujiFilm is selling any color film, that will go away, too. Kodak has been making film for them for a few years now.

Other companies, like Lomography, will no longer have color film. All of Lomo’s regular color film is made by Kodak. There are other options and they have other emulsions as well as their broken cameras, so I doubt they’d fully go under, but it would be pretty rough.

Ilford, on the other hand, suddenly becomes the largest film manufacturer in the world, so good for them!

The Whole Point

Film photography sometimes seems more about buying stuff than actually creating art. So when Kodak’s latest flirtation with oblivion came to light, we had our own little meltdown during which we said things like “What will I do without Portra?” “How will I survive without Tri-X?” “I only use HC-110! I guess I’ll switch back to digital!”

Now is a good time to remember that what we create has far more to do with us than it does with the material we use to create it. It’s easy to forget that when so much of film photography is collecting gear and stocking up the film fridge, but it’s true.

Of course, most of what Kodak produces can be swapped out with something else. Do you like Tri-X? You’ll be fine with Ilford HP5. Do you develop with HC-110? There’s Legacy L-110. Adore the colors of Portra or Ektachrome? Well, okay, admittedly, we’ve got a problem there. But with Ilford dipping their toes into the color pool, and with them suddenly being the largest film manufacturer in the world, it’s likely they’d jump in to fill that gap.

But even that isn’t the point. The point is that we will survive the loss of our go-to emulsions should Kodak go the way of the dinosaurs. My favorite emulsion is Vericolor III. It was discontinued by Kodak in 1994. I’m doing fine. We are artists and creators, our damn job is to overcome obstacles to realize our vision, our dreams. Film is a big part of what we do, but it’s not the reason we do it. Film is not why we are artists or even photographers.

We Are Small

Kodak has served photographers since before photography became a thing that everyone was doing. At its height (and for a couple of generations before), every household in America and Europe had at least one camera, and that camera needed film. The film community as we know it now didn’t really exist then – it didn’t need to.

Once digital became a thing, we eventually figured out that we missed film. We missed the look, the process, the ritual. A bunch of us came back. That number, however, is an incredibly minuscule fra…

If you look through my photos, you will see pictures of abandoned buildings, of houses left empty, of roads seldom driven, of paths sometimes walked only by me. You will see endless photos of old towns, empty cars, power lines, bridges, and railroads. But you'll almost never see a photo of a person, let alone a portrait.

It took me years to realize that I shied away from this. And maybe that's what it is, maybe I am shy. Too shy to ask if I could take your picture. Too shy to learn just how to make it good. Too shy to extend myself to make that connection.

But part of that realization was that while I don't take pictures of people, I do take pictures of humanity, though maybe that isn’t the right word (as you’ll see soon enough). Maybe I take photos of personality.

People

When someone first pointed out that I didn't take pictures of people, I almost didn't believe them. I will roam from town to town, taking many photos, talking to many people, seeing them on the streets and in their cars and in their houses, and yet, rarely have they ever appeared in my photos.

All of these subjects, all of these places that I photograph, were once peopled, were once inhabited. Some still are. Nearly every photo of mine has some record of human interaction with nature.

I have fallen in love with this interaction, this relationship between humans and nature. I don’t even look for it anymore, I just see it. In every place I visit, every photo I take, there it is.

I used to submit some of my photos to an online group that focused upon nature photography of Washington. Their only rule was that there was to be “no hand of man” – obvious evidence of human occupation or manipulation. But almost everywhere in Washington, almost everywhere in America, you can’t find what we think of as nature without the hand of man.

The trails we walk, the hills we climb, the streams we swim were all affected by this mysterious “hand of man.” Perhaps it’s not so obvious as a paved highway through a forest, but the lasting ramifications of our relationship with nature are everywhere.

Nature (Animals)

Our usual definition of nature is anything outside of human interference. It’s tempting to suggest that our view of nature is faulty – that maybe humans should be counted as part of nature rather than separate. This makes sense in so many ways, especially because of how we now build our houses, our cities, exiling nature to the outskirts, and well-managed parks.

But in another sense, maybe it's our perception of people that is faulty. Our idea of personhood and personality is very narrow. We see ourselves in it, of course, and sometimes we extend it to our pets, which is understandable. But almost never does it cross that line, almost never does it leave our house, our property, our bubble.

And yet, it shouldn't be a stretch to see other animals as people. We give names to our pets. We see the personalities in our cats and dogs. And so it shouldn't be insurmountable for us to see the animals we come into contact with in the same light. Maybe we aren't as familiar with their ways, but we could be. There's very little stopping that from happening. Maybe it’s our shyness. Maybe all of us are as shy with the animals as I am with people.

I don’t take too many photos of animals, if I’m being honest. I shared a couple of stories not too long ago about photographing some cows. I’ve also photographed a bird or two, when I got the opportunity. And, of course, there are the photos of Juniper on her deathbed. It was a devastating honor to take those photos.

I do wish I could take more photos of animals, but it isn't shyness that's stopping me, it is skill and maybe patience. I don't have the patience to be a wildlife photographer. Also, most of my lenses are wide. In many photos, there must be hidden animals, unseen, staring at me, wondering what I am doing with a 90 mm lens. If only they could tell me.

Nature: Plants

But why not the plants? In some narrow ways, we are familiar with seeing plants as people. We raise and talk to, and even name, flowers and ferns. There was a prayer plant who lived in my house, and his name was Greg. I didn't name him, but he came to the house with that name, and it stuck.

Many of us fawn over the flowers and vegetables growing in our gardens, and we form what logic tells us is a one-way relationship with them. But somewhere inside, we do understand that there is an exchange happening. Even materially, we water them, they grow, in return, they make us happy and fill our stomachs.

So why not the plants in the wild? Why not the trees, the grasses, why not the wildflowers and sage? Even in the cities, plants are more plentiful than our human neighbors. And they're often much easier to deal with.

Other People

I don't think I've always seen plants and animals in this way, but I'm having a hard time remembering when I didn't. It's something that I simply haven't given much thought to. But when I look through my photos, I can see it’s there. I am, in a way, taking photos of people. Maybe they aren't human people. And many of them aren't animal people.

But I take portraits of trees. I focus in on flowers. They are not, as we often mistake, inanimate objects. They have life in them. They cycle through birth, disease, and death the same way we do. We have much more in common with them than we do a house, or a bridge, or a car.

There is a world going on around us, under our feet, above our heads, and in some ways, we are connected to it. But in most ways, I think we've neglected it. Maybe we’ve forgotten. Maybe we've never had it.

When we were babies, did we really see much of a difference between our older sibling and the dog? Didn't we have a favorite tree? Didn't we have that childhood urge to run to the forest?

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a small town surrounded by farmers’ fields and woods. A large creek bordered one side of town, and I’d spend entire summer days running through the trees, scrambling up hills, building forts, and catching turtles and bugs.

I learned quickly that if I sat silent and still, birds and squirrels would get used to me, ignore me, and go about their normal business. There were special moments when I’d see deer creep close for a drink, eyeing me all the while. And even when the deer and the squirrels weren’t around, I discovered that I could sit by a stream and just listen to its murmuring.

Our Inanimate Friends

So really, why stop at plants and animals? Couldn't the water also be a person? It can be calm and still one day, and full of anger and violence the next. We see that in ourselves. We see that in animals. And we can see that in the rivers and streams, the ocean, especially. None of these beings is inanimate.

Even the rocks, though they are still and solid, are not inanimate. It may take millennia, but they can move. Even mountains can move. There is a mountain in Washington that many geologists are starting to figure out that moved from Baja California. In fact, much of Washington state is made up of tiny islands that were in the Pacific Ocean. They've all gathered together to make the home where I live now. And yet we think the land is inanimate because our lives are too short to see its motion.

Nature Is Motion

As photographers, we can show the personality of animals and plants, of water, and even mountains. And I've always found it important to do so.

Many photographers who photograph nature refuse to take their pictures when the wind is blowing. They want to take a beautiful photo, with a tight focus and a wide aperture. They want a tripod and the fastest shutter speed to negate any movement. I never understood this.

All of nature is in motion. All of life is in motion. Even in death, we are still moving, the bugs wriggling around in our bodies, the worms in our guts. It's all motion. There's no way to escape it. As photographers, why are we trying to deny this?

When I take a photo of, for example, an abandoned house, I try to show the uniformity it has with the nat…

This episode is a bit different. First, it is audio-only (and when you listen, you’ll understand why). Second, it is fully recorded in the field on a few hikes and an overnight camping trip that would usually be a photography trip. I suggest listening with headphones.

Here, I take my first camera-less trip in well over 20 years. Did I survive? What is left of me?

Along the way, I talk about why I wanted to try this, why I love this part of Washington state, the importance of photography, whether I regretted not bringing the camera, and so much more.

There are, of course, no film photos to share with this one. I did take two or three cell phone pics, though.

[Before we start, I want to let you know about my new zine, Cloudless. It’s now available, and you can pick it up here.]

The narrow dirt road straddled the Idaho/Washington border with late spring wheat fields, their stalks nearly to my knees, growing on either side. I stopped the car on a hill and waited for the dust to settle so that I might see the scene behind me in my rearview mirror.

I stepped onto the road, grabbing my camera and checking to see again what I had loaded. The road ran through a small cut into the hill, with steep enbankments rising above on either side. I scrambled to the top of one and saw the green wheat undulating like waves on a vast and uneven ocean.

The hill I was on rolled its way to a small valley and other hills rising in the middle distance. An old barn stood in the valley, its wooden walls decaying and its tin roof patched, but intact. Light clouds dotted the sky.

I raised the camera, took the photo, and slid back down to the road. This entire encounter took maybe thirty seconds. I stumbled into a lovely composition, and the photo nearly took itself. I was back in the car and driving to the next picture.

Just how much thought I put into this photo, I couldn’t tell you. I know a good composition when I see one. I saw one and took the photo. It’s not that I didn’t think, it’s not that I just shot. I quickly scraped together whatever experience and foreknowledge I had, saw the photo before me, and took the picture.

Lomography

There is a film company called Lomography that markets its rebranded films to photographers who want a certain lo-fi look. It plays well on nostalgia, and they’ve managed to turn the memories of grandma’s photo albums into a thriving business.

On each roll of film they produce, they’ve printed their slogan: Don’t Think - Just Shoot! There is something mildly philosophical about this. I understand immediately what they want us to believe they’re saying. “Don’t overthink the photograph, go with your gut, shoot it!”

Of course, what they’re actually saying is “buy more film.” After all, they are a company whose priority is the bottom line. The more film we shoot, the more film we buy. And the more film we shoot without thinking, the more film we blow through like a mid-80s wedding photographer.

I can’t stress enough how bad this advice is. The advice is as bad as the faith of Lomography’s argument. It is only made worse by how obvious and brazen a cover it is.

And still, on this trip, I brought along a film Lomography called Potsdam. Before the rebranding, the film was made by German motion picture film manufacturer ORWO, which called it UN54. I used to buy it in bulk back in my 35mm days. The only way to acquire it now in medium format is to buy it as Potsdam from Lomography.

I love how this emulsion handles shadows, how inky dark it can be. There is a contrast to this film that you can ply with a yellow filter, or even red. I would shoot this film more, and might even use it regularly if not for Lomography’s lack of quality control. But more on that later.

Cows

I often find myself driving through range land, where cows and sometimes sheep roam free. An awareness of this is necessary when I’m driving, and caution is always in order. A few years back, while driving near the Missouri River in Montana, I was surrounded by cows with their young bulls. One of the bulls spooked and, rather than running away from my car, ran into the front quarter panel, putting a huge dent in it.

I stopped to see if he was okay - he was. And then I called my insurance company to explain that a cow had hit my car. “You hit a cow?” she asked. “No,” I replied, “other way around.”

Cows are usually skittish and fearful of us. It’s no wonder the hell we put them through. Taking their photo is something that almost never happens for me. The car already frightens them, and then when a human emerges from this metal cage, it’s basically the end times.

But along a Summer Road I’ve photographed before, I came across cows and heifers on both sides of the road. They were behind fences, and there were no young and frightened bulls to be seen.

The older cows were immediately uneasy, but the heifers, maybe a year old, were curious. Their eyes met mine, and they stood watching me. Another walked closer to get a better look.

I slowly went for my camera and began talking to them in a soft voice. I have no idea if this mattered, but it put me at ease. I walked from the road, over a small ditch, and into the grass where the barbed wire fence was strung, separating the cows from the road.

They stood, just looking, though I could see the clouds of hesitation and anxiety building behind their eyes. I lifted the camera and focused. This is usually as far as I’ll get with cows. At this point, they’re taking no chances and running away, often creating a mini-stampede.

This time, however, they just watched. They looked into the camera. There were three of them - two younger, one older. I was afraid that the loud click of the shutter and mirror slap of the Mamiya RB67 might scare them away, but even that hardly registered.

I took several photos of the trio and another of a mother and calf, who also cooperated, though with much more apprehension.

I had to work quickly. I had no idea how long my luck would hold, how long the cows would tolerate this strange event happening before them. I had to “just shoot,” worried that I might miss the opportunity. But I never stopped thinking, I never ceased calculating the odds of getting just one more photo.

In the end, that wouldn’t have mattered to Lomography (whose film, Potsdam, I was shooting). I quickly finished the roll and loaded another. They don’t really care if you think or not, they just want you to shoot more. And I did. Then, with the next roll of Potsdam ready to go, I returned to the car, grateful that the cows were brave girls. The boys could certainly learn some lessons.

The Worst Question Ever

Back in the days of the previous podcast, I interviewed dozens of photographers. Through all of that, there was one question I never asked, one question that nearly every other film photography podcast asked first: “Why do you choose to shoot film?”

It’s not that it’s necessarily a bad question. It’s just that nearly every film photographer answers it the same way - some variation of: “I shoot film because it makes me slow down.”

This answer, like the photographers answering, comes at the question from the aspect of a former digital photographer who thoughtlessly shot everything as quickly as they could.

It’s understandable; that’s how digital photography was marketed. With film, you had 36 exposures at most before you had to change rolls. With digital, you’ve got hundreds.

However, these are two different issues: one of speed and one of capacity. They’re not actually related at all.

The push for faster photo-taking wasn’t invented with digital cameras. All through the 70s and 80s, film camera manufacturers pushed how quick and easy their new cameras were. From the motorized backs for medium format to the point & shoot 35mms, how quickly we could blow through frames was a huge selling point.

Wheat

There are small dirt roads that are rarely driven by anyone but farmers to and from their tractors parked on the edge of their fields. But I drive them. There are seldom homes along them, no businesses, rarely even barns. But here, the roads rise and fall with the land. Only slightly graded (maybe once in the springtime), these Summer Roads offer us the closest feel we’ve got to the roads of the territorial days, the days before the car.

As I bounced along one, driving west with the morning sun at my back, I was again between wheat fields. The road was straight and level, though a small ridge rose beyond. In the middle of the road, as if planted on purpose, grew a small and struggling stalk of wheat. Its leaves wrinkled unshaded under the sun, yet still several spikes of grains grew in seeming defiance.

It was not purposely planted here. It likely …

Did you ever have someone get really intense with you over something you said? They were insistent, and even their arguments seemed a bit more involved than just boring semantics. Maybe they were even angry. And it’s someone whose opinion you valued, so immediately, you took a step back and gave a long think to whatever you said and how you said it. Then, after quite a bit of soul-searching introspection, you concluded that you were still right and what the hell was that all about?

One time I was casually talking to a fellow film photographer about how much time we all spend on film photography - “it’s our hobby,” I said, “it’s what we do.” They were really unimpressed with this. I wasn’t trying to be deep or even thought-out, but they took offense.

“Photography is NOT just a hobby,” they said, using the word “just” to fully and completely separate what they did for fun from what other people do for fun. “Photography is everything! It’s our artistic outlet, our means of communicating our emotions, it’s how we see the entire world!”

And that’s all true. But this photographer, like me, was not a professional. They spent far more money on photography than they saw in any returns from print sales, etc. We were pretty much on the same level of photographic intensity. It was indeed our lives, it’s what we thought of when we woke up and what we dreamed about when asleep. Every second of our day was consumed by photography.

At that point, I was more than happy with thinking of photography as my hobby, and myself as an amateur photographer. It’s a thing I did in my free time, and I didn’t get paid (in the sense that if this were a business, I’d have been bankrupt years ago). And this argumentative photographer was there too.

This conversation took me aback. Did I misunderstand what a hobby was? Was I not arting well enough? Was my photography lacking or inferior because I was fine with it being a hobby?

What is a Hobby?

At first, my suspicion was that maybe we were using two drastically different definitions of “hobby.” Wasn’t a hobby just a fun thing you did in your free time because you enjoyed it?

After collecting a few opinions on the matter, I hit the dictionaries and discovered, yes, that’s basically the definition we’ve all agreed upon in the English speaking world.

The entire idea of having a hobby is something that didn’t come about until fairly recently in Western history. It seems that the concept didn’t even invent itself until the 1500s when some wealthy people suddenly found themselves with nothing to do and they filled this free time with stuff that seemed like work (and actually was work to poorer people – like woodworking, needlepoint, and baking), but was actually something they did for pleasure.

The word hobby comes from the “hobby horse,” – a stick with a fake horse head on it. For some reason, possibly involving Tristam Shandy, that phrase was expanded to mean leisurely pastime. Eventually, the “horse” was dropped and “hobby” remained.

At first it was seen as a privilege to have a hobby. But by the 1600s, “hobby” had taken on a negative connotation. Maybe this was when the phrase muttered by every shitty boss everywhere came into being: “if you can lean, you can clean.” It is almost certainly tied to the Protestant work ethic. Hobbies were seen as play, and play was something for children. Western Civilization has been in decline since then. (I’m joking, of course, it was already well on its way.)

We have much more free time today than we did in the 1600s. However, we are also living through a period where free time is valued less and less, especially in the United States.

For me, photography is a hobby. It’s probably a hobby for you too, and that’s okay. I also have other hobbies. Obviously, etymology is one of them. So are music and movies. I recently got a fountain pen and I suppose I could make that a hobby if I wanted to (I probably don’t, and that’s okay too). Writing is probably second to photography and scratches many of the same itches.

Is Collecting Cameras a Hobby? Is it Photography?

Caught up in all of this is the strange fact that film photography actually encompasses two completely different hobbies. We have photographers and camera collectors. This is muddied even farther since the Venn diagram depicting the crossover is nearly a circle. Most film photographers have a collection of cameras, and most camera collectors are also photographers.

Some of the desire to draw a line between photography and hobbies comes from this. In some ways, I get it. I really hate gear talk. When photographers start talking lenses, I basically die inside. I just can’t do it. I just don’t care.

It’s not that I think it’s beneath me or not artistic enough, it just doesn’t interest me in the same way that knitters talking about different gauges of needles doesn’t interest me. That’s not my hobby.

I mean, I have a bunch of cameras like most other film photographers these days, but I don’t care much about them (and yes, this is a whole other thing I need to talk about someday). They’re fun to look at, and I’m basically fine with them being there, but I’m not a gear person. When someone asks me which lens I’m using, I have to look it up. I just don’t care enough to remember.

But I guess you could still call me a camera collector, or at least, a guy with a camera collection.

I’m the perfect candidate to look down on those photographers whose focus is gear rather than art. And I admit, it’s really ingrained in us to feel this way. It’s difficult not to. But it’s also shitty, and it’s important that we get over ourselves. Let people find their joy just as they let us find ours. And who’s to say our joy is more joyful, more pure?

Photography isn’t JUST a Hobby!

When someone says “photography isn’t just a hobby,” they’re actually admitting the 17th century Protestant work ethic idea that hobbies are childish, that hobbies aren’t important is true. They’re implying what they’re doing is art and is endlessly more important.

Calling your artistic pursuit a hobby doesn’t diminish what you love; instead, it recognizes that the love other people have for their pursuits is just as worthy and wonderful as yours. Calling it a hobby doesn’t lessen your skills and expertise. It doesn’t make you less of an artist. It’s just a good way to remind yourself that you’re doing this for the joy of it.

The problem with saying “photography is just a hobby” is that we’re also conceding that it is a hobby, but it’s also much more. And it is! Two things can be true! Most hobbies are more than just one thing. Most hobbies involve something that sets them apart from other hobbies. There’s a lot in photography that is unique to photography, but it’s not more unique than the specifics of literally any other hobby.

For me, the go-to example of a hobby is model railroading. It’s nice, pretty much everyone agrees that it’s a hobby, even model railroaders (is this because they’re not pretentious?). Model railroading involves a crazy amount of artistry, physics, research, skill, and free time. There are people even more into model railroading than we are into photography, I promise you. Pretty well anyone would agree that a good model railroad layout is a work of art, and yet they’re never counted amongst other artists. They sculpt, yet aren’t seen as sculptors. They paint, yet nobody calls them painters. They’re often pretty good photographers, too. But that’s not what they lead with. They are hobbyists and seem to understand the actual value of that word.

Meanwhile, we’re over here insisting that “photography isn’t just a hobby” because we can frame a picture and push a button. Maybe we need to recalibrate our enthusiasm.

The Way Out of Hobbies is Dumb

Film photography came back into prominence during a strange intersection of nostalgia and recession. It came about when vinyl records started making a comeback (for some, anyway – I never stopped). Things were turning very digital very quickly, and we longed for …

“You don’t take a photograph,” a young Ansel Adams might have said, “you make it.”

This is probably Adams’s most famous quote. And, it’s usually just something rattled off by your photography professor because it sounds deep and you gave them a bunch of money, and they have to say something at least a little profound-ish. And you were young and impressionable. You’d buy anything.

It’s used by a thousand semi-professional photographers trying to convince their potential clients that they’re doing something different, something more thoughtful.

But was Adams really trying to be profound or obtusely philosophical? Was his meaning truly the chasm of profundity we seem to believe it was? Or is this quote just photography’s “Not all who wander are lost”?

Ansel Adams thought that the act of photographing something should be a process, something well-considered, crafted. And it’s hard to disagree with that.

And yet, it always seems a bit cringe when I hear “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” This could be my own hang-up, assuming that the person saying or writing it was being precious and pious. It sounds pompous and inflated with self-importance. This is because it often is.

Let me get this out of the way right up front. This is a pet peeve of mine. And since it’s a pet peeve, it means that I don’t have to care about your rational opinion of this because I fully understand that my opinion may not be rational. More importantly, I’d rather scan the curliest 35mm negatives than argue with someone about this. And no, you don’t have to listen to me and my dumb opinion, but here you are.

Etymology for Fun and Profit!

When we say “I am making a picture,” what we’re really attempting to say is that we have given this subject, this scene, or whatever we’re photographing some thought. We’re not just taking a throw-away snapshot. I don’t think that’s how Adams meant it, but we’ll get to that soon enough.

First, I want to dig into the words “take” and “make.” They rhyme, and that’s a big clue to solving this mystery of why some of us say that we “make” a photograph. And we’ll get to that later too.

One of my other pet peeves is writers who begin an essay, “the dictionary defines” whatever they’re talking about. It’s lazy, it’s poor form, and I know attacking it is an easy target, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a target.

This, however, is different. We’re talking about two words that are, in the case of photography, almost interchangeable. Regardless of which one we use, we are exposing some chunk of photosensitive material to light. Both words describe the same action.

Both words, however, are very different, with wildly contrasting connotations. When we “take a picture,” it’s quick and thoughtless, but when we “make a picture,” it’s full of intention and purpose.

Historically, the words “take” and “make” are roughly the same age. “Take” comes from early Scandinavian, and we got “make” from one of the old Germanic languages. Both were welcomed into Old English a long time ago.

The definition of “take” is pretty straightforward. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “take” means “To seize, grasp, or capture something.” The original definition generally refers to capturing a town or vessel during wartime. But all of our basic definitions for “take” are drawn from this idea.

The definition for “make” is “to bring into existence by construction or elaboration.” It goes on: “To produce (a material thing) by combination of parts […] to construct, assemble, frame, fashion.” “Make” is about production, about the material produced. It’s the end result of whatever we’re doing.

Even now, we can see how “take” and “make” both have their parts in what we do. We “take” or capture a picture. We “make” or produce a material print.

Taketh a Likeness

But let’s go a little farther. Why did we ever say “take a picture”?

While it’s impossible to know who coined the term, it was first used in relation to imagery in the early 1500s. This was 300 years before the invention of photography. In the letters of Sir Thomas Cromwell, he mentions that someone would visit and “see his daughter and also take her picture.”

In this case, “take” meant “to paint” a portrait. Throughout the following centuries, we see this usage again and again.

Francis Meres complained in 1597 about someone “With such trimming and setting, and smoothing and correcting, as if ye meant immediately to have your pictures taken.”

Oliver Goldsmith wrote of a “limner, who travelled the country, and took likenesses for fifteen shillings a head” in 1767. [Side note: the word “likeness” meaning an image or painting, dates back to well over 1000 years.] [Also, a limner was someone who illustrated a manuscript.]

When photography came around, they just continued using the same word: take.

In an 1839 article about Louis Daguerre (one of the inventors of photography), an author wrote about his daguerriotypes, “Some of his last works have the force of Rembrandt's etchings. He has taken them in all weathers—I may say at all hours.”

The same word, “take,” was also used in early cinematography. “The biograph people came down from New York and took moving pictures of the ten-seater [bicycle],” wrote the Denver Evening Post in 1897.

To be fair, “make” did show up from time to time when talking about paintings, but it does seem to have been pretty rare, and always in the past tense, often in the distant or ancient past.

What we don’t see, however, is any reference to “making a photograph” prior to Ansel Adams in 1935. This is because, I believe, it was Ansel Adams who started this in his 1935 book Making a Photograph. It was Adams who redefined the word “make,” and all joking aside, that’s commendable.

But I don’t think he was using the word as we use it today, I think we’ve redefined it even further, twisting it and his quote to suit our own ideas.

Language is constantly changing. When I was growing up, “out of pocket” meant hat you had to pay a bunch of money because your shitty insurance wouldn’t cover something they said they would. Now it means ridiculous or crazy, though in retrospect, I see the connection.

There are two types of people when it comes to definitions and word usage: prescriptivists and descriptivists. Prescriptivists want words and meanings to remain as unchanged as possible. They want unchanging grammar, standardized usage, and regular spelling. Descriptivists look at how language is actually used rather than how it’s “supposed” to be used.

Normally, I am more of a descriptivist. I understand the need for standarization when it comes to writing, but languages are fluid and constantly changing. I love looking back through etymologies and seeing how usage and definitions have changed over the years and centuries.

But not here. Again, this is a pet peeve. I won’t be budging. With the take vs. make argument, I’m a prescriptivist. It’s take. Always has been.

However, the descriptivist part of me finds it a little interesting to see how the usage of “make a photograph” has slipped since Adams said it in 1935.

The Original Quote

But there’s something more to this. We’ve taken a look at the quote (“You don’t take a photograph, you make one”), but I haven’t told you the whole quote, the full context.

Are you ready? Because I don’t think you are.

“The unique quality in photography is a combination of rigidity, based on the pure physical, scientific facts of life, and the possibility of controlling that rigidity. You don't take a photograph, you make it. Expression is the strongest way of seeing.”

This appeared in a 1979 issue of Time Magazine. The quote is not sourced, but I believe it comes from his 1935 book, Making a Photograph. Ansel Adams was a wonderful photographer, but his writing leaves much to be desired.

I spent hours upon hours trying to source this quote to no avail. What I also found is that the quote we kn…

Last week I told you a story, I told you about my first hike of the season, I told you about solitude and how important a role it plays in where I travel, where I photograph. Last week I told you all about it, I told you almost everything. It was, however, a lie of omission.

“I scrambled up some natural steps,” I told you, “between sagebrush and giant boulders left stranded.” Before taking in the Columbia River still hundreds of feet below, I took out my phone, recorded a video, and posted it to Instagram.

I told you about walking the ranch road, which “made for a feeling like I was walking in history” without telling you that I took out my phone and recorded another video, posting it again to Instagram.

The same was true for the balsamroot flowers, as it was true for the walkway on the basalt cliff. The same was true for the bus, except I took two videos.

The ravens, however, I kept for myself. They were my solitude amongst the imagined solitude and a miraculous 5G connection.

I made some glancing reference to all of this. “All along the hike,” I confessed, “I had been taking quick videos with my phone and posting them as stories on Instagram. I thought that I wasn’t going to do this,” I told you, “and was a little unhappy with myself after the first few, finally giving in and sharing the whole day.”

This is maybe the only fully true thing I wrote. But even this is understated. Even this seems like some throwaway line, lip service paid to some vague concept of the rugged outdoors I claim to seek. Solitude doesn’t work like that. Solitude isn’t just isolation. Solitude isn’t a place. It’s not where you go to get away from it all. Solitude is expansive and expanding, it is terrifying and fleeting. Solitude is a life. It’s thousands of days, hundreds of years, centuries all wrapped up in that moment you realize you are alone, that there is nothing that will touch you.

It is not the canyons, the desert, the solo camping trips. It’s not the hours or road miles before you, after you. It’s not even being alone, it’s not even lonesomeness. It is something you carry inside of you. Something concealed, something necessarily and only yours. Solitude is you. It is the very essence of who we are. It is not family or friends or community, but our solitude affects all of those. When we ignore it or get lost within it, our solitude affects those we love. When we embrace it, love it, trust in it, trust in ourselves, then we can offer our true selves to our loved ones.

The walk I took last week was not solitude, and not just because I had a data connection or because I talked to a few people. It was not solitude because every chance I had at solitude was cast aside by an Instagram video. I wanted solitude, but more than that, I wanted to reach out, to tell my friends and the people of my community, “hey, look at what I’m doing right now!”

I wasn’t content to spend time with myself, to get to know who I was that day. That connection I sought is a connection I have almost constantly. I didn’t really want to share my day as much as I wanted to ignore myself. And while connection and community are essential to life, so is solitude, so is connecting and communing with yourself.

In that way, the time away was a failure. And I needed some redemption, I craved that isolation, that chance for solitude.

An Explanation

And so, this past weekend, I tried again. It wouldn’t be a hike this time, I’m still not sure I’m up for that. It would be a drive. But I think I owe you an explanation as to what that means.

My drives are well-planned. I select lonesome dirt roads leading from stop to stop, photographing anything that catches my eye. I visit small towns, but even then, I keep to the side streets, the alleys, and secondary roads leading in and out. I’m not quite slinking or skulking, but I avoid the highways and asphalt as much as I can.

When I stop to photograph along the way, I take my time. In a way, it’s a meditation, a relationship is built or continued, as was the case last weekend.

I have driven almost every public road in Douglas County, Washington, from the highways to jeep roads that faintly trace their way across the sage and hills. This trip was a return, a rekindling. The locations I selected were mostly from memory, and I tried to approach them in new ways, both physically and mentally.

The landscape changes slowly out there, but it does change, and with photography, we have a record of that change. Our photography is the thought and the words of that conversation.

Cloudless

I was packed – two cameras, a few lenses, over a dozen rolls of film, and far more sheets than I would use. I had my tent, my sleeping bag, food, and a feeling that my solitude could come into play at least to some degree.

There was one large caveat, however. The skies would be cloudless. Normally, this would be enough for me to postpone a trip. Clouds are often essential to what I shoot. They frame my subjects, they are dark halos over once-loved homes, they are the heavens rendered reachable, touchable. Without clouds, there is nothing above. There is void. But there might also be solitude. And it was at this I decided to make the trip anyway.

I took my phone, of course. My offline maps were loaded on it, and it’s an essential tool for what I do. But I was going dark, not quite off-grid – I could still be reached (and reach out) if necessary.

My photography wanderings are quite an undertaking, with multiple trips from the house to the car, loading it with camera gear and packs. As I was lugging my 4x5 kit down the stairs to the car, I realized this. So much prep and effort are packed into a three day, two night excursion. It’s understandable why it’s so rare. But I don’t understand why I hardly leave the house otherwise.

Home

Apart from work, I am homebound. It used to be different. I used to go to the movies a few times a week. I used to photograph Seattle, taking on huge photography projects, which led me to explore the less-traveled parts of town. I once walked over five miles a day just wandering down various streets and paths through the city. But now, even with the beautiful spring, here I am inside.

To add to this, I used to publish a zine every month or so. I used to have a podcast with a world built around a growing community. I’d receive dozens of messages each day from listeners, friends, people asking questions, and others answering mine. I was online and connected about as much as I am now, but that connection seems lost or that it’s moved along.

I feel like I’ve been infected with a short attention span. Where once I was able to watch movies, even at home, with little care about what’s happening on my phone, I find myself wandering through uncountable YouTube videos and for no good reason.

Even on May the 4th, Star Wars Day. I wanted to watch something adjacent and picked Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress and The Bogart & Bacall film The Big Sleep as interesting takes on A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. But I didn’t. Instead, I just flipped through YouTube like I flipped through channels as a bored kid.

The movies and local photowalks take almost no planning or commitment at all, while my days-long trips take foresight and a level of preparedness that would keep most people from doing them. I don’t understand why I can hardly leave the house or focus unless it’s some big production. I don’t have answers here. It’s not that sort of thing.

Letters and Numbers

Most of the roads through Douglas County are laid out in a grid, each road exactly a mile away from the next, each road numbered or lettered accordingly. When I plan, I look for roads that break that pattern. They are placed where the land would not relent to an unnatural straight line. This was not even a compromise, we stood no chance, we gave in to the contours of the land.

There is a road which peels itself off from Road E Northwest call…

I had packed the night before - camera, film, water, food. I had checked maps, selected my trails, and committed them to memory. This would be an easy hike, I thought, but then recalibrated. I am out of shape, this is the first hike of the year (first hike in a year), and I haven’t felt great in months. This will be what it is.

It’s not that I didn’t care, but I had to get out. The winter and early spring of Seattle was suffocating me. The constant noise of cars, the echo of far too many voices, the monotony of concrete and asphalt and concrete was walling me off, brick by brick.

There’s a balance we try to strike as photographers between living in the moment and photographing that moment. It’s impossible to do both, though we often tell ourselves otherwise.

We lie to ourselves, saying that while we are experiencing the through the lens, it’s still happening and we are still fully present. We want so badly for this to be true, even when we’re not hiding behind the camera. Experiencing the moment without the filter of a lens grows terrifying the more time we spend behind it.

It was tempting to leave the camera at home, but of course I didn’t.

What I did was a compromise I made with myself years ago. Each hike, I make some vague attempt to carry my camera inside my pack. Of course, this runs antithetical to the photographer’s philosophy/film manufacturer’s marketing slogan of always having a camera at the ready.

This, I’ve found, allows me to experience the moment first, and then hide behind my camera. This also means not capturing some of the moments. But then, this is also a rule I end up breaking to no real advantage by the end of the hike.

With large format a pack is necessary. There’s really no other way to carry a tripod and camera that needs a tripod (as well as film holders) into the field. But I’ve also started doing it with medium format, lugging the boat anchor known as the Mamiya RB67 on my back.

When I see something worth a photograph, I sling off the pack, unroll the top, take out the camera bag, take out the camera, and shoot. This entire operation requires only thirty seconds or so. The lens is already on the camera, the film is already loaded. All I need to do is check the light.

The sun rose softly behind thick morning clouds as I crossed the Columbia River on Interstate 90. I had left Seattle hours before dawn and regretted not camping the cold night before. The light was dim and gray, and though I was there to photograph the spring wildflowers, I had brought enough black & white film to last the entire hike should the clouds fail to disperse.

Washington is known for its lush forests of firs and moss, its tall granite peaks, and glacial lakes. But that is almost never my destination. East of all that, on the other side of the Cascade Mountain Range, lies an almost prairie landscape full of sage and grasses intercut with seemingly inexplicable dry box canyons. It’s called the Scablands, and that’s an awful name for one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. This is the shrub-steppe, a (nearly) desert grassland that covers nearly one-third of the state.

While a few trees dot the landscape – mostly the invasive Russian olive tree – the rolling hills are covered with sagebrush, a slow-growing shrub whose leaves smell of camphor and mint. When it rains, the air fills with this scent and everything in the world seems perfect, even though it really, really isn’t.

When I arrived at the trailhead, there were more cars than I had ever seen there before: fifteen. Maybe sixteen. Had my spot been blown up? I wondered, reminding myself that this wasn’t my spot, that I’m only here a few times a year. This is public land, and it’s ours. But still, that’s a lot of cars for a place three hours from Seattle. I parked, double-checked my gear, took a long drink of water, and started down the trail.

The hike was at a place known by a few different names. Most commonly, it’s called Ancient Lakes – a misnomer we’ll come back to. But it’s also called Potholes Coulee, and has been for nearly a century. This is a state wildlife area known as the Quincy Lakes Unit, part of the Columbia Basin Wildlife Area.

The main features, apart from the lakes, are two half-mile wide canyons running parallel, east and west into the Columbia River, for two miles with a thin spine separating them. From space, they look like a giant had pressed two fingers into the mud. The north canyon, Ancient Lakes Coulee, is the most traveled and visited. It’s the easiest to get to and has several small lakes inside it. The south canyon is Dusty Lake Coulee. They are not mirrors of each other, but hikers rarely do both.

But I would do neither this time. Over the years, I have explored and camped in both. I have walked in from the same trailhead, level with the floor of the coulees. And I have also scrambled the 250 feet down the side of the coulees from the top. I have hiked and photographed the overlooks, side canyons, wetlands, and oddities of this place for the last fifteen years.

Though the coulees themselves weren’t where the trail was taking me today, my first stop was a photo I have wanted to retake for years. Nothing was wrong with the original one. Or the one I took after that. But I wanted to see what I could do with it again.

A main trail – actually an old ranch road – leads you across the wide mouths of both coulees, here nearly a mile in width. Along the way, several trails lead you inside the coulees, with various branches splitting off here and there.

I tramped past the first main trail off, and then the second, cresting over the crumbled remains that divided Ancient Lake Coulee from Dusty Lake Coulee. From here, I looked east along the tall spine left standing. These were sheer basalt cliffs with columns like the Devil’s Fence Post or Giant’s Causeway. But they were here, unheralded and unnamed, tucked into the cliffside with some small sunlight piercing the clouds and showing their tall shadows. Looking a mile across to the other side, a small waterfall was lit up white by the sun, and it twinkled and shone. If I had time, I said, I’d visit it on the way out.

I backtracked some, returning to the trail into the coulee. My footprints were the only ones on it that morning, and I tracked over only the faintest of prints left in the mud some weeks before. This was the first warm weekend, more would be coming. But for now, it was just me.

What I was seeking was off-trail a bit, and I began angling away from the trail, moving through grasses, sage, and nearly-opened rock buckwheat flowers, stepping over tumbleweeds of invasive Russian thistle, until I found a century-old iron wheel stuck into the ground. What was left of its spokes was cut so the axle could be freed.

I don’t know what this wheel was attached to or why the wheel was left. I know nothing of it at all, finding it by accident as I roamed around a decade ago.

I slipped off my pack and removed the camera. I circled the scene a few times, deciding how to shoot it this time, forgetting how I shot it last, though maybe that’s for the best. When I reshoot a location, I try my best to forget how I shot it before. But I also want to photograph it differently, and so I try to feel my way into something new. Sometimes it even works.

The light was still dim, and I used 400 speed Ilford HP5 with a yellow filter to bring some small handful of contrast to the scene. Still circling the wheel, I shot several frames, including a close-up of a thistle branch. The sun cooperated by staying hidden, and I continued on, looking for the trail that would lead me lower.

If the coulees had flowing water, it would empty into the Columbia River, running perpendicular just a mile west of the trailhead. The land between the coulees and the river, 500 feet below, is a maze of tall, sharp outcroppings and dead-end narrow basins. Few trails lead down the various precipices, but I had found one that did.

The trail here was a well-cut walkw…