A Day With Fletcher
I met Fletcher Cleaves at his home in Cordova a month ago. He was run off the road in Sept. 2009 and broke his neck.
Working with Fletcher was such a joyful experience. The guy just glows. He and his father just let us march right into their lives and document their day. You really can feel the love in their home.
Its people like Fletcher that stokes the desire to do true, real, classic documentary work. I want to pause and capture history. I want people to look back on my photos and remember important times, people, places, etc.
Thanks for letting me into your world for a couple of days, Fletcher.
Best of 2010
Here are some of my favorite images from 2010. It is amazing how much you forget in a year. Seeing each image brings back sights, smells, emotions and ever lingering doubts. “Am I any good at this?” “Am I getting any better?” “What defines ‘BETTER’?”
After looking through tons of images from this year, I still can’t get away from the fact that I truly love honest, classic documentary images. It feels like there is little place this world for such work, even though it is the most important.
130 Miles from Nashville
The hum of a guitar amplifier is drowned out by the bang of a snare drum and the mellow plucks of the bass guitar. Joe Garner tips back a cold beer during band practice at drummer Jesse Hornbeak’s house. He strums the first chord on the sunburst Gibson Hummingbird as the drums and bass come in like a steam engine at stride.
Music has always been a part of Garner’s life growing up in Centerville, Tenn. His father Charlie Garner played with Grand Ole Opry star Del Reeves and the “Goodtime Charlies.” “He was just the kind of guy that was very full of integrity, not just as a person but as a musician,” Garner says about his father. “To watch him play was really a very special thing. He was a very beautiful kind of person to watch play honky tonk bass.” Though Garner’s roots run deep in country music, his style, melodies and lyrics could not be further from the current pop-Nashville sound.
Between working two jobs and balancing life at home as a husband, Garner continues to make sense of things through songs. Garner says his regressive country music is not written with a market in mind, like most popular Nashville country. Instead, he delivers messages of societal tensions and relational discord while tipping his hat to legends such as Waylon Jennings and Gram Parsons.
“Songs have an impact on me and whatever goes on in a song is something that speaks to me and people like me. When you have a good melody and can match it up with some ideas, it’s just powerful.”
As Garner finishes up his first full-length album and prepares for several Fall tours, he continues to work and pay his dues as a musician progressing outside of the Nashville scene.
The Ever Evolving Frame
I am really trying to evolve. The frame is a wily beast that is seldom tamed. I’m trying to let it loose a bit more.
2010: Week #1
The cold weather forces workers indoors.
The state threatens to pull funding from Carroll Academy, a school for troubled students.
Lambuth Coach Hugh Freeze resigns as football coach.
Being an Editor.
I can’t remember the last time I actually wrote something. Lately, I’ve noticed two growing trends among several of my photographer friends and acquaintances.
Trend 1: Over Edit
If you live in the world of visual communication, I feel it necessary to display your work on a regular basis outside of the publication you work for. It seems as though the most talented of my friends rarely, if ever, post their work for public viewing on a blog, Flickr, etc.
Being excellent at your craft and hating your own work seem to mysteriously go hand in hand. Posting your work for all of your friends and peers to look at and evaluate is not easy. I whole heartedly believe that a good photographer must also be a good editor… but sometimes the editor is never satisfied.
Show your work. Embrace the community of visual communicators around you. We don’t live in a world of daily critique. I hardly ever (meaning never) get critiqued on my work other than a “good job” now and then from my editor. It’s not an editor’s responsibility, necessarily. I can’t tell you, though, how many comments, both good and bad, I’ve received from photographers, producers, heck even musicians on my work just because of a blog post now and then.
All that to say: share your work. Let others grow with you. And look at your peers’ work. Encourage them to perfect what they are doing right. Don’t tear anyone down unless you can build them back up… because we all suck 99% of the time…
…which leads me to…
Trend 2: No Edit
This issue is extremely harmful to your craft and growth as a photographer. I can’t tell you how many times this week I have looked through someone else’s shoot on a Flickr, or dare I say… Facebook!! (yuck! Facebook has awful photo compression – just say no!) and seen 1000 bad to mediocre photos with maybe 1 or 2 gems. People. Hear me out. If you post 100 photos for all the world to see, you better be confident in every frame, because 1 or 2 good photos are completely lost in the 10-100 bad photos.
Posting a bagillion photos from a single event/shoot is evidence of a greater problem. Editing. You must be capable of distinguishing between a good frame, a great frame, and the rest (bad frames). Any hack can pick up a new camera, put it on auto, blaze away, and maybe get one image that shows some sign of thought… but what separates them and you? EDITING!
I’m a mediocre photographer at best, but I want to make sure that the only images I allow the public to see are the best of what I shoot on a regular basis. This exercise forces you to really look at what you are doing, how you are repeating yourself visually, what environments/social scenarios you do or don’t function well in, and what you are saying with your work… because every image says something.
Your images bare your fingerprint. If you are a lazy photographer, it will show. If you love people and are readily embraced by your subjects, it will show. If you don’t know how to expose a frame or tone a photo, it will show.
When you make a photo, you often have a fraction of a second to respond to a situation. You don’t have time to plan your frame. It is here for but a moment and will never happen again. So if you can’t even sit down in front of you computer and tell yourself why this frame works, but this one doesn’t, then you won’t be able to when the moment happens.
I have missed millions of incredible frames because I was not prepared. Remember, when you release that shutter, you are stopping time and saving it for others to see, so it better be worth it.
So show your work, but know what you are showing. Being an editor is a blessing and a curse. It can cause you to never show your work… or worse, show every last frame within 3 stops of a proper exposure.
Christmas Week
I’ve been the only photographer here during the week of Christmas. Here are some images all the way up to Christmas Eve. Click the images to go to my Flickr and read the cut lines.
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