I’ve been thinking about Anita Jesse’s post “Constants” where she describes one of her favorite restaurants and stated:
…how comforting it is to have some constants in our life.
I can tell a blog post is pertinent to me when I keep rehashing the gist of the post long after reading it. I sometimes jokingly think of these as peanut butter posts–you know, sticking to the roof of your mouth and requiring work to get it all. :-)
One constant many people have in their lives are good friends–people they see or talk to regularly, people they hang out with, people who they have history with.
When I photographed these three elderly people it was apparent they were good friends who probably got together almost every morning and to watch the ocean and share a time together. They didn’t appear to be talking a great deal but I suspect they didn’t have to. They had reached that point of friendship when there’s not a need to fill all the silent moments with idle chat.
Witnessing their close friendship struck a cord with me, so I made this effort to capture the moment–not for them, but for me.
Often photography is used to capture the unusual and extraordinary. But photography provides an opportunity to record and capture many of the constants of our lives as well. Those things we value and identify with. It gives us the ability to exercise our creativity in expressing why these things are important enough to become a part of our personal foundation. Photography can be a tool for viewing within as well as viewing without.
For many of us the act of photography itself becomes a constant in our lives.
I love the peanut butter idea. Now, I plan to borrow that one from you. ;) One of my favorite things about your work is that you seem to be drawn to these simple, yet profound moments in the lifes of everyday people. This “peanut butter post ” certainly captures the sense of old friends. The photos are right on the button. The black and white suits perfectly and brings to mind old family snapshots.
By the way, maybe these fellows weren’t talking much partly because they are male. Females would most likely have been chattering away. After all, we have so many words and so little time to use them all.
@Anita: Thank-you! Perhaps you should take another look at the photos. Two of these friends are women and I believe the lone man with the ball cap is wearing double hearing aids…no doubt his hearing lose may be related to the words and time issue you mentioned. ;-)
Oh, I here-by grant you unlimited rights to the peanut butter quote.
The person on the right side in the first photo and the far left in the second one gave me pause, but I attributed that to a trick my eyes were playing on me. Somehow, I had gathered they were men and that’s what I thought I was seeing. Interesting how we tell ourselves what to see. By the way, I still can’t find a second woman in the group because of the angle. Am I being awfully denseor blind?
@Anita: Not at all…I’ve done that before. Since our brain interprets all the visual data it often takes shortcuts if it thinks it knows ahead of time what is being seen. This is actually very effective in many cases, such as moments of danger when a quick response may mean life or death, but leads to mistakes as well.
I’ve saw a documentary on one of the education channels that gave insight into this.
@Anita: Oh, in the first photo, the man is in the middle and the two women are on the outside…same in the second photo. Hints in the first photo, the bra-straps on the women on the left and the earrings and lipstick on the women on the right (not always a sure sign this day and age.) Second photo same three people. :-)
Well, I still think the former is a sure sign, even these days, but the latter could definitely be a man’s way to be individual. :-)
I’m definitely one of those for whom the photography in itself is a constant.
What can I say? I lived in Los Angeles too long. Honestly, a lot of lines got seriously blurred and one became accustomed to seeing all sorts of things that were once unexpected. I saw the bra straps as one of those t-shirts that a lot of guys there wear. And, of course, mostly this is the result of rushing along. If only I had looked more closely, I would seen the fasteners of the bra. I’m ducking my head now.
Of course, the real problem is that you threw me a curve by mentioning that they weren’t talking much. With that information, I couldn’t imagine them being female. :)
Your comments about taking visual shortcuts are excellent. It reminds me of the way we will fill in letters and even words when reading text. I wish I had seen that documentary. (And, not just because I obviously need help.)
I know two old guys who love to hangout at the local airport. I used to also spend some time there after I retired but when my wife retired I ceased going, I guess it was a guy thing.
I too like your peanut butter on the top of the mouth idea. But, your last statement, “For many of us the act of photography itself becomes a constant in our lives”, is the one that hits home for me. While going through a divorce, loss of job, loss of a home, my spiritual journey, good solid family and friends and my photography helped keep my head above water. Nothing like a walk with my camera or watching the sun rise or set with my camera to bring serenity to a troubled mind.
In the course of this week I came back to this image several times. For me it is loaded with a lot of associations, also emotions, and that quiet b&w is unobtrusive enough to allow all this free flow. Probably it’s a slow image, but in this way even more powerful
@Markus: I often come back to this scene as well. There’s a certain truth to it.