photography

My dad loved cameras. He had buckets of lights and bulbs and camera parts. He had tiny point-and-shoots. He had Polaroids. He loved his Kodak Disc Camera SO MUCH that when we left it on the Blue Ridge Parkway by accident during an ill-contrived picnic, he drove two-and-a-half hours back to the picnic site to find it.

But none of this camera love compared to when he got his first video camera in the mid-90s. He carted that huge thing (which looked, in comparison to today’s models, like a camera a TV crew would use) to the beach on one of our last trips there together. He set up his tripod, and stood there (was he in his red Speedo? I can’t remember) and filmed HOURS UPON HOURS of the waves coming in and out and the birds flying overhead. He told me once, If I could have been anything, I would have been a photographer for National Geographic. In a Speedo, probably.

So when I present to you this little slideshow (sorry, the migration of my blogs to WordPress deleted all these, and, well, do you really want me to rework them? If so, comment and I’ll try to find the files! Really! I don’t mind!) of my recent trip to Savannah, know that I come upon this honestly, this urge to record every little thing. And let me tell you how awesome it was to travel with someone who takes more pictures than me! And who laughs like crazy when I make her pose in front of fiberglass elephants in the parking lot of a fireworks store! (Which is not included in this little show because, really, nothing can compare to the alligator shot.) Ha ha!

I’m loving summer already! Thanks, Dad!

Why do you travel? For me, it’s to see new places, expose myself to new things, people, culture. Walking unfamiliar streets, eyes peeled to the sky; watching people pass you on the street; hearing the street noises in a new city: needless to say, the urge to see and do these things in an unfamiliar place aren’t original.

But one thing struck me yesterday as I looked at the photography exhibit at MoMA. Even though I was surrounded by some of the world’s best art, I found myself searching for the familiar in the art there, particularly in the photographs. Which I loved. The shots of nature and models and portraits were intersting. But the photographs of Knoxville and the girl at the flea market in Georgia, I couldn’t get enough of those. I go hundreds of miles away from my home to experience something new, yet search for the familiar when I get there? Why? I really don’t know. Maybe I’m drawn to other people’s interpretation of your home, in general terms, out of the environment in which it was created and reflected. It’s like looking in the mirror in the dark, where you struggle to recognize the shape you know is there without even opening your eyes.

Or maybe I’m homesick for a home I couldn’t wait to leave.

For Asheville/Buncombe County Flickr lovers (I am one, I admit), there’s a “Day in the Life of Ashvegas” project in the works.

Check it out here. And there’s a meet-up planned for Feb. 17 at Asheville Brewing on Coxe Avenue at 4 p.m.