Hi y’all!

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to believe it’s September already. August flew by faster than I’d have liked, and I’ve begun to realize (as we get ready to start our next homeschool year in a week) that summer breaks exist for the benefit of teachers, not students.

August was a bit of a strange month. I started off feeling like I needed to cram as much as I could into our short sabbatical from school, and tried to read, listen to, and accomplish way too many things. I took a lot of photos, but hated almost all of them. It’s a weird thing about photography; you can make an image and love it for approximately 37 seconds before you turn on it and decide it was a waste of disk space. Sometimes I think it’s not even about the images themselves but rather the space my mind is occupying at the time. After a rough couple of months it felt hard to get going again.

But by month’s end I was feeling much closer to my old self and actually managed to make some images that I really liked. In fact, if you do nothing else I hope you’ll all read my blog post on the last days of summer (below); it is both my favorite set of images and piece of writing that I’ve made in a very long time. (I even liked them so much that I briefly got back on Instagram to prove that I was still alive and post them.) And though it would seem that the film gods were not smiling on me this month and cursed every process and piece of equipment I use, I even managed a few film images I’m happy with.

So all in all I guess it wasn’t too bad.

I hope you all are doing well! As always, thanks so much for following along. And I truly do love hearing from you, so write me back!

kg

THE PAIN AND JOY OF FILM

This past month has been full of lessons. Lessons such as how long an opened bottle of developer will last before it expires, and what using expired developer will do to your film. Or how easy it is to screw up loading 120 film into a camera when you’re still new to it and doing it on just a few hours sleep. Or how 35mm film can simply, on occasion, become entirely detached from its canister so that it can’t be rewound. Here I thought I was on summer break but turns out August was a month full of learning. I’ve been so lucky with my forays into film shooting and developing so far, I knew my number would be up soon. And fortunately I have friends armed and ready with stories of their own film debacles to make me feel better. Even through all of it I ended up with a handful of frames that I actually liked and kept, like this one of the morning light spilling into the kitchen.

A SUMMER ENGAGEMENT

I never really shared much of my portrait work here even when I was doing a lot of it. But it’s not every day you get to help someone plan and pull off proposing to the love of their life. I’m not sure who was more nervous, me or him. And while the break from portrait work has been nice, I have to say it felt really good to get back into it and help capture such a special moment for these two.

RECENT POSTS

JUST FOR FUN

I’ve written before about the magic of polaroids; their dream-like quality imbued with a nostalgia you can’t help but smile at. When I look at these I feel like they could be from my own childhood, and I couldn’t possibly love them more.

AT THE MOMENT

LISTENING TO

I discovered the album Holy Moly by Chris Staples (not to be confused with Chris Stapleton) earlier in the month and it keeps finding its way into my ears. It reminds me of maybe say Pete Yorn meets Elliott Smith, and has all those awesome early aughts feels.

READING IN

I don’t really write much about spirituality and religion, though they’re something that occupy a large amount of space in my mind. I tend to be drawn to contemplatives like Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr. But by far one of the best books I have read on contemplative spirituality is Cole Arthur Riley’s This Here Flesh. I know I mentioned it among a few last month, but I’m mentioning it again because it deserves at least two.

THINKING ABOUT

I am forever grateful to (and for) the man who introduced me to Alan Watts. If you aren't familiar with Watts he was a fascinating philosopher who looked critically at religion, embraced Christian mysticism, and integrated a lot of eastern ideas into his own beliefs. His life’s work very much mirrors my own spiritual journey. And though some of his terminology is a bit outdated, his ideas, like those found in this lecture, often feel more relevant today than ever.

CRUSHING ON

I’ve become pretty obsessed with poet David Whyte. Being the word nerd that I am I was first drawn to him through his most recent book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. But discovering his poetry has been a game changer. His voice is incredible, as you can hear in this beautiful TED talk featuring two of my favorite of his poems: Finisterre and Santiago. (On a related note I’m currently fundraising for a trip to walk the Camino de Santiago, so if you’d like to sponsor me let me know.)

AND ONE MORE…

Photography has led me to knowing some really fantastic and talented people, many of whom do some of the coolest things with their craft. Lee Griffith is one of these folks. Earlier this month I received the first three volumes of his series 35 Days of War, a project to help support the people of Ukraine. Each day since the war began he has posted an image and accompanying writing of his experience living in Germany and watching the tragedy unfold. He began to publish the posts as a volume of images, 35 at a time, with proceeds going to support refugees through UNHCR. The books can be purchased through Amazon, and you can follow along with his current posts over on Instagram. It’s easy, removed as we are from it and with everything else going on here, to forget that it’s happening; I’m grateful for Lee’s posts as a poignant reminder.