I was a chaplain in a psychiatric hospital for a few months, many years ago, replacing someone on sick leave. It was very challenging work. What it helped me to see, however, is that many of the psychological problems that put people in hospital are found outside it. The difference is a matter of degree: if you can cope, you don’t end up in hospital. One of those is bipolar disorder. The diagnosis is pretty common these days — even of artists and musicians of the past. (Frank Sinatra was the last person I read about who was diagnosed by someone as tending to bipolar’s alternating mania and depression.)
What does this have to do with photography? A lot, actually. Photographers, like any other creative people, have times of high energy and creativity, and fallow periods. I’m not bipolar, but I tend towards periods of intense work and other periods of low energy. This is much less the case in my older years, but it remains. So I was off on a vacation in the Caribbean, and shot everything in sight that caught my eye. Then I processed the images in Lightroom and selected some for this website. On the Saturday I got back, I found out Sheldon could model for me Monday, that is, two days away. We had been looking for an opportunity for quite a while. Sunday was busy with church and the church’s annual business meeting. I didn’t have time to vacuum the studio (or the rest of the second and third floors), but I could set up the studio, and so I did. I was ready for a day of concentrated, imaginative discovery. I had several ideas I wanted to try. High-key images with white on white, and black on white. I had a blast!
So I had Sheldon wear a pair of my white pants and a white shirt. She had black pants, and I had a black shirt, so we tried the other combinations: black top and bottom; black top and white bottom; white top and black bottom.
I also had a Derby hat, and she brought a cowboy hat, so we had props. She also had black suspenders, that worked well over a white shirt, and I had round novelty glasses that worked for some shots. (I was struck at one time by Rene Magritte’s “The Son of Man” and “The Pilgrim.”)
“Dis Location”
We mixed and matched, tried different poses, clowned around a bit, and I fired away. I also had Sheldon drape shiny red fabric, shiny silver fabric, blue cloth, and a white bedsheet over her front, baring her back, and captured the results.
Finally, I shot her in my corner window with different lenses and controlled natural light. Some images were deliberately blurred by a slow shutter speed and subject movement. These suggest more than they show: the viewer is encouraged to read into the image some emotion or mood.
I made 768 digital captures (shots). That’s a lot. I was so pleased with the results, however, that I couldn’t distinguish easily between ones I should put in an online gallery, and ones I should just leave on my hard disk, or erase as redundant. Some of them will generate in my imagination a treatment of one kind or another (black and white? toned? textured image? composite image? run through Filter Forge?). So there are 232 images in the gallery, and I’m too busy or distracted to winnow them down. 🙂 I may have a few fallow days, before the creative urge returns.
To see these images, click here.