By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Download
I learn doing and undoing. Take the flash. After nine years of natural-light photography I bought a Speedlite for an indoor shoot. Time had come.
It arrived the p.m. before the shoot and I quaked unpacking it. My Depression-raised Dad taught me get a return when you invest in yourself; it is not an indulgence then. I had newspaper stuff to knock down before starting learning.
At 4:59 next a.m. I started reading the manual backwards. The flash was idiot-proof for a proven idiot; by the time I reached basics in front I’d bought batteries (4 at one time, the rest of the 12-pack Iost) and made it pop on my camera moments before the gig.
When I showed I was scared to use it. Confidence must be earned, Dad said. Until then stick with what you know. Finally, with my client occupied I tested the flash and liked readouts enough to keep shooting with it.
Now download. Scan bracketed shot alternatives, choose and process favorites. Note: learn to shoot raw plus use Lightroom. If manuals are backward I’ll learn in no time.
My gear grows heavier as I add years too. I still like to go but am less mobile lugging fuller sets while limping. Lack of balance I preach slows movement.
After 16 years shooting a contained area many “spontaneous” photos are based on stakeouts. Study available light (clear/ cloudy skies, time of day/night as sun and moon circle, where shadows fall, expect unexpected). Show again with essential gear, predetermined settings, light’s perfect, your subject dies of a heart attack. Crime photographer Weegee made what some thought a toxic lemonade of lemons, shooting macabre things, so do I need to? OK, Mom, I don’t want to either.
My parents had different drives; Dad more combustible, Mom dreamlike. How do you like my writing? Did I show aptitude? I’d ask. Son, it’s … different, Dad would say, then rip pages from my typewriter while I slept and took them to the newspaper. Next time I saw them they were in print. I was 16 maybe.
He and my brother Shawn set up and played in a basement darkroom; I stayed out of it. Years later he unloaded their long-unused gear on me, now I shot too for a start-up paper that made me boy editor. Downloads 50 years later? Son, don’t be easily satisfied, he would say.
Mom’s Mom had died of lung cancer. When Mom got brain cancer many years later she fought but it didn’t quit either. Her mind mattered to her; when she couldn’t miss it was slipping she was ready.
Dad wasn’t. He sprang for experimental surgery, prompting her to write tear-stained goodbye notes to my brothers and me; we read them while she was under. Mom sprang back from anaesthesia gabbing excitedly, then lapsed into depression. We’d never seen that.
Dad drove them to a neighbor’s Christmas party in Naples, Fla., perching a Santa cap that drooped off her head. She could barely talk, which once too would have been a novelty. I drove back to our hotel with Mary and our 2-year-old Flannery in a rental car while “The Wheels of the Bus Go Round and Round” repeated on my wife’s boombox.
I called their doctor pleading with him to talk Dad into putting Mom in hospice. That night I got a call from him, crushed to hear from a medical professional what all could see but he didn’t want to.
Did I show aptitude? Did I dream it?
First enraptured with fresh downloads, time and doubts set in. Don’t be easily satisfied, son. Tension, traction, can’t you do this faster? Best deadline’s yesterday.
Flashes show things natural light might not. What human-processed vision’s not artificial? Backdrops, buffers, how many radio-wave triggered sidelights might make best of studio space you don’t have? Go portable?
First learn how to fit my new Speedlite into its plastic off-camera shoe.
Dad had Dig Diglar energy knowing all could go blooey yesterday and loved the way Mom offset him. Mom’s Mom before she died thought I was ready to read Ayn Rand.
I twice made it through half of “Atlas Shrugged.” I may have been 17 then. Good God. After Grandma died Mom gave me a sheaf of her typewritten O. Henry story efforts, which many more years later our black rescue cat Saske, jealous of new rival Ash, sprayed on and made unbearable.
Nearly-grown-now Flannery and I loved Ash, who raised hell till he too died of brain cancer. That’s what took Hamlet, my black cat when Mary and I got married.
Can downloads be salvaged as ravaged as I am? Never quit, son. Dad was not the same without Mom. My ex-newspaper sold and corporate stole (they didn’t mean to, but watching Dad die was torture) my creative freedom. The publisher said I was insubordinate to his subordinate. Get me out of here!
I flew to Naples with be with Dad in his last phases. I asked nurses one night to help move him from bed when he soiled himself, but they were too busy watching Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during halftime of Tom Brady’s first Superbowl win. My Dad laid in excrement.
I got myself fired at last and at once a new job I’d eyed Saugatuck, which our family all loved, came open by design or magic.
Did I show aptitude? Can I dream?