Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

Blue skirt in the rain

Those who cannot write quote someone who can say it better:

Paradoxically, photographers must also face the threat that their vision may one day be denied them. Their capacity to find their way to art, which is their consoloation – to see things whole – may fail for an hour or a month or forever because of fatigue or misjudgement or some shift in spirit that cannot be predicted or understood or even recognized until it has happened past correction.

Robert Adams, “Why People  Photograph”

Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?

John Gray,  “Straw Dogs”

Photography is not brain surgery, it’s fairly simple.

Elliott Erwitt, “Personal Best” (video)

Girl crossing, car turning - Santa Fe

A day trip to Santa Fe for our daughters and their friend who is staying with us … but I have had enough of Santa Fe for this year, at least photographically speaking; so what to point the camera at? Two years ago, in the same location, I experimented with extreme over exposure and out of focus; I liked the results then so I try that again today. I need to use more shots; the technique is unpredictable especially when you are not looking through the viewfinder! If people see a camera to your eye they either avoid getting in your way (the opposite of what you want) or just avoid being photographed (understandable). Holding the camera down from your face solves the problem but makes framing a little hit or miss.

I think I am going to love this image; it grows on me with each look. There is a hint of a Bronte character, standing on the moors looking into the distance, thinking of unrequited love. In fact the girl is crossing the road with a car turning in the opposite direction, it’s turn signal luckily caught in the moment. The camera was to my eye for this one; she is walking away and unaware of my presence.

Is he paparazzi?

I love visiting Santa Fe but I wonder if I would like living here? These “African Nouveau” ceramics of Woodrow Nash, warily eying the camera, seem more real and alive than some of town’s organic residents. As one store manager we spoke to described it, you must either posses a well endowed trust fund or live hand-to-mouth in this city; there are few to be found in between the two extremes. It is an expensive place with more than a hint of decadence.

But wherever the true heart of Santa Fe lies, it is a fecund source of photographic subject material; too much to show in a one posting per day blog. All of the New Mexico, 2010, images can be found collected in a gallery of the main web site.

Tail Light, Santa Fe

Yesterday I only had two photographs to choose from; today, in Santa Fe, I have 28. Each visit I have made to the town over the last ten years has proved to be rich in images though not quite of the type one might expect from such a storied location; there is something special about the New Mexico light but it does not stir me to make National Geographic cover submissions when I am in the state’s capital. Perhaps half of all the images I have shot here have been abstracts, half of the remainder have been store windows, and the rest have been of people; but very few of them appear on first sight to be specific to Santa Fe.

It seems that there is a Santa Fe muse that calls on me when I am here. I can rationalize it as a combination of being off duty and on vacation, being in a place where cameras are on every second arm and raise no eyebrows, being in an art Mecca so who wouldn’t be inspired? But I think there is something more than simple psychology at work for there is a strand that ties all the images that I make here together (and subtly different from those I make elsewhere) even if it is not as obvious as the turquoise and adobe reflected in this car body.

Boy in Red

Defocus: The act or result of causing a lens to deviate from accurate focus.

The VFXY Photos theme for this week is “Defocus”, a subject I have explored many times and therefore both natural and challenging. Natural because I have so many images at hand to select from and challenging since I can only offer one.

I settled on this modernist and spartan composition of a boy in a red shirt walking past; seen in Santa Fe Plaza back in 2008. A craft fair was being set up in the square and the sunlit white tents of the booths simplify the background of the boy walking in the shade of the governor’s palace.

Our day trips to Santa Fe have always been photographically fruitful, with a higher proportion of peopled street scenes than is usually found in my shy person’s portfolio. Tourist locations are good opportunities for the easily embarrassed Gary Winogrand wanna-be; no one is much surprised or concerned with the camera pointed in their general direction. Stratford-On-Avon and Santa Fe have more in common than the weather and accent would lead you to believe. We return to New Mexico again this summer, staying near Taos but certain to spend at least a couple of days in Santa Fe.

You can see all the submissions to the current VFXY theme at /photos.vfxy.com/themes/.