Onward into the Fog (Keep Trying)

Willingness is more dangerous than talent

Winter in Whitefish. The snow on the trees is bright than the sky - stranger in real life than you might think. I’m burning wood from now until May.

Open up the archive, click way back into 2012 (I’ve lost everything from 2011 and beyond), and click into a random folder, and there it is, the sunset that made me decide I wanted to become a photographer.

Summer 2012 at a bridge I frequented. Walgreens scan.

I remember what it was like to be 5, and to start high school, and how much older Juniors and Seniors were, I remember what it was like driving by myself for the first time in my own vehicle, and I also remember what it was like standing on this bridge. I had been stumbling around in the fog of unknowing with broken and breaking cameras, never sure whether I was progressing or even heading the right direction. This sunset was one of the first of countless recalibrations.

“Oh shit, there it is.”

Granted, I didn’t do anything to make this photo except for showing up at the right time, and the image itself isn’t amazing. But it was something, and for a person who at that time had no vision, it was significant.

Here are some more scans from the early days. I was shooting an AE-1 Program, and some of my mom’s old 35mm cameras:

Drug store film in the unfinished bedroom I grew up in.

Trying.

I still love this one. Near my home.

I knew that certain photos were special. Couldn’t tell you why, and I didn’t know how to make one, but I could tell the difference. I did forget that pretty frequently, apparent as I look back into the old rolls and see myself often trying to polish a turd.

“move on, buddy”

A few weeks after that sunset, I was heading out west to live in Eugene, OR for a few months before leaving on tour (I was a musician then), and even out west, in its apparent and repeating way, I continued to stumble, to not see, unable to connect the dots.

And it doesn’t matter, the trying was the only part that mattered. Looking back, I am so grateful and full of humility that that person, with no resources, promise, or skill of any kind kept trying. Kept stumbling.

Day 1, driving from Oklahoma to Oregon.

Wyoming near Laramie.

The Mighty Snake.

Stumble stumble.

And so time went on. There were no cracks in the earth that opened up and signaled a new direction. No signs to follow, no reassurances as to whether a particular way was the right way, or if this was even the right thing to do, or a waste of time. Everyone else is getting married and starting families and buying houses and going to football games.

Thank God Threads wasn’t a thing back then or I would have probably been swallowed up in the online noise instead of keeping my head down and trying, trying, trying.

There were only more small moments like the sunset in Oklahoma. Affirmations so small that they wouldn’t even translate into a conversation with a close friend, limited to pictures here and there, hard fought, transient, and as I see it now, each of those granules imperative in forming the bricks that would become my foundation.

This doesn’t embarrass me, it gives me hope.

I had no business shooting Velvia 50.

What I’m saying here is that no matter what you are going through, or into, keep trying. Keep moving forward. It’s paradoxical, but when you need clarity most, in the beginnings, you won’t have it. But a lot happens in that time of self proving, testing, and although I don’t fully understand it, I think it’s imperative. It was for me, at least. Maybe you’ll realize that is was for you as well.

So keep going. The fog can be good, because most of this is about paying attention to where our own two feet are headed.

Onward,

FM

November 2012, a different world from now.