I’ve yet again been having a difficult time reading for fun. I miss reading. For so long it was my escape, my mental retreat from the world. I always carried a book with me to turn found time into fun time. Now this dearth of pleasure in reading seems to crop up when I’m struggling with memories from the past or other PTSD symptoms underneath the surface. My stack of YA and nonfiction sits untouched on the shelves next to the bed along with compounding magazine subscriptions occupying an ever growing pile of electrons inside my Kindle.

So these last few weeks I’ve attempted to use my newly discovered coping skill of reading about cameras and photography more intentionally when I noticed I’m not able to attend to reading. Why not read and actually learn to improve my craft as I distract from knowing the overwhelming things creeping up on me? I might as well get something out of my coping mechanism.

So there has been been quite a lot of reading photography books instead. I can attend to these at least somewhat. I started with Joe McNally’s “The Hot Shoe Diaries” and then “The Photographer’s Eye” by Michael Freeman. Both were interesting in their own way. Joe’s book was fun to read, Michael’s informative but neither was fulfilling the need for authenticity and perhaps deeper meaning I was seeking.

On a whim I went on a used book buying spree one weekend ordering all of Ansel Adams’ “The Camera”, “The Negative”, and “The Print” in his photography series plus another of examples on the making of forty iconic photos. I’ve long loved and admired Adams’ work so finally reading these books makes sense.

Well… mostly since unfortunately there’s a deeper layer here. My father idolized Ansel, and so his work sometimes disturbs slumbering memories from the depths. It makes for hesitant reading. After trying to read a couple of the Adams books and making minimal progress, I stumbled across “The Art of Photography” by Bruce Barnum and decided perhaps it would better fill my needs of the moment. Bruce seemed to speak to the part of me desiring to find a way back into photography and reading at the same time. I can’t say it has helped jumpstart my reading, but it has definitely helped me focus more on practicing my art.

In “Art”, Edward Weston is credited with describing photographic composition as the “Strongest way of seeing.” While I have always looked for subjects and resulting images which piqued my interest and solicited an emotional response, I’d not thought much about the process past that feeling. Armed with a bit of awe and some resulting intentionality, I set out to see strongly.

After work one evening the following week my wife had an appointment at a slightly unusual building. I decided to take advantage of my free time to walk around and find some images which spoke to me. Months ago I had taken to keeping a small DSLR in my purse, and so I was all set when we arrived. She went in to her appointment and I strolled around with a camera in hand as I like to do.

At first I tried a few perspectives in a courtyard but each time the images fizzled. I didn’t feel anything. That heavy stuck feeling started creeping up inside.

Peeking around a corner, I saw a passage of deep shadows between two buildings crowned by sky. It seemed an escape from where I’d been trapped in the past, from where I starting to stick in the moment. It was an invitation to look up and back into the light.

I climbed the stairs and turned, looking back the way I’d come. A change in perspective and continuing to be open had pulled me out of the darkness. Inspecting the gate, I realized the Pac Man of my youth (albeit a bit rusted) had been relegated to gate latch duty. A smile formed.

After a moment of reflection I continued around the building. The sidewalk fronted along a wide avenue whizzing with cars and trucks just feet away. I longed for the quiet shadows of the passage or even the courtyard. Still, it is better to keep going forward. Walking around a Pub on the corner, I found a vantage point with light and color. I stopped and paid attention, noticed what drew me to the scene, the light was layered, the colors contrasted, and that sky!

Around the edges of my perch were a few planters with colorful flowers and ivy drawing my eye in. With some work I managed to capture just what interested me, and not the giant cigarette disposal device almost interwoven into the ivy of the planters.

The tang of wort and sharp citrus of hops filled the air as I walked on. A brewery guarded by towering tanks and an old delivery truck stood in front of me as I down to the back of the building.

Behind the brewery, detritus from replacing the walkway to their drinking patio was stacked haphazardly against a post. Density of texture, color and light jumped at me just waiting to be seen.

Coming back to my starting point, I was confronted by a panalopy of flowers. Clearly they had been there when I began my walk, yet only now was I seeing them. What had changed in the intervening walk so I was now able to see the shock of black-eyed Susans right in front of me?

I had started to inhabit the world around me, to notice, to be in the present. I was seeing strongly just by giving myself an opportunity to do so. I’d spent a pleasant hour almost entirely present, being in the world of light instead of the shadows of my mind. It is a place I intend to inhabit more often.

It’s springtime here in the south. The sun is brighter, the days are warmer, and pollen is ubiquitous. This also means flowers in bloom, which this year is all of them at the same time. Colour spouts everywhere. Walkabouts with my camera to explore my new neighborhood have been filled with bountiful blooms.

I’ve been taking pictures: experimenting with close up photos, with framing and with depth of field. It’s been enjoyable, diverting me from the stress of moving, from memories just under the surface. Having to focus on minute details and put into practice skills long unused keeps the mind from wandering to anxiety provoking topics of both the past and the present.

These are the kinds of pictures my father never took, which makes them the kind of pictures I want to take, because they are mine. I claim them for my own, inhabit them completely without being cast into darkness by his shadow.

I never would have expected to see myself interested in these vivid subjects. As a young photographer I was drawn to sweeping vistas, dark skies, and faraway things. The thought of stooping to sample the roses would never have sat right with me. It is too quiet, too sedate, not interesting enough.

I’m reminded of an evening photography class I took one summer as a tween. It covered many topics I found engaging, but it’s the one I wasn’t thrilled about which sticks most in my mind – attention to detail. We were given an assignment to shoot an entire roll of photos of a single object – a stump. I found it difficult to focus on that stump for 3 or 4 frames, how could I take all of 24? I knew I was never going to make it as soon as I started. It’s hardly surprising I got negative from that assignment, though I might still have the few photos I took someplace.

That has changed so much over the intervening years. Now even the smallest thing pulls me in if I let it. A contrast of different color flowers on the same azalea bush, a mix of orange and purple pansies in the same bed. It seems anything becomes helpful in avoiding that which I really don’t want to know or can’t deal with just now. If it’s quiet and beautiful, that makes it even easier to lose myself.

So I walk around, camera in hand soaking up the world waiting for things to draw my attention. The surroundings speak to me visually as I try to notice the wonders hidden in plain view around me instead of the dark memories within.

Every now and then something jumps out, begs to be seen where it wasn’t visible just a moment ago. So I raise the camera, snap a few images to capture an ethereal presence which won’t be there tomorrow and walk on looking for the next moment before the spring flowers fade.

Over the last few months I’ve been feeling photography grow ever more comfortable. When I posted earlier this year about taking photography back from childhood trauma, about making the hobby mine again, I had reached a point where it had switched from being a trigger to a pleasure. Lately something unexpected has happened – photography has become solace.

Since memories of childhood trauma came pouring forth the best part of a decade ago, I’ve often found myself wondering how to make sense of my life experiences. Though I have explored the disjoint, terrifying memories in the safe embrace of my journal and therapist’s office, I wrestle with how to translate these experiences onto the page. I yearn to tell my story, yet how to do so without scaring my readers or befuddling them with disconnected slivers of memory has long evaded me.

Since the summer, I’ve been mentally rummaging in the junk drawer of my mind, going back over experiences trying to find a common framework from which to make sense of things. Unexpectedly I discovered photography showing up all over life, not just in my trauma memories. From pictures of childhood events, to family voyages photographically assaying the American West, to images of my own independent travel and those of my son, photography is the river that has flowed through my experiences. The negatives and positives of my life are all connected by an unending spool of film.

As I worked through all of this in my journal, I actually could give attention to it for the first time. Instead of shying away because of being triggered, I was able to embrace the idea of using photography, both mine and my father’s, as a way to understand my own story.

Bolstered by this framework of how the pieces of my life might fit together into a cohesive whole, I let myself slip more into photography. I let it envelop me, become part of how I see the world again. I finally looked back over my catalog of pictures from the last 20 years and beyond. I started to write a mixed media essay with some of those photographs. I began to read about photography and cameras, which I had never been able to do before. In daily life occasional images would impress themselves on me. Bright pansies in a planter surrounded by the browning world of late fall caught my eye one day, a Christmas wreath around a streetlight another, and Thurman with a particularly vivid background on yet another. Interesting images were all around me, I simply started noticing.

I found myself wandering around the neighborhood, camera in hand allowing my eye to once again see things as the camera might. I’d found something I never thought I would experience again: the countenance between light and dark, the sharp joyful spark of color, the excitement of the unexpected caught still. Small, even inconsequential things became my subjects and created a smile as I found life in the ability to represent things as I saw them.

I am no longer only tolerating capturing an image. I’m finding joy and life in creating with my camera. I’m using photography as a tool to help myself now. When I go numb, disconnect or get anxious because I am overwhelmed by memories, a walk with the camera grounds me to the earth. These walks connect me to things waiting to be seen, to life itself because in order to capture the world as I see it, attention must be given to the present instead of what is going on inside. I am forced out of the darkness of images trapped inside my mind to instead experience the light of the world around me.

Somehow moving toward instead of away from memories of my father the photographer has allowed me to work on accepting the duality of my relationship with him. In turn I have felt a peace develop around cameras, photography and how they weave into the fabric of my life. Once again photos are an outlet for me to express myself as an artist, instead imprisoning me.

There is still darkness in photography for me, but as long as I walk in the light, darkness lives only in my past.