Common as cockroaches

When we were little, my brother and I always shared a bedroom. One night when we were living on the island of Guam, I remember getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and seeing at least a dozen large cockroaches crawling around on my brother’s shirtless back as he slept, blissfully unaware of the thirsty insects drinking his sweat. It really freaked me out! Soon though, I quit noticing the roaches because, on a tropical island, they are literally everywhere. It’s kind of like the little cicada in this image. They have been so plentiful this year that I didn’t notice this little guy until after the exposure was made. I had been concentrating on the ripple patterns in the bird bath. There was a pause in the rain and every time there was a gust of wind, water droplets fell from the trees and into the pools of water.

Tumbling dice

According to my iPad, I did not complete a single book in 2020. I didn't know it kept track of information like that, but in any event, I've resolved to do better this year. I was flipping through one of the books I didn't finish this year, Robin Kelsey's "Photography and the Art of Chance". It's an academic text, and I've started reading it more than once. Maybe this year I can actually stick with it...

How many times would you have to throw three balls in the air and photograph them to end up with an image in which the balls are in more or less a straight line? A few times, probably. You can read up on John Baldessari to see how the results of these studies turned out. I am not being dismissive, I just think there are other meaningful ways that chance and disorder can impact an image. In other words, we're not done yet with this topic. 

Since the time of Julia Margaret Cameron, the material accidents of photography have been used to great effect by some artists. A contemporary example would be Sally Mann. Pulling this off successfully can be a lot harder than it sounds.

Slightly missing focus is a good example, I think. But out of focus blur (bokeh) depends on multiple factors, making it hard to control perfectly in a photograph. So maybe chance can play a role here as well? 

For this image, I photographed the roses with the optically most perfect lens I own, but at its closest focus distance and wide open at f/1.2. I chose where to stand, how to frame, and where to focus, but the arrangement of the flowers and the distance of the vase to the window were not determined by me.

That's so random...

Adding a dash of randomness into your process of making photographs can sometimes lead to interesting outcomes (or not, failure is possible, too). Perhaps you will discover a new way of working, gain deeper insight into why you prefer a particular subject, or find new compositional relationships. One time honored way to do this is to experiment with double/multiple exposures.

This photograph was taken a long time ago on a trip down the Natchez Trace from Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS. I found this image in my archive, but candidly, have absolutely no memory of making this frame. Upon reflection, and after a bit of head scratching, I am beginning to suspect that it was, in fact, made by my wife! Which brings up the additional important point that collaboration with a friend or partner is another great way to introduce randomness into your process.

Mercy, mercy, mercy...

One of the particular charms of analog photography is that sometimes mistakes happen, sometimes things turn out just a little different than expected. Sometimes adversity comes up. Cannonball Adderley, the great jazz alto player, offered up some pretty solid advice on how to manage, way back in 1966. This is how he introduced the song "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", recorded live at 'The Club':

You know, sometimes we're not prepared for adversity. When it happens, sometimes we're caught short. We don't know exactly how to handle it when it comes up.

Of course, the tune itself provides the complete answer to the question, so you'll have to listen to it at some point. How does this relate to photography? Well, sometimes you just don't love a certain film stock, but you bought a brick of it. What can you do with 10 rolls of film that you are not that fond of? Maybe just experiment a little bit and see what happens. In my case, I decided to expose a couple of rolls while I was streaming TV. I played around with exposure settings, especially dragging the shutter.

The image below shows one of the more interesting frames I got. It has not been manipulated at all (except for being rotated 90°). I'm still not quite sure how this image came about, but I think it works pretty well as an abstract composition. For me, it references the landscape. By the way, it was captured using the Leica R9 with the 135mm f/2.8. For whatever reason, this lens is not very popular and copies can be had for bargain basement prices. Yet the lens was designed by the famous lens designer Walter Mandler. It's a solid performer.