“The tide is out, their boat is stranded and they can’t leave.”

“Oh.”

When you grow up on the water tides are not something you need explained. I grew up on the bay you see here, to the left a bit. This is the family boat house, which is locked and which, to the best of my knowledge, no one uses though there are three random extra boats, states of repair unknown but likely bad, simply sitting around it. Three families use it, and we caught a ride from one of them out to their camp where we hiked, showed Fiona a 70-year-old stone lookout and told her it was a fairy house, and had some fabulous lobster stew. We’ll be going back next summer to camp ourselves and clear some of the many fallen trees, victims of spruce budworm. Maine gets in your soul. You can leave, but the longing to go back is always there.

I took this with a holga in the boat on the way back from our afternoon away from computers, clocks, iPhones, electricity and running water. It’s a few moments before we left a world of measuring time by the tide.
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* My MA is in Medieval Studies and if you can find a less useful master’s degree I’d love to know about it because, really, I think a full year of Old Norse pretty much wins any “least useful” contest. No, I don’t actually remember any of it, though I have started reading Norse myths to my children.

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Her parents volunteered her for an analog shoot and not just any analog shoot but a Holga-heavy one.

Of course, I made them be in a few.

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Holga wedding images and portraits are not for everyone but if this kind of special imagery appeals to you let me know!

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1. Leave the DSLR at home. Everyone has one now, they all know what they are and they are sizing up your lens. Is that a 70-200 in your bag or are you just happy to see me?

2. Instead, bring out a toy camera. Make sure to load the film – what is this film thing you speak of? – at the picnic table. The medium format film will get an extra odd look as it doesn’t look like the film people remember. Then, pull out your roll of gaff tape and tape the sucker up.

3. Lie on the ground slightly in front of the swing set so you can shoot up. Try not to get kicked in the face – it’s best to be back a little bit.

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Now and again things happen at photography sessions that make one laugh, though usually not until a bit later after a glass of wine or two. A small sampling…

1. I was doing a very casual portfolio building shoot of a friend’s 3-month old son at my house on my back deck. She took her glasses off to get some pictures holding her child without the specs and my own child grabbed her glasses, broke them, and dropped them under the deck. We had to fish them out (or rather, I did, as she really is basically blind without her glasses) using a hook AFTER we located where they were by peering through the wooden boards at the assorted dead leaves below. Finding patterned brown glasses in dead leaves with almost no light is, well, interesting. I told her to let me pay for new ones. Did she? No. They are STILL taped together and that boy is 18 months old now. Every time I see them I feel glasses-guilt. Lesson learned: don’t ever try to do even the most casual shoot with your kids around. This just doesn’t end well.
2. I did a maternity session for one woman and was doing a set of rapid fire pictures, one after another, of the same pose. When I went back to proof the pictures, as I flipped from one to the next, I realized I could see the baby shifting around inside her womb and causing her abdomen to change shape. I’ve also had a woman have contractions during the shoot; she was a trooper and hiked all over West Hartford Center – in high heeled boots – pausing only briefly during contractions. She admitted she hoped the walking would bring on full labor. No such luck. I did, however, once have a mother go into full labor about 5 hours after our session.
3. Babies pee on my ALL THE TIME. It’s just part of the job and one reason I wear very casual clothes to shoots. Only once, however, did I manage to actually catch an arc of pee in the air when I pushed the shutter RIGHT as the baby peed. If this happens to you I will add a complimentary 4X6 of that shot for you to tuck away until your child’s wedding rehearsal dinner when you can add it to the slideshow of cute childhood pictures. This will be payback for the sleep deprivation.
4. At a wedding I once, camera gear hanging from my neck, jumped down a river bank to grab a blow-away ketubah that the wind had snatched and was attempting to introduce to the water, not 15 minutes after every single person in the family had signed it. This was not in the fine print of “How to be a wedding photographer.” I’ve also helped a bride into her dress, which eliminated any sweet “the bride getting dressed” shots but ensured that she actually DID get zipped into her dress.

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