I spent a good part of the past weekend lost in the bosque on the west side of Albuquerque. No need to get into the gory details, except to say that I now know the feeling of trying to find a needle in the hay. Adding insult to injury, I had brought along my ultra-UN-reliable Kiev 6C; a medium format film camera that the Soviets probably used as weapons while stomping down pro-democracy rallies back in the 80s. That is to say that this camera is a brick. Well, of course my roll of film was botched, the take up spool not really doing its job, the film was not tightly wound and thus, was royally fogged upon opening the back of the camera.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, and to prove to my faithful fanbase that I am fallible, I’m sharing the results here anyway. Because really, these photos actually look pretty good to me. Sure, proper exposure, good framing, and clear imagery in general is what most of us strive for, but there is something appealing about the blast of a light leak, the numbers and dots from the 120 backing paper superimposed onto my photos. It just looks nice to me.

We humans are never perfect. We make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Over and over and over again. Even when you think you’ve gained enough experience to not make the same stupid mistakes, they always seem to crop up and knock you on your ass. Might as well own up to it.

Mistakes and oversights can lead to enlightenment. The image above was the result of my inability to remember to advance the film on my Holga Panoramic 120 camera properly. I’ve shot with this plastic beast enough times to have maybe been able to figure out this very basic step. Still, I’m prone to error. I am human, after all.

What I find fascinating about this particular photograph is that does not look anything like the reality of the day it was created. That morning, the sun was shining, the air was crisp, the sky clear blue. Ducks and geese were flying and landing in the pond just beyond the reeds. Yet, the overlapping of exposures definitely created a sense of otherworldliness, and setting my camera at ground level also helped me take advantage of the pinhole camera’s extreme depth of field.It all feels post apocalyptic.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my departure from showing the world “as it appears” in my photography. So true: everything has been seen in every which way, certainly as far as photography goes, there truly is nothing new under the sun. A friend recently shared a great quote by artist David Hockney: “There’s a point where you’ve got to interpret the world, not make a replica of it.” I have been going “all in” on interpretation. It has given my vision a serious push into exciting new directions. It has been liberating and satisfying. Maybe a few years ago I would have been disappointed by a roll of overlapping exposures. This week, it felt like a gift.

“Honor thy error as a hidden intention.” - Brian Eno﻿

“Honor thy error as a hidden intention.” - Brian Eno