Factory Drone

Lately I have been a Factory Drone.  One has to make a living, and sometimes that takes hours one would rather spend elsewhere.  To wit: I don't get to read, write, or make pictures as much as I would like.  The overload will end, but it has brought me to some conclusions.

I look around the internet quite a bit for good current photography.  What I find right now seems to be running for public office.  I mean. . . one must be careful, no?  I still look at Mark Tucker's photography.  His techniques are beautiful and his images have never been thematically challenging, so I am not disappointed but still fascinated.  He serves a commercial clientele and still manages to make interesting images.  He is good at messing photographs up.

It takes a lot of time to develop a style and make images that are identifiable and that stand out.  Now that I haven't a studio, it hits me.  I spent a LOT of time working on images.  Now I don't.  I keep factory hours which means daylight hours.  Without a studio, I can't make pictures at night.  And with a job, I only have a couple days of daylight with which to work, and truly, there are many things that demand my attention then.  Including some rest.  So. . . I haven't gotten good with the Hasselblad yet.  I haven't been working with the Black Cat Liberator, either.  My intentions are good, but inauguration is stifled.

I want to get good at it.

It might be a while.

I miss the studio very much.  I can still see each item where it lay.  I can smell the heating wax when I made encaustics and the dangerous solvents when I did transfers.  I can hear the printer and the soundtrack to each shoot.  I remember the feel of the keys in the locks when I stepped up to the front door.

All of that will fade away, I'm sure.  But nothing is easy now.  I have everything piled up in the garage.  It is storage, not working space.  Everything must be moved each and every time.

Mark Tucker is a camera, or many cameras.  He can take a month and just do something new.  I read that is what he did with wet plate work.  One month of nothing else.  Every day, he packs up some cameras and goes.

I don't know him, don't know that.  One imagines things.

What I don't need to imagine, though, is that it is time to ready myself for factory work.  The whistle blows.  I put this away for the day.  Listen to the drone.