Proclivities

Back when I was young and dumb(er), I would read interviews in which photographers, like Elliot Erwitt or Lee Friedlander, would mention perusing old contact sheets and “discovering” some heretofore unknown tendency toward a particular subject.

I always thought this was strange. How can a photographer not know where their proclivities lie? It made no sense to me.

Last May, while gathering photos for the IPL article, I realized several of the final candidates featured dogs as the primary subject. Deeming this “a tad excessive,” I whittled the selection down to a single pooch, and didn’t give it another thought until June — when multiple dog photos once again found their way into the finalist pool. Again I whittled it down to one, and again I didn’t give it another thought until July — when my final candidates folder contained five new dog photos. However, unlike the previous months, I couldn’t find many suitable alternatives — even that month’s rejects were dog shots! So I was forced to publish two dog photos, rather than one. When it came time to post August’s article, 100% of my preliminary candidates featured a dog somewhere in the frame. I struggled and juggled — failing, once again, to bring the doggie count below two.

It was only then that it finally hit me — I take a lot of dog photos! In retrospect, it’s obvious. But, like Erwitt or Friedlander, I wasn’t aware just how strong the propensity.

This got me wondering: Are there any other subjects that attract my camera without piquing my awareness? I glanced over my last several posts, and there it was: the port-a-potty.

Without even realizing I’d done so, I had published three portable toilet photos within a six month period. Granted, that’s not a lot in the general scheme of subjects — but it’s probably three more portable toilet photos than the average guy publishes in a six month period. Randomly opening a few old blog posts uncovered evidence that this is not a new fixation — I’ve got portable toilet shots going back a decade. Nor is it a fixation likely to end soon, as witnessed by the additional port-a-potty shots I’ve included with this article.

What other proclivities might be hiding in plain site?

I turned to my Lightroom catalog, and took a gander at the keyword list I’d so carefully crafted over the years. One keyword, in particular, had an anomalously high count: stairs. I clicked the link and was greeted by the site of a thousand photos in which stairs were a primary element. What’s particularly curious is how few of these I’ve actually published. Stairs, it seems, are one of my most photographed subjects — yet I rarely deem any of them worthy of publication. So why have I taken so many? And why do I continue to do so — particularly when I so obviously suck at it?

Despite taking all these stair photos, I can recall only one instance when I was consciously aware of doing so — and that’s when I suffered from a debilitatingly pathological obsession with a crumbling and decrepit staircase that descended from Vancouver’s seawall down to the shore. I couldn’t walk past it without a Pavlovian urge to fire off a few shots. I photographed those stairs from every conceivable angle, using every camera and every lens I owned. Hi-fi digital shots; lo-fi grainy film shots; sharply rendered; soft focus; black & white; colour; from a distance; up close — you name it, I shot it. I was tormented by the need to take a compelling photo of those stairs, while never figuring out what was actually so compelling about them. This went on for several years, until the city cordoned off that very segment of the seawall — stairs included — tore it all out, and replaced it with a characterless and visually bland alternative. It was the happiest day of my life. To this date, I’ve only ever published one photo of those stairs, when I used it to make a cheesy, Photoshop composite to illustrate my Alternative History of the Film Camera article.

Looking back, I’m not sure that particular descent into mania was even related to my generic stair fixation — more likely, it was just a mental defect. This theory is backed up by a totally new, but eerily similar obsession — one that began a few months ago, when I snapped a shot of a dilapidated pedestrian bridge that crosses an even more dilapidated railroad. Viewing the photo at home, I realized it completely failed to encapsulate what I felt when I saw the bridge. So the next time I crossed, I took a few photos… and the next… and the next… and, well, now I find myself looking for excuses to walk across that bridge. This is exactly how the whole seawall steps thing started. I should probably nip the problem in the bud, and make a series of anonymous calls to city hall — demanding they send a crew to dismantle and replace that bridge with something far more characterless and visually bland.

So I’ve proven, once again, just how clueless that young Egor guy really was. In the end, it took me a scant 30 seconds of research to disprove my old theory that a decent photographer couldn’t possibly be unaware of his proclivities (assuming I qualify as a ‘decent’ photographer). I’ve also discovered that my own particular proclivities don’t necessarily translate into better photos… just more photos. If I can just finagle a way to live to 160, I might finally be able to figure out this whole photography thing.

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS: “Kibble-of-the-month.com” [Leica M10 Monochrom | Leica 21mm f/3.4 Super-Elmar-M] is yet another new dog photo, proving the proclivity has not yet subsided. “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Hole” [Konica C35 | Across 100II | Rodinal] and “Special Delivery” [M10 Monochrom | Voigtlander 75mm f/2.5 Color Heliar] are indicative of my ongoing infatuation with public toilets. “Daunting” and “Scene Awaiting a Crime” [both Leica M10 Monochrom | Minolta 28mm f/2 Rokkor] represent two new additions to my Lightroom collection of photos keyworded with ‘stairs.’ “Straight In” [Leica M10 Monochrom | Leica 21mm f/3.4 Super-Elmar-M], “Straight Through” [Leica M10 Monochrom | Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron v4] and “Straight Up” [Widelux F7 | Across 100II | Rodinal] are just three of an embarrassingly excessive collection of ‘pedestrian bridge’ photos taken in the past few months.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.