How are we supposed to learn how to work, how to make pictures? There are plenty of courses on the technical aspects: how to get a proper exposure, rules of composition, eliminating camera shake, etc. What I’,m getting at is how do you come to ideas, how to discover your subject, how to you order your working patterns on an ogoing basis?

On Sunday, I took two hours to drive around the backroads near the little Colorado town where we live and see if I could find anything that caught my eye to shoot. This is my way of working. I threw my camera bag in the car and headed out east towards Greeley, trying hard to skirt the ever expanding housing developments that are encrouching on the farmland. I knew there was a huge tree that’d been stripped bare of branches and bark by the recent tornado and I wanted to shoot that. A warm up, really. It wasn’t as interesting through the viewfinder as I’d thought it would be and good thing because for whatever reason all the shots came out muted (I’m shooting digital.)

Here’s where I feel I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m just plowing along in the car, eyes darting to the left and to the right hoping something will catch my eye. I’ve been on this road before, so I have a general sense of some things I want to shoot, but nothing specific is in mind. Am I doing it “right”? Something says that doesn’t matter, it only matters that I’m out shooting. Something else says without a “point” or a plan, I’m unlikely to just stumble across anything good and this is a pointless exercise. But I keep going.

Next was the Kodak film processing plant. Its entrance was dark and looking derelict and I tried for a juxtapose of the Kodak corporate sign sitting out in a swath of grass infront of the gloomy deserted entrance. Not too satisfying, so I hopped in the car again. The whole time I drove on through the country roads each potential stop was haunted by Robert Adams’ The New West, which I’d bought a week or so ago. Was I overly influenced by those amazing photos? Was I just aping Adams’ work? It would be easy to end up mimicking his work, not much has changed about the continuing sprawl on the Front Range in the 30+ years since he made those photos.

I stop at a roadside memorial that I shot earlier in the spring. Pop, pop, pop. Trying to get good exposures, hampered by shooting in broad daylight, somewhat into the sun. Back in the car, onward, looking for another set of crosses I’d skipped that other day. Now, they are engulfed in summer grass.

Roadside memorial in the spring grass, 2008, Todd Walker

The long grass set off my allergies and I’m fighting 60 or more sneezes as I turn back around a retrace my route. I stop to capture some roadside signs that demonstrate some sense of internal irony.

Have a nice day, 2008, Todd Walker

A few more stops to capture a real estate sign (more Adams influence nagging in the head), some sort of decrepit natural gas machinery, storage tanks and the wind generator manufacturing plant. The whole time I’ve got a sinking feeling that I’m running out of time, I need to work fast, I need to get home and I’m going to disappointed with the results. This is a common feeling. I need to do this more, I need to let this way of working become familiar so I can lose the unsettling sense that I’m doing it “wrong”.