... several months ago the freedom, new hampshire, public library invited me to display my photographs ... as much as i enjoy taking pictures, i always appreciate it more as a shared activity, so i invited john and chad join me ... on new year's day chad picked us up and we drove over to hang our work ...
TERRI BROOKS
... if the chance arises, or, even better, if you're willing to set the dice as you like, please, take a little wanderabout over to freedom to share our vision ...
Three Friends, Three Cameras
SHARING VISION
Of my earliest memories are of driving out to the military base with my Pa and spending an evening in the Photo Lab’s darkroom. He would perch me atop the little wooden stool in front of the fixing bath, and for several hours it would be my responsibility to gently stir the exact amount of time, then very carefully use the giant tongs to move the prints to the first washing tray. Staring at the exposed paper in the developer, watching with awe as an image slowly emerged, I became forever cast in photography’s magical spell. Much later in life, he would hand me one of his older cameras, offer up a box of outdated color slide film, and say to me, “Go, see, find your own pictures.” It was quite some time before I began to understand the relationship between f-stop, shutter speed, and ASA. After that came focus, depth of field and circle of confusion, the Zone System, exposure latitude, reciprocity failure, and the fundamental "rule of thirds." It was even more time before I came to accept that I was never going to stop learning.
What happens when I take pictures? I'm not sure. Closest description of my feelings that I've ever heard was my friend Carl, who said, "Pat, you see things that most of us merely look at ... you stop and notice what most of us pass by." Whatever it is, I'm always pleased to think there are others who enjoy sharing my vision.
Patrick Groleau
I picked up my first camera and seriously started taking photographs in 1978 on a family trip across country. Trying to capture something more than simply a scene quickly became the aim of every shot in every national park we visited, though most shots never reached that lofty goal, it became the reason to take pictures.
Over the years with a variety of cameras, I have attempted to place my camera in the right spots at the right times to capture the essence of the moment at hand. It’s not easy, but it’s rewarding when you occasionally hit the mark. In the end, making a photo that captures what you’re after is simply the icing on a delicious cake. The greatest value in this endeavor is the process of learning to see, learning to anticipate, and putting yourself in the way of beauty. I still love the national parks, but I’ve learned you don’t need to go to Yellowstone to get a great photo, you just need to open your eyes to what’s all around you where ever you are. It takes practice and that’s the joy of photography.
John T. Meader
I throw my camera and tripod in my car, make sure I’ve my little flashlight, and off I go to Schoodic Point or Northwest Harbor or one of dozens of my other favorite places along the coast of Maine. It is not unusual that at three in the morning in almost total blackness I am sitting alone along the edge of a heard but yet-to-be seen sea. Gradually, my eyes become accustomed to the starlight, and there is a period of time I am like a night creature, viewing the world in barely discernible shades of gray with only the barest of a hint of color in the breaking surf’s phosphorescence glow. I wait ... I wait ... and then, no matter how I prepare myself, always a moment that catches me by surprise, a suddenly contrasted distant horizon is the sun’s announcement to me, “Hello, Chad. Get ready, because for you, most especially for you, today I might just happen to have something spectacular in mind.” Later, I will bring to my sweet wife and children, and to my friends and family, my pictures. I joy in the sharing.
Chad Tracy
“Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.”
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSEN