Nostalgia, Memory, and Christmas Lights
How I found inspiration taking photos this holiday season.
I’ve never really spent much time taking photos during the holiday season. Mostly, after Fall, I spend my time waiting it out in an undisclosed beneath a shack somewhere in West Texas, waiting for Spring.
This year was different, however. OM SYSTEM asked me to use my beloved OM-3 to photograph “creative” holiday scenes. I told them confidently: “Oh, no problem. Holiday scenes are easy.”
After the call, went out for a few hours to take some photos - then I freaked the hell out because I didn’t know how to photograph Christmas lights! I came back home, defeated.
I kept taking pictures, but I didn’t like any of them. While I kept seeing pretty holiday scenes, every photo was flat. A mere snapshot of something in front of me. I was aimlessly looking at pretty things instead of “seeing.”
“I’m broken,” I said that night. “I have no photography juice left. Washed up. Done.” (Yes, I go to Doom quickly.)
Then, almost without realizing it, I drove to the neighborhood I grew up in, across town. I had no plans to go here, but sometimes the Force works in mysterious ways.
I explored streets I haven’t seen since I rode my bike through them, probably 40 plus years ago. Here is a house just down the street from my childhood home:
I drove through the neighborhood, and a memory popped up:
I was biking down the sidewalk, full-speed, when I launched myself over my bike’s handlebar, through the air, and directly on my face/neck/chest against the cement sidewalk on 115th street. I was probably 14 years old.
I stayed down there for a second, unsure if I was alive. To my left, a strange sound, muted at first but rising in volume. I looked in the direction of the sound and saw a woman with big 80’s-style hair in a minivan screaming, “OH GOD, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”
My honor as a “man” was at stake. I blinked and jumped up as if nothing had happened, laughing it off: “Oh, I’m fine! Ha! No big deal, it’s totally cool.”
My mouth was numb, and it sounded like, “eh, em fyyyyn. Nahbedeal. Itoecool.”
I was dizzy, couldn’t feel my tongue, and everything in the world was way-too-bright. Absolutely this was one of at least a few concussions I experienced when I was young.
She looked at me strangely but slowly drove away as I limped off in shame. It took me forever to stumble back home.
Back to the now: here I am nearly 35 years later standing at (I think), the spot where I hurled myself over those handlebars.
I took a photo (the one above) and connected to it immediately.
From that moment on, the photos started clicking for me.
I must have subconsciously driven here, my photography survival instincts kicking in.
One tree in particular caught my attention:
I twisted my focus until I saw this:
The colors are wonderful, and it’s a really cool photo for me. This is a tree I walked/biked by hundreds of times when I was younger. Now, this photograph of that tree is like memory itself: blurry and partially imagined, steeped in nostalgia.
Another memory:
Window shopping in the Old Market with my mom. I was seven years old, maybe, and she held my hand as I crossed the street with her, looking down at my blue snow boots and the brown slush on the bricks, ready to shop for gifts.
It was so much fun, both to walk the streets to experience the color and mystery of the holidays, but also to connect with memories of a simpler time in life.
The next morning, a gift: FOG
I walked and photographed:
And… sometimes it’s just fun to slow down the shutter and shake the camera around:
What about you? Do you connect with the past in your photography?
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Nostalgia and memories aside, these are wonderful photos! You capture mood and color and story here. Thanks for sharing these.
Love how going back to that exact spot on 115th street unlocked everything for you. There's somethign about retracing physical spaces from childhood that shakes loose creative blocks in ways other methods just dont. I had a similar experiance shooting in my old neighborhood and suddenly all the flat compositions turned into somehting deeper, like place holds memory even if we can't fully access it otherwise.