SAD144

SAD144 :: Pentax K1000 :: 28mm/f2.8 SMC :: HP5 :: June, 2005

Larry White is a slave driver.

After two 400 level photo classes and the big, bad photo award, I realized that I had probably better graduate soon. This was a tall order; I still needed something like 40 credits, because, as Larry told the entire art department, I hated everything about school but photography.

I also knew that I was going to be shooting photos all summer, and figured I might as well get credit for it. So, with all that in mind, I signed my lazy ass up for summer school for the first and last time in my life. Oh, how I rue the day.

Documentary Photography is meant to be a sixteen-week course. We did it in four. Easy enough, right? The first problem was that Larry expected the same level of in-depth reportage as he'd get from the sixteen-week time frame.

The second problem was that, during week three, the school decided to have the darkroom re-plumbed. So what should have been an intense four-week course became a nearly impossible three-week course with a break in the middle.

I have never worked so hard before or since.

We met every day but Friday, at eight in the morning. It was me and a bunch of girls from Western who were trying to graduate at the end of the summer and needed one last "easy" course. I bet they rue the day, too. Whole lotta ruin' goin' on.

One particular day, Larry took us on a field trip to Marshall. I think he wondered why we were so pale in the middle of summer.







I was still pushing film. And it was a good thing I had learned to do that, because my documentary project became what is now Declare Arms, and I pushed every roll to ISO 800. But I didn't know that when we took that trip. And now I kind of wish I had some good fine-grained shots of Marshall, though I can't go back. Every time I drive through that town, I smell fixer and Red Bull and hear Larry White cackling in the background.