Flash Practice, Part III: Spousal Abuse

. . . continued from Part II.

If you've ever been in a car wreck, you know that insurance agents, attorneys and chiropractors pull accident reports and send you all sorts of mail advertising their services. After reading posts like this, divorce lawyers send the same kind of letters to my wife.

After all, nothing says 'marital problems' like coming home after a long day at work only to discover that your living room has been transformed into a bad memory of senior picture day:



And then, to throw you off from being mad as hell, your lazy artist husband (who has of course been home all day planning this moment) says "Here, sweetie, toss this banana."



Bam. Just like Harold Edgerton. I wonder if he was married?

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I pity any photographer who doesn't marry someone beautiful. And I pity anyone who marries a photographer.

You have to understand, as the photographer, that people generally want two things: To look good, and to be left alone. And as a photographer's spouse, you have to understand that any good photographer is crazy. And when you look at the image on the back of the camera and think, "Yeah, I guess it's okay, but my hair is all full of static, and I'm hungry and cold," he's thinking, "My God, her hair is all full of static, and that out of focus highlight in the background . . . that's the sun!"



To a photographer, especially one who lives by the rule that you always keep the sun at your back, this photo is proof that he's moving in the right direction. Bouncing a flash off a brick wall and warming up the subject while balancing against the sun is pretty much like defying gravity. To the spouse, I can only imagine, this must be an exercise in patience.

I still have a hard time with the flash thing. I understand that some lies are white. They are still lies. I feel about flash the same way I do about long lenses: They make pretty pictures, but this is not how we see, with perfect light in all the right places and the background blurred out. For most of our lives, we see everything in bitter light, and sharp, harsh focus. If there are rare good times, they are dim and blurry, and trying to change that changes what you sought to capture.

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So for the life of me I can't understand why I'm still married. It must be because I am either (A) a Famous Artist, or (B) incredibly lucky. Whatever the reason, there have been no divorce papers served (yet), and so I really haven't had any consequences to learn from. Thus, while Jes is trying to work at night, I do things like this:




And she is patient as a saint:



And the result is here. To my eye it looks too good. Surely it can't be the truth. But I reckon that anyone else--without my jaded vision--would see that it is. You can hope to capture perfect light. But when it's a long, dark, cold winter, sometimes you have to make it for yourself.










PS: No flash FTW!



PPS: Oddly enough, Pepper is also patient: