With a pen and a camera

Photographing at a writer's workshop

Go to a writer’s workshop. Stop by the coffee stand where your old friend is. See an instant camera on one of the bar tables. Pick it up and take a photo. It turns out quite well. Point the camera at somebody else, take another photo.

Realize, once again, how much fun you have taking photos. Put down the camera, go write or talk to people.

The next day you stop by the coffee stand on the porch and you see the camera lying around on the table again. You pick it up, take some photos; they turn out well. You take the camera and walk around.

Remember your teenage years, how many photos you took with the family whenever you managed to get access to the family digital camera. Remember your own digital camera that your parents bought you at the end of middle school. Remember your dad, who really liked taking photos and really liked taking photos of you. He cared about preserving memory. Remember a hard drive full of photos, all the photos that he had taken.

Remember biking around your hometown with your camera, pointing your camera at things. You observed how reality looked from different angles, in different frames. You have a few pieces of work that you have been very proud of, to this day. All of your work has been done either on a small digital camera, or a phone. You remember being envious of your friend’s DSLR camera because you never had one. You’ve gotten good at taking photos on your phone.

You decide that you like the instant camera, and order more film.

By now you are the only person at this workshop using this camera. You have taken possession of it, walking around as if it is your own. You find out that this camera belongs to the organizer of this workshop. He seems happy that somebody is using it. You bring the camera with you on a trip to the beach and take photos of people. They tell you the photos turned out well. You take more photos.

You realize that you’d thought about what photos to include in your blog posts before an advisor told you to do so. You take more photos on your phone. Whenever you see something interesting you take a photo. You keep a stash of interesting photos to choose from.

You remember your best friend from childhood and how she was good at painting and drawing, in a way that you never were. You couldn’t draw; you could only take photos. You think about how photos just came so naturally to you, a part of your entire life. You think about how you were one of the only two people at your middle school graduation who thought to bring a camera to school and took photos of your classmates. How glad you are that you have so many photos from your childhood. Your dad was on to something when he told you that it was important to preserve memory.

This workshop has gotten you try on “writer” as a label, and you realize you’d never considered “photographer” as an identity. You were just somebody who took photos every now and then. Maybe you don’t want to be a writer, either; you can be someone who writes every now and then.

There is an open house coming up at the writing workshop and the organizer is soliciting ideas. You look at the list of ideas and none seem appealing to you. You decide to make a photo wall. You tell the organizer and he likes your idea. You bring him some photos you have taken. He likes them so much he buys you more film to take more photos.

You collect a bunch of photos taken by yourself and other people and find out the fastest way to print them. You find out that they can be printed within an hour. You come back with a stack of photos. People tell you that the photos turned out very well. You ask for a piece of art to be removed from a wall and make that wall your canvas. You stick the photos onto the wall one by one; soon enough you have a photo wall.

The playwright at the workshop tells you that you’d always been an artist.

Another photographer walks by; he has a real DSLR camera. He compliments your photo wall. You notice a small thing that needed to be fixed; you fix it. The photographer takes a few steps back, holds up his camera, and asks you to turn around — in his viewfinder, you are smiling in front of your photo wall.

(h/t to Mingyuan for the format)