I walk
not passing negligently the things I love
but stopping to know them.
Admiring the imperfect, the impermanent and incomplete
Seeing beauty in things modest and humble.
Walking in fellowship with nature.
After Robert Henri
Images are from an in-process project titled Little Walks. I walk daily along the American River with my dog and my cell phone.
I am a resident of the present and tourist of the past.
I lost my mother in a car accident when I was 10 years old, as a result there are few family photographs of me or the places I have been from that age on. Now, I recognize the importance of what it means to me to make images of the place I live. If I don’t take the time to make these images, who else will? When looking at photographs of the past I am reminded that I am the sum of my own experiences.
This work is about melancholy, loss and working through that to build a meaningful connection with the place I live.
One reason I hadn’t photographed any of the places I have lived with any real rigor is that I never felt quite at home. Part of this project is to push past that and recognize that “feeling at home” is just a state of mind. I am embracing the aesthetic of the environment I live in and how it influences me.
J. William Kraintz II
Resident-Tourist
One thing I have learned is that the early photo assignments I had during introductory photo courses have become indispensable tools to me as a photographer. A common exercise that instructors give photo students that are just starting out and looking for ideas about what to photograph is to take a picture of something during different times of the day.
The subject matter isn’t what is most important, the exercise is meant to encourage you to experiment with photographing something more than once and to learn how different lighting situations affect the scene.
The rapidity at which an image can be made with a camera can also create a false sense of what it takes to make an image, what you don’t see is curating, criticizing, and evaluating over time to end up with a series of photographs that communicate clearly and are aesthetically pleasing.
The photos below are from my current project Resident-Tourist. This project consists of making images as artifacts and producing postcards to send out to supporters of the project. Only one of these will make it into the final portfolio.
In some cases I am not happy with the first exposure that I take of a scene, so logically my next step is to return and photograph it again and again at different times of day. This can be tricky especially if it is in an area where you may not be able to get the exact field of view, for me it was the fact that the parking lot full of cars made it difficult to keep the framing the same, in the end I think that it didn’t matter anyway and being forced to try different compositions helped me refine what I was aiming for aesthetically.
So even though you may not be doing a photo assignment that you are enthusiastic about remember that it is a tool that you can use in the future like I am doing here.
Try it for yourself!
This exercise is easier with an object on a table next to a window. But this is meant to be done any way you like.
As an extra take all of the images to your friends and ask them what they think is their favorite then reveal what your favorite image is. This can lead to a great conversation and help you understand how everybody has a different and unique idea of what is a successful photograph.
Thank you for visiting.
J. William Kraintz II
The photos below are organized in the order that they were made over the course of a week.
02 January 2021
31 December 2020
Photographs from a fishing trip to Lake Berryessa 12/28/2020. We didn’t catch any fish.
The incredible nostalgic quality of the photograph. At 36
The more I learned about photography and expression through visual communication the more I wanted to rush home and reexamine the world that created me. It wasn’t the act of photography but the new way of communication that I had never really understood before. Why wouldn’t I want to take pictures that would remind me of some of the happiest moments in my life. To record them in a way that relies less on fading memory but gives me a tangible thing that I can revisit and reexamine and I can share with others a slice of the human experience and hopefully communicate something they hadn’t thought of or had seen before and pushed a little self reflection and creates a connection between myself and the audience. I remember fondly when I was a child my father catching some crawdads in the creek that ran by our town. So when I had the chance at 36 to catch some crawdads with my dad I made sure to bring my camera. I’m not trying to reconstruct my past in any way. I just wanted to make something that would spur such a good memory from my childhood and now connect it to something positive in my present.
By john kraintz
44 pages, published 6/10/2020 A day trip to the Sierras for trout fishing. A reflection on our connection to the Earth.
The spot
It is the spot
The place
The hole
Where the fish live
Where I return
Time and time again
I will travel great distances
To return
To that which connects me to the earth
Food
Fish
Life
And
Death
Hook
Line
Sinker
Not every morning is the same but most start something like this.
Wake up
Walk the dog
Make coffee
Read
Kraintz Photography 