The Quality of the Image
The Brownie also moved the conversation away from the quality of the image. Photography became less about aesthetics, and more about the moment, the snapshot, and the feeling. The iPhone, with its “crap lens,” has done the same.
"That won’t make a good photo," my dad said, and he was right. I don't remember what I was taking a picture of when he said it. I remember the moment that I realized that there were rules for composing things like photographs, and until I knew those rules, I would be doomed to produce bad things.
I think he was trying to get me to stop wasting film. I went through a lot of film. I had gotten a Kodak Instamatic 110 as a present, and I loved it. It was so simple. Pop the cartridge in, pop the cartridge out. Look through the viewfinder and click. And I didn’t know what I wanted to capture, so I just grabbed whatever caught my eye, leaving me with a mess of blurry, confusing images forty years later, a box in the attic that I need to get rid of.
I vaguely remember the school field trip to Springfield, touring the Lincoln sites. I remember the kid next door, Garret, but I don’t know why he had a shield. Pictures of dogs, of cars. Classmates whose faces were somewhat familiar but whose names had long since been worn away. I spent an evening sitting on the floor of my attic under a bare bulb and didn’t come across a single picture in the bunch worth keeping. He was right.
And I’m clearly conflating separate events, because there’s no way he came along on a school field trip, but somehow that comment and those pictures got linked. I think it was when I got the pictures back from Fox Photo and I looked at them and I finally understood what he meant. They weren't good photos. I could tell that they weren't good photos, but when I took them, I thought they would be. I didn't know what I was doing.
It didn't stop me from taking photos, even taking a photography class. I think I still have a nice film camera, somewhere. Honestly, I have no idea where it is. I feel like maybe I gave it to someone who could use it, but I don't remember.
But it was chilling, in a way, the moment that I became aware that there was a difference between the way I saw the world and the way that others would see it. Not just a difference, but a deficit. I didn't know what I was back then, but I saw that some people were better at things than I was. Some people had gifts, had the ability to see what would make a good photo, and what wouldn't. They knew how to judge the quality of the image before they took it. I could only wait until the photos came back to be disappointed.
It makes sense, now, post-diagnosis. I would say the back of the matchbook of my life would read, "Realizes there are rules he doesn't understand." It could apply to so many situations and events of my childhood. And this idea that there were aesthetics that I didn't grasp would follow me well into adulthood, making me feel the deficit when I didn't intuitively grasp the meaning of some art.
But it's ridiculous, too. I could have learned basic composition techniques. If I had known then what I know now about myself, I could have forgiven myself for not understanding something right off the bat; instead I developed this view that it was a failing on my part. Again, that word deficit pops up. And it's not a deficit, it's a difference.