Goodrich Sign, Okeechobee, FL 2010
After about a 10-year lapse in belonging to the Society for Photographic Education, I rejoined this year for various reasons, chief among them, I wanted to reconnect to a larger group of photographers. I recently felt out of the loop to photographers in my region and across the country. So I paid my dues again (more expensive) and signed up to go to the Southeast Regional Conference in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (less expensive). I applied to give a talk on my photography and it was accepted. I was among about a dozen programs given throughout the day on Saturday.
The trip was eventful from the beginning, while still in the predawn dark I ran over something metal which punched a hole in one of my tires and wedged a steel bar to the undercarriage of my car. Due to the good work of AAA I got back on the road again, with a new tire in little more than an hour. This event however, placed a strange veil over the rest of the weekend, where most everything turned out good, but there were some things that made the weekend not as good as it could have been. It should be said that I blame no one for this, as the serendipity of the road is sometime good and sometimes works against you.
I saw about four of the programs, (three were going on at any given time) and they were all interesting. I particularly enjoyed a talk about the photographs made in the Storyville section of New Orleans in the late part of the 19th century. After this excellent presentation it was my term and I attached my computer to the projector and looked at the first image to make sure that it looked good and started my lecture. I am not sure what happened, but the rest of the slides had so much contrast they looked as if they had only two tones, black and white. At this point there was not time to see if the projector could be adjusted and I just went on with the talk, inviting the audience to look at a box of prints that I brought to get a better idea of what the images looked like.
The ones in the audience, who talked with me after, said that they understood about the projector, (it seems that it had been that way almost the whole day) but still found the program interesting because of what I had to say. One young lady, who was a student at Virginia Intermont, said to me later that she knew that I would not knowingly have such awful images, so it had to be the projector.
For the most part it was a good conference as I did see many people who I had known, but not seen in 10 years. I was pleased that they remembered me and seemed glad to see me. I was glad to see them. I also met some new people, a librarian from Kansas, who had an intense interest in photography. Another young man was very interested in my method of traveling for he too was a wanderer. He was doing a project where he would, as he traveled, stop every hour and photograph whatever was there. There is someone who believes in serendipity!
Even with the good reception among my older friends, I will have to attend more conferences to fully recapture my sense of belonging. Like any group, there are cliques. This not a snobby or bad thing, it is just that some of these people only see each other once or twice a year and want time to catch up. I will have to pay some dues. I felt good about the students that I met. So, even with the issues involving tires and projectors I had a pretty good time and the weekend did for me what I wanted it to. Thanks to all those who made me feel welcomed and remembered.
