The Devil Made Me Do It

We’re heading out on a long road trip in September that will include a search through the Mississippi Delta for some historic crossroads. You’ve likely heard the song Crossroads by Eric Clapton’s Cream. That’s a cover of a song by blues legend Robert Johnson, who, legend has it, sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads in exchange for his unmatched guitar talent. In the Cream song, at the end, you’ll hear Clapton say “I’m standing at the crossroads/Believe I’m sinking down.” That line is direct from the original and that’s Hell he’s sinking down into. 

Some of the story is verified fact, some legend, some….who knows. Robert Johnson was in fact a guitar player at a young age. He played around the Delta in the early 1920’s, including the Dockery Plantation which is kind of the birthplace of blues music. The older men there, Charlie Patton, father of the blues, among them, made fun of him because he wasn’t very good. He got angry and left, on foot, not to be seen in the area again for months. When he came back, he was one the best, if not the best guitar player anyone had heard. That much is fact, corroborated by blues histories who spoke with those who were there. 

Robert Johnson in 1936

Then the legend begins. The idea of meeting the Devil at the 

Crossroads has a long history. In the part of Africa where many of the enslaved people of the Delta had roots, the Trickster god in their pantheon is called The Dark Man. He was the only of the gods who was unpredictable. Praying to him might get you want you wanted, or not. He was associated with places where paths or roads crossed. In America, as the Africans were introduced to Christianity, The Dark Man was a natural fit for The Devil. And so we get the Devil at the Crossroads. A story in the Delta held that you could bring your guitar to the crossroads just before midnight and play. At midnight, the Devil would appear, take your guitar from you, tune it, play some, and hand it back. From then on you’d have great skill as a guitarist, but your soul belonged to the Devil.  This is what many people thought was the source of Robert Johnson’s talent. As an entertainer who depended on a certain degree of notoriety to draw audiences and make his living, Johnson did not discourage the story.

You can believe that or not. But after he became a great musician, Johnson never rested. He never lived in one place and never stayed in one place long. He traveled all through the Delta and the South, up to St. Louis and Chicago, and even to New York and Canada. It’s hard to listen to him sing “Hellhound On My Trail” and not at least entertain the idea that he did in fact believe he was trying to outrun an evil fate. He certainly lived like it. 

The actual Crossroads involved in this story were never specifically nailed down. The “official” spot is the intersection of highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There’s a big sign marking the spot, and I’ll certainly go and get some photos, but it’s a busy intersection and today features such things as a Sonic drive-thru. 

We’ve also tracked down some other possibilities, much more out in the country, and these are what led me to my Devil Made Me Do It purchase of a new-to-me old lens. The Delta is very, very flat. These crossroads are dirt roads through mainly cotton fields. I thought that to capture them the way I’d like required a wide angle lens, so I found a 24mm Pentax for the Spotmatic at Roberts Camera (https://robertscamera.com/) used gear site Used Photo Pro (https://usedphotopro.com/ )for about $60. Buying from them was a breeze, it came quickly packed safely and in great shape. I can’t wait to try it out here then take it to the Crossroads. 

I hope to come back with my soul intact. But if when I return, I’m all of a sudden shooting stuff to put Ansel Adams to shame, you’ll know what happened. 

Road Trip!!!!!!!

 It’s been soooooo long since we went anywhere for any length of time. We’ve done some fun day trips and we’ve been on a couple overnighters to go see the boy, but we haven’t proper been away since before The Plague Times. Tomorrow morning, though, we drop the News Hound off at Pet Camp and head to a fancy resort in Greensboro for four whole nights! It’s not quite really a vacation, though. It’s the annual conference of the North Carolina Association of Municipal Clerks, during which my lovely bride will become the new president of the Association. I’m very proud. I’m also really happy I get to tag along. Lisa will be in classes all day, so I will actually have a bit of vacation time. Naturally, I’m planning to use it to play with cameras.

We’ve been to Greensboro enough that I have a start of an idea of some things I need to see and hopefully shoot. The city has a fun little downtown area that we’ve mostly just driven through, so exploring that is high on the list. Greensboro prides itself on its green spaces, too, so I have some gardens and parks and trails on my list as well. It’s supposed to be sticky hot, but partly cloudy with just a chance of thunderstorms rolling through, so should be pretty good photography weather. And since Lisa’s classes start early, I can easily get my butt out for morning light and come back to do some magazine when the light is harsh (and it’s super hot.) That’s the plan anyway.

I’ve not been anywhere on photo safari since I began messing about with film photography, so I was’t sure what I wanted to bring. After thinking about it a it, I settled on pretty much everything. I have a good sling camera bag and also a fairly large backpack, so I have the room. I’ll leave the Brownie at home because folding it is a little iffy, but I’m bringing the Holga and the Petri 7 and the Eos R. I have the two RF lenses as well as the telephoto and the wide angle zooms. I figure I can look at the day’s weather and where I’m going and pack the sling with whatever I’ll want for that trip. Or throw the backpack in the car, who knows? But as far as cameras and lenses, I’m pretty well covered.

The Go Bag

Film left me putting in a little more thought. I’m leaving the slide fil at home because that’s for my Disney Project and I’m not confident about being able to replace any that i would use in Greensboro. The medium format film for the Holga was pretty easy as well. I’m taking three rolls each of Tri-X 400 and Lomo 400, that way I’ll have both color and black and white. I’m thinking it might be fun to load the Holga with color and the Petri with B&W or vice versa, so I always have both as options. That means I’m able to bring some pretty funky 35mm film. I have my Washi “S” 50 ISO sound recording film as well as both the 50D and 500T Vision3 Kodak film stocks from Film Photography Project. I’m also packing a couple rolls of the tried and true Gold 200 as well as two rolls of the very normal but new to me ProImage 100. 

I think that gives me a wide variety of film speeds in both color and monochrome for the Petri. I’m expecting lots of light, so the low ISO stuff should work well, especially in the urban areas. I can go to the 200 for the shady spots in the woods if I end up there. That’s the plan anyway. 

I’m hoping to have the chance to branch out a bit with my subject matter. Not only is it a new city, but it’s also much more urban than even Wilmington, so should offer a different style of shooting than I’m used to here at the beach. If there are people around, I could try some street photography. We’ll see if I get up the nerve. Maybe shooting strangers won’t seem so weird in a city. We shall see. 

And I’ll also always have the mirrorless Eos R with all its bells and whistles and options and a  big pile of memory cards to go along with it. 

I’m looking forward to spending some time just focusing on photography (heh, see what I did there). If all goes well, I’ll be busy in Jeff’s FotoMat and on the computer when we get back. And let’s be honest, this is a dry run for the Disney trip, so any lessons learned will be valuable. It’s all very exciting :-)

Road Trippin’ with Pedro

 Now that the lovely Miss Lisa and I are vaccinated against The Plague we have ventured forth into the world again. That was the toughest part of the Plague Times, the staying at home. We’re not staying at home people. At all. In the Before Times we were always hearing people ask us where we were going next or telling us they liked following us on social media to see where we would end up next. People would ask, “Aren’t you ever at home?” Doing what, I wondered. Mowing the grass? Dusting the house? Watching TV?

 I really don’t know what the stay at home crowd does at home. It’s not a part of my experience. Growing up, we were always on the move. We’d just “take a ride” on the weekends, with no particular destination in mind. Going for the sake of going has been my normal. So, fair warning, you will begin seeing blogs about getting out into the world, because when we go, the camera (or, now, cameras) goes too. Photography was always a part of the roaming life for me, and the two combined remain one of my life’s great joys. 

Last weekend we took a ride up I40 to the Meadow community in Johnston County. It’s really kind of in the middle of nowhere, but as Raleigh grows it’s becoming closer to somewhere. We were there for the pie. Chocolate cream pie, to be precise. You see, the lovely and talented Lisa stops at the Meadow Restaurant for lunch on the way home from business meetings in Raleigh. She raves about the place, or, I should say, the pie. It’s a country buffet restaurant and the food is pretty standard country buffet food. The desserts, however, are amazing, especially the chocolate cream pie. It was killing Lisa that I’d never experienced this pie, so off we went to lunch, a few hours up the interstate to a crossroads in the Middle of Nowhere, North Carolina. As one does. 

Lisa had heard from someone that there was a Meadow Museum. We’re suckers for museums and a museum named for a town that isn’t even actually a town and that contains exactly one restaurant, one gas station, one fertilizer store and said museum……well, we had to go. It did not disappoint. Neither, by the way, did the pie.

I’ll write more about our photo-tour of this museum another day, but for now I’m bringing this back to those road trips of my youth. My favorite trip was the drive to Florida. One of the best things about driving to Florida from Pennsylvania is watching out for the increasing numbers of South of the Border signs as you approach the NC-SC state line and that glorious piece of roadside kitsch. Most of the signs feature Pedro, the South of the Border mascot who would, I’m sure, be considered a bit problematic today. He’s a caricature of a Mexican guy and he’s the king of bad Spanish-English puns. Here today, gone tamale and stuff like that. And the signs worked. By the time you’d passed your hundredth one, how could you NOT stop? And stop we did. Never to eat (my dad said he’d eaten a burrito there once before I was born and it almost killed him) nor, heaven forbid, to sleep in their motels, but we’d browse the junky gift shop and I’d beg for fireworks. It was great. 

How’s this relate to the Meadow Museum? As it turns out, the man who owns the museum once worked for the Department of Transportation and he’s gathered some discarded highway signs, including those advertising South of the Border. These weren’t the huge billboards with the puns, but they were classic and looked exactly like South of the Border signs were supposed to look and they brought me right back to the back seat of our station wagon rolling down I95 to go see Mickey.

I had the old 35mm Petri film camera because Lisa asked to use the mirrorless that day. It was the perfect camera and it was loaded with Kodak Gold 200, the iconic vacation color print film. I’m going to say that there’s not a better way to shoot old South of the Border signs than with a 1960s vintage camera and Kodak Gold. 

Three of the signs were outside and one was inside, but there was plenty of light and the film has incredible exposure latitude. It’s hard to screw it up, really. I’m very happy with the images I brought back. They remind me of my childhood and of our return to the road after this past horrible year, so they serve double duty of making me happy. 

That Old Time Film Look

 Ever have an idea in your head of something, creatively, that’s you’d like to bring to life and you sort of bumble your way towards that idea without really knowing if you’re on the right track or not until all of the sudden exactly what you’d been hoping for happens? That’s the feeling I got when these photos appeared on the first roll of color film I developed myself.

I bought the Petri 7S rangefinder camera I used because I wanted to try a rangefinder camera and because I had this notion of recreating the sort of vibe of the vacation photos of my childhood. Having seen how the old folding Brownie produced photos that just have the feel of 100 years ago, no matter what the subject, I thought getting a camera from the early 70s might do the same sort of thing. 

This idea was brought on at least partly by Walt Disney World’s 50th birthday. We are incredibly happy that Lisa and I will be joining a couple friends in the Magic Kingdom on October 1st, the actual 50th anniversary of the park’s opening. I thought it would be fun to bring back photos of the event that had the feel of photos taken 50 years ago. 

So after running a roll of black and white through the Petri and finding that it seemed to be working just fine, I ordered some Kodak Gold 200, a pretty classic-looking consumer grade film, and headed out to see what I could do. Luckily, I live at a vacation spot so taking “vacation pictures” with my old camera and vacation film wasn’t a challenge. 

We headed out to the pier because nothing says vacation like the beach, right? I love the top of these two photos above, but the beach photo was the one that let me know I’d bumbled right into completely nailing what I was after. That could have been taken in 1972. I am so happy.

This is also the first roll of color film I’ve ever developed myself, and it turned out great. I’ll write another blog about the process, but it wasn’t hard at all. And it gave me all of this!

I even tried a few portraits, because what are vacation photos without the people? Focusing the rangefinder close up is weird and takes a bit of time and practice. I’m finding that the exposure meter in the camera is pretty trustworthy, though. I couldn’t be happier with these photos of the lovely Miss Lisa (before and after her first post-plague haircut).

That top one really has me excited. The light coming in is great without blowing out and the out of focus background is just perfect. Managing to get the Petri 7S version with the 1.8 aperture lens is going to prove fortunate, I think. 

Over all, I’m super excited. This little camera will be just what I wanted and I think the Gold 200 will be perfect. I have a roll of Kodak’s more pro-grade color film in there now, so we’ll see how that turns out. It is supposed to give more realistic colors, but that isn’t what I’m looking for in every case. Figuring out which film is right for which project will be a fun experience. 

So Much To Blather About

I used to blog fairly regularly on a blog called Pooh Sticks. It was about all things I liked, but mostly the idea that sometimes just stopping to drop a couple sticks in a stream and watch them pass under a bridge is a really wise use of time. It also became a very Disney place, and that was fun. I had been away for quite a while and a few weeks ago decided to post again only to find there was no way to access it as an author. It’s still there if you’d like to see it, but I can’t add to it any more. I was bummed. 

Then I bought an old camera at one of the coolest shops in our town,The Painted Mermaid. I purchased it as an office decoration. It’s a folding camera and looks all steampunk and whatnot. When I got it home, though, I looked closer and found that it appeared to be in fine working order. This has since turned me into a bit of a Mr. Toad with a new obsession. I researched the camera, found out how to get film in it, tried it out, and sent the film away to be developed. 

Here she is, the 2A Autograpic Brownie from Kodak circa 1919-23. Glorious, isn’t she?

All of this, it occurred to me, needed to be blathered about publicly. I have been writing on Facebook about the journey, but these are pretty much perfect blog material subjects. So I’ve begun this Photoworks blog under the name of the little photo business I tried to start a few years ago. Besides the antique (I found it to be made between 1919 and 1923) camera project, I’ve also ordered (I think) everything I need to develop my own film, so that will be chronicled. I’m also stalking other old cameras on eBay and have my eyes on a couple of toy cameras that look fun. And then there’s my day job publishing a couple of local culture and arts magazines that often leads to fun photographic adventures. And, of course, there will still be Disney. We’re headed down there in October and I can’t wait to indulge my new film photography hobby at the Most Magical Place on Earth. 

So there ‘s plenty of material. I’ll try to label all the posts so readers (assuming there are any readers) can find all the stuff they like easily. I see there being a few running subjects. And let’s hope Blogspot doesn’t lock me out of THIS one.....