Flickr: alexcraghead.com

"Transit
lighter than air
than water
than lips
light, light
Your body is the footprint of your body
- David Paz"

Inside an abandoned caboose.
Shot @ ISO 400 using a Canon Powershot G9.

For me, interest in the camera grew out of my painting and my laziness. Carrying around a sketchbook and pencils, much less stopping to use them anytime something interested me, was just not suitable to my late-20th-century, grab-and-go mentality. Maybe part of it, too, is paranoia; I love to observe others, but I don't want to be observed in return, and stopping in a public place and whipping out a sketchbook is like wearing a sign on your back saying, "look at me! Ask me what I'm doing!"

Coming from a fine arts approach, I didn't think much of photography. Oh, sure, there are some cool images, but all in all, it's like hunting, isn't it? Far too much luck involved, luck, with it's inequitable distribution of favor. Where was the effort being rewarded in photography? All you had to do was be in the right place, at the right time.

Later, I began to make the acquaintance of other photographers, and I began to view my photography differently. Where once it was just a tool, just a mechanical sketchbook, now I was using it to create end products that would never be rendered with a brush, images meant to exist solely as photographs.

I was in a circle of fellow photographers who put real effort into their work, people who hiked for miles on end for one image, people who spent an entire day waiting for the right moment and the right combination of light. People who, for every shot they showed to others, had a hundred, or even a thousand, they'd never show.

Slowly, grudgingly, I was giving photography it's due as it's own form of art. The turning point came when i realized that it takes more than luck to create great photographs. The camera is just another tool. To rely only on luck is like tossing paint at a canvas and hoping you end up with a modernist masterpiece. The more effort you put into it, the more you get out of it.

Generally I prefer to shoot in black-and-white. I like it's tonal simplicity, and it's flexibility to adapt to almost all light conditions. I still shoot film; I have nothing against digital photography, but I view it as a different medium, in the same way that watercolor and oils are different. Part of it, too, is the tactile approach; I like the idea of a physical negative or a physical slide. Tradition appeals to me a lot, yet I take very untraditional approaches to post-camera work; my negatives are scanned, corrected in Photoshop, and printed digitally on Fuji machines at a nearby lab. Part of that is the necessity that comes from having no darkroom, part of it is the easy with which I can accomplish what I want with tools I am familiar with.

If I had to nail down a goal in my photography, it is to capture a moment, to capture a sense of place and time. I don't want someone who sees one of my photographs to feel they are there -- I'll leave that to panoramic color photographers or to videographers. Rather, I want them to understand the place and time, and maybe show them a story they might not have noticed, even if they had been there.

Bio: Alexander Craghead is a writer and photographer living in Portland, Oregon. He is also an avid watercolorist, illustrator, and an occasional graphic designer.