New Project

For the past year or so I’ve been without a project. When I look over the past year’s posts here, I see that I posted far less often than in 2022 and 2023. That’s partly about busyness, but more about not having a direction, a long-term project of sorts. Photographing the “downtown” in small towns in West Michigan and surrounding areas kept me going fora while. But I’ve run out of towns within an hour’s drive, and the project itself had started to feel repetitive for me.

My thought late this fall, after seeing the work of a couple of photographers, was to play with multiple-exposure photography, broadly defined. It’s not just multiple-exposures that I have in mind, but also adding to that camera movement and zooming in and out. My thought is to play with the loosely similar abstraction and unsettling of perspective that I’ve done over the years with reflections. I may also use textures for more abstraction. I can now plan to go back to places I’ve done in the past few years and try to see them with new eyes, as I figure out my approach to multiple exposures.

So, here are some images from late 2024 and early 2025. Note that I plan to get off to a slow start, as I’ve learned that I don’t like photographing in the cold! So, January and February will see posts few and far between! Maybe March too.

The first two are from downtown Grand Rapids. I shot the first from the top floor of a parking garage. The second is from the street, looking up to an entrance of the Van Andel Institute, if I remember correctly. Both have some subtle texture added.

The next is from Lowell, Michigan, a half-hour east of Grand Rapids. It has multiple exposures, obviously, but also a longish (a bit more than a second) exposure among the multiples.

In Ada, about 10 minutes east of Grand Rapids, I spent some time on the RR tracks by the dam. This double exposure is images looking East and West. The water on the right is what you’ll see on the right looking East; the buildings on the left are what you see on the left looking West. One of the things I’ve realized is that a good multiple-exposure image needs an anchor. This one, it’s the RR tracks. I was careful to line them up well as I took the second image.

The sunrise one morning, in my kitchen window was pretty, so I went outside and made this image. The first exposure was wide angle; the second one zoomed in. I also added texture to this one.

Finally, bridges over RR tracks near Fulton and Forest Hills, a few minutes west of Grand Rapids. This one is three exposures, the second and third zooming in towards telephoto. I used the RR tracks and second bridge in the distance as the anchor.

As these images suggest, I am working on what subjects work well for my approach to multiple exposures, and I’m working on my approach. When to use subtle shifts in perspective, moving the lens just a little bit each time. When to use motion or zooming in. When to change direction dramatically for a second or third image. Finally, I need to figure out if I am trying to make a point or just playing for fun, or both, depending on the subject.

In general, I like both multiple exposure and reflections images because by distorting and abstracting perspective they remind both the photographer and viewer of the fact that we always see and understanding from somewhere, from some perspective. That’s a philosophical habit that I bring not just to photography but teaching, researching, and writing history. The camera allows us to see this, and “fix” perspectives in place, that the eye by itself does not.