Cover photo : ©Abandonednordic

It’s a subject not often addressed but significant in the process of creating images. There are domains where risks have to be assessed, evaluated, and prevented. Taking risks is sometimes necessary, although that encompasses many different aspects, and the stakes are also diverse. It mostly depends on your photo field and where you are on your photography journey.

Be Prepared

Low on the scale is the simple risk of failing. It may happen when you’re not able to complete an assignment, when your photos of an event are disappointing or they’re technically or aesthetically of poor quality.

There are multiple reasons: you forgot something crucial, you had technical issues, there was a misunderstanding, or the client is simply not happy with the result. Not all photographers include a satisfaction clause in their contracts. It can even be more insidious: the client may be satisfied with the result, but not you.

It happened that I accepted a job, wondering if I would be able to manage. Initially hired for a standard series of corporate portraits, there were also group shots (4-5 people). No big deal. It’s just a question of organization and preparation. But things became more complicated when, from the group shots, I was supposed to make a montage of all of them in panoramic size. Theoretically, it was possible.

It needed some planning, marks on the floor, consistent lighting, and the use of a 50mm lens that shows the least amount of distortion. The shots were spread over two days in an office. If the shooting itself went well, there was no guarantee that the panoramic group image would turn out satisfactory.

It was stressful, as I kept doubting my retouching skills. It needed more work and time than planned. Even the background needed to be retouched. Although gray, it had some tint variations that needed to be leveled, which meant making precise selections around the people.

Finally, even with a 50mm, some deformations were visible. The distance made it impossible to use a longer lens. I guess that an 80mm would have been a better choice. The final result, although shameful to me, pleased the client, which was the most important. But I felt it was a failure nonetheless.

The risk here is not overcoming this fear and losing some self-confidence. Knowing our own boundaries allows us to grow inside them before we push them.

So you have to be prepared. In all meanings. Mentally and technically.

Don’t rely on luck alone. Ewan Lebourdais, a prominent navy photographer who obtained the official title of Peintre de la Marine in the French Navy, remembers that he wasn’t entirely familiar with the use of his newly acquired 600mm f/4 when he accidentally encountered a returning nuclear submarine off the shores of Ouessant Island. Even if it allowed him to win the Nikon Photo of the Month, he humbly confesses that it was only “beginners’ luck,” mostly because it was difficult for him to reproduce it afterwards, only thanks to hard and long work, in order to progress by improving the techniques.

To this end, it’s crucial to keep improvisation at its lowest level. Try to get the most information you can find about what you intend to photograph. If it’s a wedding, check the venue a few days ahead. Try to figure out if you need a flash, a tele lens, a wide angle, if you’re authorized to bring a tripod, etc.

If you plan a landscape trip or an urban tour, use applications such as Sun Position Sunrise & Sunset, SunCalc, or SunOnTrack to determine the sun’s orientation at the time of the shooting, as well as weather forecast applications or websites as exhaustive as Windyty.

And, as the gear doesn’t (yet) magically perform, you might need some training prior to a shooting. That’s the moment when a comparison between photography and sport or music becomes relevant.

When Your Gear Is at Risk

Now, there are domains where your equipment might be at risk. And I’m not talking about getting some drops of champagne during a wedding party.

Natural elements are, by far, the biggest issue. In nautical photography, for example, the salty water shows no mercy, even to the sturdiest gear.

Ewan Lebourdais remembers very well when, on board a light inflatable boat, along with a group of Navy commandos (the equivalent of a Seal Team), he documented an assault against a bigger ship. While the soldiers were climbing to its deck, their boat was swept by huge waves that submerged them regularly. The Nikon D5 didn’t die on the spot, but corrosion finally killed it three weeks later. Fun fact: the operations happened during a night so dark that Ewan had to shoot at ISO 100,000.

So, in such circumstances, it’s safer to use extra protection, such as an underwater housing or case, even if you don’t plan to dive. Motorsport photographers know this very well and don’t hesitate to spend a few coins on an investment that can save the day.

It’s also a good idea to insure your gear. It won’t replace the shots you may lose on the memory card, but at least you’ll get back on your feet faster.

Apart from the material risks, a more significant issue might be your own safety and health.

When It Gets Serious

Some fields are inherently hazardous for the photographer.

Wildlife photography sounds exciting and is within reach of any patient photographer. But it’s not totally free of danger. Andreas Schmid, an underwater and wildlife photographer, advises beginners to “work your way from simple, basic subjects towards more demanding and dynamic animals,” especially as “anytime you face a big animal, there is a certain risk involved that something unexpected might happen.” Still, he is quite clear: it is necessary to take the risk of exposing yourself to a potentially dangerous situation. “Not in a mindless way, though. (…) The key is to know how generally a subject will behave.” It is necessary to stay calm, show respect to animals, get to know them, and know when not to cross the line. “Perfect your craft before trying to capture the most challenging situations and animals”.

In another popular field, such as urbex, this notion of danger is also very present.

Steve, also known as K9urbex, is quite clear about it: “Urbex is risky at 90%.” It’s confirmed by Tanja and Timmo from AbandonedNordic.com: “There are no safety rules for abandoned buildings.”

The question is: is it worth it?

For Andrea Schmid, when underwater, “getting great results requires getting close,” a stance not so far from the famous Robert Capa’s line: “If your photos are not good, it’s because you were not close enough”.

For K9urbex, “each photographer should ponder what he or she is ready to sacrifice for a photo (2 months in hospital for 300 likes?)/” Abandonednordic also insists on weighing the possible risks against the rewards.

In urbex, the list of potential dangers is impressive.

The most obvious would come from the building itself. Floors can collapse, and ceilings can fall down. “Falling is a constant threat,, says AbandonedNordic, especially when floors are strewn with “shattered glass, nails, and all sorts of debris.” So, get your vaccines up to date.

Other hazards are less often reckoned with, but those urbex photographers warn about them: mold is usually encountered in ancient houses, mines, or underground facilities. Asbestos and germs or bacteria from animal droppings are other reasons why the air might be unhealthy or unbreathable. Even radiation might be a concern in some areas.

Not to forget animals, which are also a possible threat. Snakes, dogs, or even owls are known to attack their victims on the face. Insects may not agree with your presence either. Check for ticks when you get back home. Lyme disease is far from pleasant.

Those are the reasons why they don’t recommend this hobby to anyone.

Another matter is the legal part. Neighbors usually have a negative opinion about urbex photographers, who are sometimes suspected of being thieves or drug users. Exercising common sense should be enough to keep you from photographing military installations, even abandoned ones, or anything close to a government facility.

Think of the Lana Sator case, for example.

K9urbex recalls that “nothing justifies your presence.” So, he strongly advises being discreet and respectful, a golden rule in urbex. Tanja and Kimmo confirm this: “Never break or take anything, but photos.”

Ewan Lebourdais admits that “when you shoot in three dimensions, there is always some risk” and “going to the sea is always inherently uncertain.” And there is no need to face a tropical storm or climb Everest to find yourself in a perilous situation. He underlines that “a good sailor is the one who knows when to renounce and turn back. (…) The objective is to never put yourself at risk.”

His advice is that “the more you anticipate and prepare, the better it is.” In the case of a shooting involving several people, the briefing is a very important step. It avoids misunderstandings, sets boundaries, and prevents vagaries.

Ewan concedes not being willing to take uncalculated risks. “I think that it always ends badly, and the photos might not even be good!”

K9urbex keeps in mind a scale, graduated from 1 to 10, and tries to stay at 6 or 7. He always sees urban exploration as “a pleasure, an adventure, a way to surpass oneself,” but he never pushes for a “competition for the shot that has never been done before because of its danger.”

Conclusion

Regardless of any shooting circumstances, anticipation and preparation are crucial. A good understanding of your skills and gear and an in-depth knowledge of your subject and the environment are essential. It will never eliminate all the risks, but it will keep them at the lowest level possible.

“The limit is what allows us to avoid the risk”, concludes Ewan Lebourdais. “Being a hothead never lasts long”.

All images used with permission.

When I’m teaching photography, I always suggest to my students that they make checklists of to remember things when they shoot. I’m also a fan of handy acronyms to remember them.

Coming at you from Canadian nature, wildlife, and astrophotographer Simon d’Entremont is a video that combines both to help you remember to avoid basic compositional mistakes that plague so many a seasoned and beginner photographer.

d’Entremont introduces the concept of HASTE. Ironically, despite the word itself implying speed, that’s not the case.

The “H” stands for highlights, as in, don’t blow them. It’s impossible to recover detail from an overexposed portion of a photo, and d’Entremont offers a variety of ways to avoid that issue that can keep photographers from messing up that portion of a photo on the scene.

“A” is for and? What does that mean? Instead of just your subject dominating the frame and only your subject, what’s the additional component? What’s the “and”? Something to think about as you frame your composition. d’Entremont offers a variety of his own photos that showcase the concept of shooting with a little something extra in the frame.

The “S” stands for subject, something I often realized my photos in graduate school were lacking when my professor would comment: “Nice photo, but it’s waiting for a subject.” It’s one thing to have a strong scene, but that scene needs a subject to anchor it. d’Entremont offers a few tips to help add visual interest in your photos in this way.

Many photography instructors have a variation of d’Entremont’s “T” or Tree in the head. I myself call it polehead, and it’s exactly what it sounds like, where pole-like elements protrude from a subject’s head because of careless composition. Easy to make this mistake, but also easy to fix with just a little movement.

And finally, the “E” stands for enough ISO. When I started out, cameras got pretty dicey at ISOs above even a relatively modest 400 or 800. Nowadays, those ISOs are as good as ISO 100 and cameras can push 3200-6400 with decent quality. It’s important to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action and get photos that aren’t blurry, so don’t be bashful about using a higher ISO to get there. Your camera can handle it.

d’Entremont breaks down the concept of HASTE and offers many more examples and tips to help avoid these mistakes. Check those out in the video above, and share your own in the comments below.

Tucked near the end of Main Street, right beside the famous Moose Jaw tunnels, Past Times Photography & Gifts is a must-stop for Moose Jaw locals and visitors alike.

According to its slogan, Past Times has “gifts galore from ceiling to floor” and it’s hardly an exaggeration. One step through the front door will have visitors craning their necks to take in everything the store has on display.

The fullness of the store is entirely part of its charm, and owner Mike Thul has been filling Past Times with giftwares, collectibles and decor for over twenty years. He looks to find the most unique items possible to include in the collection.

From decorative signs to postcards to artwork to mugs with funny sayings, Past Times carries a little something for everyone. Whether your taste runs towards shiny and crystal, or rustic and country, this gift shop likely has what you’re looking for and more.

Decor makes up the largest part of the offering at Past Times, and garden wares are big in the summer, with lots of things like decorative yard spikes and wind-spinners on display. The store also carries several lines of handmade products, stocked by local makers.

One of the store’s most popular features is the refinished furniture it regularly stocks. From dressers to cabinets to repurposed doors, furniture is one of Past Time’s most interesting offers. Each piece is individual and one-of-a-kind, which means customers are unlikely to encounter the same item twice.

Although Past Times has the word “antiques” on its sign outside, the store doesn’t carry as many old collectible items as it used to — but there are some historical gems scattered throughout the shelves for customers to stumble across like a scavenger hunt.

Items like old comic books, serving dishes, luggage sets and even vintage toys are ready to be discovered by the right eyes.

The most “antique” offering at Past Times is its photography service — but only because it allows customers to take a step into the past themselves.

The studio on the left-hand side of the store specializes in old-timey photos, where customers can choose from a variety of costumes and settings to immerse themselves in the past for a unique memento. Past Times Photography is able to do photos set in the Old West era, the roaring ‘20s or the Victorian era, with costumes to fit a range of sizes.

Past Times is also the official supplier of Chocolate Moose candy and fudge, a Moose Jaw staple that makes for a perfect shopping treat. The shop also carries a whole selection of other old-fashioned candies, like Cracker Jacks and Lucky Elephant popcorn.

Thul purposely stocks his store with things people aren’t likely to find in any other gift shops in Moose Jaw, and he hears often that every visit to Past Times is like a whole new experience because there’s always something new to see.

Past Times is a great experience for a first-time visitor, but regular customers also find the store is “surprisingly unexpected” every time they stop by — which is actually the city of Moose Jaw’s logo these days.

The store is located at 26 Main Street North, open from Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and on Sundays from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.

For more information on available products, check out the Past Times Facebook page or visit pasttimesphotos.com.

Social media is an incredible tool for propagating ideas, allowing the potential for mass outreach to anyone with an Internet connection and something to say.

People without a background in advertising or public relations can go viral simply by making the right meme-worthy content and sharing it at the right time, in the right place, without a real penalty for getting it wrong, leading some to treat posting to social media as almost a one-armed bandit, with the built-in reward mechanisms seeming just as addictive for some.

However, it is only really across the last decade or so that this status quo has been balanced, and within that span, the “town square” for photography content has shifted constantly. Flickr, Facebook Groups, Twitter, Reddit, 500px, Instagram, and various other forums and sites that have popped up, claimed to be the next big thing, then vanished without a trace.

Communities have usually migrated towards whoever is offering the most eyes on posts with low barriers to entry, and potential to gather new members. Some remain in the abandoned ruins of groups that have long since moved on, while others try and co-opt sites that aren’t really intended for sharing high-quality imagery (media) and are more concentrated on networking and communication (social).

A Shifting Social Media Landscape

The current landscape of social media seems to be undergoing some pretty significant changes, away from still images (which occupy a tiny fraction of attention as you scroll past) towards video content (spend longer with each morsel of content, including branded deliveries), which means still photography has been cut loose to an extent.

Combine these strategic and deliberate medium-based changes with other decisions, like fundamentally altering the ways communities behave on Reddit, or profile “hierarchies” on Twitter, and the result is a bit of a mess. It is not easy to find firm and confident footing on a path towards a photography-centric space, the digital Promised Land that ticks all boxes of image quality and audience quality.

It’s easy to be blinded by the potential a digital space seems to offer; global reach, unlimited customer base, acclaim, and recognition. But achieving these relies on standing out from the noise because you’re effectively competing for attention against every single other person who is trying to do the same thing as you, and everyone else who is trying to do something different than you.

No one is going to “solve” the algorithm any more than they will solve a roulette wheel. These social media platforms are not “your platform”, they belong to someone else. If tomorrow a company decides to remove all instances of the letter “A,” they will be entirely able to do so. They choose what they want their platform to be a reflection of.

If you have the option to buy an advertising spot and actively market your photographs that way, then people will certainly see the advert – it won’t be “organic reach” or free-range audience, or whatever else people call posting and hoping, but at the same time how many of these people who see the work will actually convert into an audience member, let alone a paying customer?

The Challenge of Getting Seen

When was the last time you bought a print or a book from a photographer you’d never heard of just because you saw their sponsored post on social media? If you haven’t, then why would you expect someone else to purchase your product when you promote it in a way that you haven’t personally responded to?

Some creators, instead of paying to have their work shown to people in the form of an advert, will “buy followers” which inflate the number shown on their profile, as well as view and like counts, sometimes even comments. But you can’t really pay someone to be your customer, for that you need advertising or an equivalent form of marketing. This undermines the accuracy of the assessment of actual popularity, which means potential clients or brands looking for a legitimate audience to harness are dissuaded from using follower counts and other numbers games for a real sense of legitimacy.

Despite all of the shortcomings, that underlying sense of potential remains for the digital space: if I’m not there, where will I be? If I don’t share my message where everyone else seems to be shouting, how will I get heard (even if no one is hearing what anyone else is saying anyway)?

What are the non-digital spaces that don’t cost money to access? What is the equivalent of a work re-sharing hub, boosting their own audience using that very audiences content? Who are the gatekeepers, and what are they gatekeeping if not just an audience you may not have reached yet?

Outside of the digital-but-not-social media options, like blogging or YouTube (which are increasingly populated by social-media-like tools), how does your physical real day-to-day existence differ from the way you behave on social media? How often do you speak to someone you’ve never met or seen before, make a new connection? How often do you involve yourself with your local community, in whatever form that may be? Would these interactions still be focused on photography? Are you showing them your photographs within moments of getting their attention?

Without the boundaries of a digital frame restricting you to one method of interaction, what new potential opens up to you? Without those digital tools would you even call yourself a photographer as an initial introductory label?

With these as a starting point, the real question becomes obvious. Is your goal only to have your work seen? Remembered? Purchased? Is social media really the best path to achieving any of these?

What’s the last image you’ve only seen on social media that you really remember?

What’s the last one you bought?

About the author: Simon King is a London-based photographer and photojournalist, currently working on a number of long-term documentary and street photography projects. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can follow his work through his documentary collective, The New Exit Photography Group, and on Instagram.

Image credits: Photographs by Simon King

Agnès Varda, at least in her later years, didn’t make a big deal about being taken seriously. For decades, the film-maker and artist was much respected as the pioneering feminist voice in French cinema and as the “godmother of the Nouvelle Vague” – New Wave – her work beating Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut et al to the big screen by several years. But she was also somewhat sidelined, eclipsed by her male peers, and it took until this century for her to be truly revered: last year, her 1962 classic Cléo from 5 to 7 was ranked No 14 in the Sight & Sound greatest films poll.

But by the time she had begun to be deified, Varda was prone to sending herself up. She would appear on her film posters and DVD boxes in cartoon form as a quizzical, rotund Mrs Pepperpot figure; she even appeared at the Venice Biennale dressed as a potato. The latter guise, she once said, was because she loved the circus as a child. “I thought I should do something to get attention.”

The clownish side of Varda, who died in 2019 at the age of 90, helped endear her to a new international public, as did her double self-reinvention this century: first as a digital documentarist with her groundbreaking The Gleaners and I (2000), then with her extraordinary late flourishing as an installation artist. Her installations included Patatutopia, a reverie on tubers at the 2003 Venice Biennale (hence the spud costume); and a remarkable tribute to her beloved island of Noirmoutier in western France (mixed media: photos, video, beach balls, a hut made entirely from celluloid strips of one of her films).

What’s often forgotten is that Varda, before turning to cinema, had already developed her own vision as a photographer. This year her black-and-white work from the early 1950s is celebrated by French photography festival Les Rencontres d’Arles with the exhibition La Pointe Courte, From Photographs to Film. The show (and accompanying book) consists of images shot by Varda in La Pointe Courte, an area of the Mediterranean town of Sète, where she lived as a teenager. Varda returned to the area – then an impoverished fishing community – to take photos in preparation for her first feature, La Pointe Courte, which she shot in 1954, a daring formal experiment alternating documentary footage and fictional love story.

Containing many photos never seen before, the show has been curated in collaboration with the film-maker’s children, Rosalie Varda – who runs the family production company Ciné-Tamaris – and actor-director Mathieu Demy. Since their mother’s death, Rosalie has begun making an inventory of Agnès’s vast archive of negatives. “We’re organising, we’re discovering, we keep finding new things,” she says. The Sète photos are particularly telling, as they show Agnès planning her transition from still to moving images. “When she decided to make La Pointe Courte,” Rosalie says, “she really worked on the photos – it was more than reportage, it was about preparing the film. When she came on set, she had no problem knowing where to put the camera.”

Having moved from Sète to Paris in the late 1940s to study photography and history of art, the Belgian-born Varda had soon established herself as a professional photographer, shooting portraits, working for magazines and documenting the Avignon festival and the Théâtre National Populaire. “That’s how she earned her living, right into the 60s,” says Rosalie. Agnès’s early theatre photos, featuring stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Philippe, have long been reproduced in published drama texts: in France, says Rosalie: “All schoolchildren had textbooks with her photos – all the classics of Racine, Molière, Corneille. Everyone grew up seeing her pictures.”

Varda’s La Pointe Courte photos, taken on her Rolleiflex, include a certain amount of folkloric spectacle – notably the gondolier-like figures competing in Sète’s traditional water jousts, in which participants try to push their opponents off boats with long poles. But she also explores the mundane reality of postwar Sète: children huddled in cramped rooms, dogs and drying laundry on the waterfront, along with familiar objects (barrels, stacked logs, carved wood) transformed into bizarre near-abstractions in the surrealist tradition.

Published alongside the La Pointe Courte book is a separate photobook, Expo54. It reproduces an exhibition of Varda’s work that she organised in June 1954 at her home in Rue Daguerre in Paris’s southern 14^th arrondissement, inviting friends and neighbours, among them the photographer Brassaï and artists Alexander Calder and Hans Hartung.

Expo54 features more children, including an eerie masked trio, as well as Varda’s friends: Calder is seen larking around in a bowler hat and sitting solemnly alongside his wife and daughters. There is also a remarkable set of ruthlessly matter-of-fact self-portraits with Varda either smiling cautiously in sensible-looking jumper and skirt, or naked, sometimes shot from behind, head bowed so as to turn her torso into pure sculpture. Even then, she sported the pudding-bowl cut that would be a trademark right through to old age, when she wore it in aubergine and silver in a style she called “mamie punk” (punk granny).

Varda moved to Rue Daguerre – appropriately named after 19^th-century photographic pioneer Louis Daguerre – in 1951 and would live and work there over seven decades, for some of that time with her late husband, Jacques Demy, the director of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The quartier had changed massively by the time I went to interview Varda there in 2009. The 1954 photos show the sooty, distressed walls of a dilapidated postwar city, but half a century on, Varda’s home vividly evoked the bohemian oasis it must have become during Paris’s cultural boom of the 1950s and 1960s. The courtyard felt like Varda’s private beach, decked with plants and decorated in shades of crimson and purple – very different from the severe site she recalled moving into, with no heating and no bathroom. By the time she and Demy had become star auteurs, the place was better equipped for entertaining, but at that point Varda didn’t photograph their guests: an enduring regret, she told me, was that she never took pictures of the Doors singer Jim Morrison, who would come to dinner.

Rue Daguerre became Varda’s base for an eclectic, globetrotting career, taking in era-defining feminist fictions (One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, Vagabond); numerous documentaries, including studies of the Black Panthers and Los Angeles murals; hybrid works such as Jacquot de Nantes, an imaginative recreation of Demy’s childhood; and photographic studies of China in 1957 and Cuba in 1962.

Varda found renewed attention this century partly through films such as her playful, affecting autobiography The Beaches of Agnès (2008), partly through her impish new delight in self-promotion. But photography always remained a key thread – right at the end of her life, she enthused about becoming an Instagrammer. And one way or another, still images continued to fuel her films. One example is an enigmatic photo from Expo54 showing a dead goat, a child and a naked man on the beach; it would inspire her 1982 film Ulysse, in which Varda pondered the image’s meaning, and she mused on it again in The Beaches of Agnès. “It was a way of showing how a narrative can be born out of a single still moment,” says Rosalie Varda of Ulysse. “The shutter clicks – but before and after, there’s a whole story to tell.”

• La Pointe Courte, From Photographs to Film is at the Cloître Saint-Trophime, Arles, until 24 September. La Pointe Courte and Expo54 are published by Delpire & Co (€20 each)

Author Micah Cash spent most of 2018 traveling through the southeastern United States visiting and photographing Waffle House restaurants, a project that culminated in the book “Waffle House Vistas” published by The Bitter Southerner. Cash explains:

I did it because I wanted to see through each restaurant’s windows. I wanted to see the surrounding architecture, catalog adjacent businesses, and understand the public and commercial space around each restaurant. I also wanted to ask questions about our society and our social, economic, and political divisions. 

The resulting photography project, “Waffle House Vistas,” collects images that document Southern communities as seen through the windows of Waffle Houses. In each instance, the point of view is the customer’s. Each photograph looks out from booths and chairs, making the viewer a witness to intertwined narratives of poverty, transience, and politics. 

These photographs ask viewers to look up from their hash browns and acknowledge the institutions and structures that create real, yet rarely acknowledged boundaries that feel impossible to break through for much of this country.  And Waffle House is the perfect place to have this conversation — beloved as a Southern cultural icon and scattered throughout our region like hash browns on a grill. But while the Waffle House feels like a “safe space” for such discussions, it has not, it is not without its own controversies.

In fact, Waffle House restaurants have become somewhat notorious for violent, racially-charged incidents. Cash cites three that occurred in Spring 2018 alone. In a more recent article, Brian Kean writes that if you Google “shootings at Waffle House,” you’ll be “shocked.” Kean attempts to explain why Waffle House “is so deadly” and posits that it boils down to the “unpredictability of a late-night crowd, the likelihood that there are guns, and racism.”

Micah Cash, then, couldn’t ignore the sociopolitical and cultural contexts within which Waffle House restaurants exist. Cash explains:

I also began “Waffle House Vistas” against the backdrop of challenging political times: the trauma of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the activism that followed; the rhetoric of the 2018 midterm elections and their consequences; the threat and eventual occurrence of a government shutdown over the holidays. While I did not want the tonality of these photographs altered by those events, in truth, they were.

There was no way around it. These photographs contemplate our volatile political and economic climate and do so explicitly from the vantage point of Waffle House restaurants. My approach had its own rules: I would eat at every Waffle House I entered and make images only from where I was seated. I wanted to have a complete Waffle House experience every time. Not only did it give the photographs the authenticity I wanted, but it also compensated the restaurant for taking up a table, especially during prime dining hours. I ordered a full breakfast at the first restaurant of the day and would order coffee and a side of toast at the remaining stores, as it was customary for me to visit multiple locations in one day while I was traveling.

Waffle House Vistas was published in 2019 by The Bitter Southerner, and a second edition was recently released. According to The Bitter Southerner:

This new edition has an awesome new cover. Inside, there are new locations, new essays, and new vistas. If you loved our original Waffle House Vistas, we know you’re going to double love Waffle House Vistas, second edition. 

The new edition includes 40 new photographs that were made between 2020-2022. The book also includes essays by Beth McKibben, Mike Jordan, Laura Bullard, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and Micah Cash.

Read more about the project here, and order a copy of the book here.

The first part of the 20-day journey covers Stockholm, Sweden.

From Philadelphia, we took Iceland Air to Reykjavik Iceland where we changed planes for the flight to Stockholm. In total, almost nine hours of flight time. Don’t expect much in the way of amenities on Iceland Air. And, when you’re at Reykjavik airport, expect confusion.

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and spans fourteen main islands on Lake Mälaren which flows into the Baltic Sea and is connected by 54 bridges. In contrast to Venice where the city is sinking, Stockholm is actually rising due to a phenomenon known as postglacial rebound. This is where the land springs up in the absence of the weight of ice sheets from the last ice age. The effects of glacial rebound can be seen in some of the buildings where there is noticeable tilting.

After a 25-minute ride from the airport to our hotel in the heart of downtown Stockholm, we rested for an hour. Then we took on the trail forged by Stieg Larsson in his Millennium Trilogy. This tour can be booked online. For the uninitiated, the first book of Larsson’s trilogy originally took form in the title of “Men Who Hate Women” only for the original German publisher to change it to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

The tour starts at #1 Bellmansgatan, Sodermalm where the novel’s protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, has his apartment. There is no street-level entrance to the apartment. It is accessible only from a second-story bridge that runs over Bellmansgatan to the building.

From this point, the two-hour tour winds its way through the streets of Stockholm to some of the familiar haunts from the novels. If you take this tour you will encounter some true die-hard fans of Stieg Larsson’s work that will have all of the details memorized. Brush up before you go.

Panoramic views and Stockholm station

For fantastic panoramic views, walk from #1 Bellmansgatan about a block and a half up Bastugatan until you see the sign for Monteliusvagen Street. Then hang a right turn and walk up the hill to this high panoramic view to the North including Gamla Stan (The City Between the Bridges). The Town or Old Town as it is known now. Many other historic sites to the North and East in Stockholm are visible from this vantage point.

Stockholm Central Station is a sprawling complex for train and bus departures. There is an outstanding pedestrian arcade with many restaurants and shops. The station is worth checking out both for the shops in the interior and the architecture both inside and out.

If you hail from an English-speaking country you’ll have no trouble navigating your way through the city. Almost all of the locals speak English very well. Swedes generally begin learning English around age seven.

Tours and the Swedish Museum of Photography

A great way to see a lot while in Stockholm is the Hop On, Hop Off buses. They get you around a large part of the city between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily. You can even do a Hop On, Hop Off boat tour as part of the bus tour for a few dollars more. If you catch the boat, it will drop you off on any of the nine stops it makes.

For the photographer, get off the boat at the Södermalmstop and go to Photografiska (The Swedish Museum of Photography). The museum and the attached outdoor restaurant offer a great experience.

Across from Photografiska is the small island of Kastellholmen. Here there is a small, but prominent castle that almost rises out of the lake. The castle is sometimes referred to as the Citadel. It has continuously flown the Swedish naval flag since 1665 indicating that the capital city is still under Swedish control.

The shopping district

Stockholm has a vibrant shopping district heavily visited by locals and tourists alike. With one million citizens in central Stockholm plus tourists, it can make for a very crowded experience almost anywhere you go. On the corner of Olof Palmes Gata and Drotninggatan, there’s an Espresso House where we stopped for a coffee and some people-watching. The throngs of shoppers were nonstop the entire time. We even witnessed a pedestrian and driver getting into a slap fight in the middle of traffic after the pedestrian made some disparaging remark to the vehicle’s driver.

Nobel Peace Prize

On Dec. 10 each year, the Nobel Prize awards ceremony is held at the Concert Hall on Haymarket Square. Later that day, a dinner honoring the winners is held at City Hall. The only exception is for the Peace Prize, which is awarded in Oslo, Norway. This is because Nobel felt Norway was the most peaceful country on earth since they had never initiated a war.

There is a lot to see and do in Stockholm. You could easily spend five days or more checking out all the landmarks and other places of interest.

In Stockholm, we board the ship that will take us to our remaining stops. The transit of Lake Mälaren takes about three hours and once we hit the Baltic Sea the ship quickly picks up speed. This journey to Helsinki takes about seventeen hours in total.

Editor’s Note: This is a four-part article from our reader, Bob McCormac. It encompasses a 20-day trip to the Nordic countries that spawned the Vikings and where they left their mark on civilization. In most areas, those direct influences have long since been erased but the impact on the cultures is still apparent in each country.

Bob McCormac

Bob’s father was an avid hobbyist photographer who helped kindle Bob’s interest in photography. When he was about 10 years old, his father noticed his interest in what he did around taking photos. He gave Bob an old ANSCO Readyflash camera that shot 620 film. His father showed Bob the basics which was pretty much just how to load the film, click the shutter, and advance the film to the next frame. He gave him a roll of film and said go try it out.

That was the start of it, although it would be almost another fifteen years after that initial experience before Bob’s interest returned in a measurable way. Since 2011, he’s pursued photography as more than a hobby and looked to be creative in the process.

You can find Bob’s work here:

The 24 Paragons of Filial Piety is a series of traditional Chinese folk tales that illustrate acts of extreme loyalty performed by children for their parents. The Hong Kong artist Fion Hung Ching-Yan has used those stories – which her father used to tell her at bedtime – as the visual stimuli for her series of therapeutic pictures, The Skeletons in the Closet. Think Eminem meets Confucius.

This image, now on show in Brighton, is based on the ancient story of the child who visits a family friend in a distant province and is given a mandarin orange. The family friend observes the child stealing two more oranges and hiding them in his sleeve. The host’s anger at the theft turns to praise, however, when he discovers that the child has taken the fruit not for himself but for his mother at home. Hung, it seems, is not wholly convinced by the implied guilt trip of that parable – the moral of her updated story is that there would never be enough oranges to satisfy the demands of her parents; she needs one or two for herself.

The series was prompted by the death of Hung’s grandmother in 2016, which exposed family secrets in conflicts over inheritance. The trauma of those arguments prompted her to pick up a camera and find a language for her stress. Speaking of the continuing project, she says: “I perform different bodily gestures and seemingly inappropriate acts to push against the institution of the ideal Chinese family.” In another picture, which illustrates the jolly story of a boy who willingly sleeps with his shirt off, offering his skin to mosquitoes so his parents don’t get bitten, her kitchen floor is filled with tumblers of blood-like liquid. Once again, however, a single, subversive artist’s hand is present to remove the only glass of water.

A nude woman reclines on a tumble of fabric, a flower in her hair and bracelet on her wrist, frankly challenging the viewer with her gaze. It’s almost Manet’s Olympia, but not quite. This photograph is an Autochrome, the process invented by Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1904 and explored by the Observer Magazine on 2 November 1980, with recently unearthed images from the French Photographic Society.

Autochrome was an early answer to frustration at the limitations of photography in capturing the colour and complexity of real life and its secret was an ‘unlikely ingredient’: potato starch. ‘Minute grains of starch were dyed in primary colours, carefully mixed and held on a glass plate with silver bromide solution.’

It was instantly popular and the Lumière brothers struggled to meet demand, particularly from the Pictorialists, pioneers who viewed photography as an art form full of possibility rather than a documentary process. They appreciated Autochrome as it ‘gave an effect of shimmering colour reminiscent of that achieved by the most laborious Impressionist techniques – a kind of painless Pointillism’.

The influence of the Impressionists and their forebears does shimmer through these dreamy, painterly images. A white-shirted worker bending in a hayfield feels composed by Millet, painted by Morisot. Women wash clothes on a sun-dappled riverbank, one cross-legged girl in red staring curiously at the camera, in the kind of scene beloved of Pissarro.

Extra-long exposure times – 30 times longer than black and white – meant discomfort was an inevitable part of the process: a woman in a wide-brimmed hat topped with an extravagantly large and droopy red flower perches uneasily on the edge of a cornfield holding a bouquet of wildflowers. And there’s a reminder that the ‘tranquil beauty’ and ease of this gilded fin-de-siècle came at a human price: against the bulk of a dresser filled with blue and white plates, a maid in a blue apron droops in sleep, feather duster falling from her hand.