Raw Footage posts look at new and developing projects

Over the twenty years I’ve lived in my small, unincorporated town on the California coast, I’ve made many projects where the town, or some aspect of it, is the subject. I’ve photographed the streets misted with fog, I’ve photographed Christmas lights and all the odd jumble of the stuff in the yards, I’ve photographed the town with the Sun red from forest fire smoke. I’ve photographed the trees and the owls and the waves and the sky and the sand on the beach, and more. Taken together it is a meta-project, a grand portrait of our tiny place.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m consciously thinking about what I haven’t photographed yet, thinking about what aspects of living here, what makes it so special living here, that I haven’t captured in some way. Or to put it another way, what more do I have to do to be done (and then what do I do then—move somewhere else)?

This project, looking at the eroding beach bluffs, is still in its infancy, though I’ve made various attempts at it over the years. These photographs are a first pass at another try, part serious image and part notetaking, seeing what works and what doesn’t, letting me live with the images a little so that I can get a better feel of what I want to do.

These images were made on September 14 and December 21, 2021, so they are already almost a year and a half old. The reason they are on the main hard drive of my laptop, the reason I’m looking at them again and thinking about them, hopefully means that I’m on my way toward doing something about them.