Parking Lot Photography, Part Two—Broken/Growth
What do these three photographs have in common?
They were all captured in parking lots (aka, car parks).
As photographers, we all love traveling to new places and exploring new sights to point our cameras at. While this is all well and good, sometimes interesting subjects can be discovered closer than you may think (obviously, ‘interesting’ in this instance is highly subjective term). Whether it’s the parking lot of some globally famous photographic icon or the parking lot in front your local grocery store, keeping your eyes, and imagination, open could yield some of your favorite photos. It has mine.
This is the first in a series of short essays about finding and photographing subjects, footsteps from your car’s parking stall.
The Sunrise
I got up early that morning for sunrise. It wasn’t the first time I’ve done so, but it being winter did mean sunrise wasn’t as unreasonably early as it had been 6 months before. Don’t get me wrong, it was still really early, as I had over an hour on the road ahead of me to get to my photography location.
But it was going to be worth it, because this was no ordinary sunrise. This was the first sunrise of the new year. But not just that, it was the first sunrise of the year following the year that no one thought would ever end. It was January 1st, 2021 and I was leaving my house at 5:30am to photograph the sun rising over San Francisco.
Maybe you’ve had this experience before; you get an idea for a particular photo, at a particular location, on a particular date, at a particular time, and for some reason you’re surprised when you arrive and realize 500 other people had the exact same “original” idea you did. No? You need to get out more.
New Year Dawn
I wasn’t really “surprised” though. San Francisco is a pretty popular subject of photographers, and who doesn’t like a good sunrise? What I did find a bit amusing was the cheer I heard coming from the dozens of people around me and the hundreds on the road below just as the sun broke over the horizon.
I don’t know if this is the typical response of people waiting to get this shot throughout the year, but I couldn’t help but think this sunrise had special meaning. It was proof after all. Proof that not only was 2020 over, but that we weren’t stuck in some existential temporal limbo; a new year had definitely begun. That WAS the reason I was out there after all, to get proof.
And I did. I got the proof, and the photograph, that I was looking for. And I ended up not really caring that much about it. It was a sunrise, something that happens 365 times a year. And with no clouds in the sky, it wasn’t even that great of a sunrise.
(As I write this, it’s over 10 months since that sunrise, and I can’t help but think how much the lingering of “you know what” may be coloring my mood toward this sunrise that was supposed to signal the beginning of a “new” year, not just a traffic light in the middle of a half-abandoned town. But I digress.)
Friendship
Anyway, regardless of what I feel now, I was excited in the moment to be out and about with my camera. I was pleased as punch that I actually got up and out of the house so early on a day that would have been much easier to sleep through. And I had a long day of exploring ahead of me and a plan to meet up from some friends who lived in The City.
By this point you might be thinking, “Is he ever going to get to the point, and the parking lot?” Well, I was just about to when you interrupted.
A few more hours passed of me checking out places I hadn’t been before in this area. This “area” by the way is the Marin Headlands across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. It’s very popular with tourists and photographers with amazing views of the City to the south, across the Bay to the east, and the pacific Ocean to the west. There’s a lighthouse and old abandoned gun emplacements scattered around the hills dating back to the Spanish-American War. It’s got a little for everyone.
Oh, and parking lots, lots of parking. . . lots (that was weird). One of these I and my friends used to meet up at and go for a little hike with their two girls. It was turning into a really great day, but the time with friends was as short as the legs of their daughters, and after nearly two hours they decided to make their way back home.
As we were saying our goodbyes, they questioned how I was going to spend the rest of my day, to which my response was, “Oh, I saw so really interesting bark on those trees over there while I was waiting for you, so I’ll probably spend a few hours exploring that with my camera.” (Now wasn’t that worth the wait?)
In all honesty, I probably only spent less than an hour with the trees in that parking lot. I captured this first scene that had gotten my attention and then just continued to wander around among the trees lining the parking lot, trying to make other compositions work.
From there I hiked a bit more, down the bluff toward the beach, stopping periodically to make an image, but eventually I got bored and finally made my way across The Bridge to spend the rest of the afternoon and have dinner with my friends at their home in San Francisco. Did I mention how good the day turned out to be?
And the Tree Speaks
Sometime later I eventually got around to processing the images from that day, naturally starting with the sunrise images, but I just wasn’t really excited about any of them. They were fine and all, just felt derivative, if that makes sense. Everyone there got some similar photograph of that sunrise, and if I’m being honest, better photographs.
Eventually I made my way through the photographic record of the day and ended with the image I had been most excited to capture; broken bark clinging to a eucalyptus tree—in a parking lot.
Broken/Growth
As I processed it, and the forms and textures began to take shape, it felt as if the tree was talking to me, or perhaps the One who created it was speaking. In that broken bark I saw this shield of protection that was no longer big enough for the growing tree within.
The thought that accompanied this image when I posted it to InstaGram was this; “The old is holding you back from growing. Inside is life; full of energy and promise, but the rigid old ways need to give way and fall to the ground. They protected you for a season, but you are stronger now. It's time.”
Looking Forward
I mentioned earlier how I left the Headlands when I got bored. This wasn’t the type of boredom that comes from the distraction of more interesting things, but from a feeling of have accomplished something. It’s the boredom that’s a sign telling you you’re done for the day, you found what you were looking for, even if you didn’t know what it was when you started looking.
I guess we all look to the happenings around us to mark the passage of time and personal transitions. That’s what this sunrise was supposed to be; a demarcation between the dumpster fire that was 2020, the new and better 2021. Looking back now, 10 months into this “better” year, not much seems to have actually gotten better. It makes that sunrise feel no different than any other.
We can be tempted to resign ourselves to the fates and allow arbitrary numbers on a grid to dictate when we can move from one season of our life to the next. But I don’t think it’s that easy, and things definitely don’t always, if ever, fall neatly into the boxes we create. If this image of tree bark from a parking lot has taught me anything, it’s that personal transformation and growth comes at us in the midst of the storm, not after the waves have calmed and the sky cleared.
I think there’s a danger in losing sight of our present growth as we breathlessly run from one definitive moment to the next. Sometimes growth doesn’t happen in the grand landscape of those conveniently scheduled moments, but in the parking lots between them.
Since posting this image to Insta, I’ve preached a sermon at my church about Hearing God (yeah, bet you didn’t see that one coming), I entered a photography contest (this image actually made it past the first round), I created a website, and I started writing a blog (this being the 9th post). I guess that tree was on to something.