Photography
Stair rails and the hand that uses them
Stair rails and the hand that uses them. A Baton Rouge field note on photograph stair rails
I kept a gray card nearby and did not add a second method until the first one had failed in a way I could describe. People rush stair rails and the hand that uses them because the answer looks like taste. It is usually a measurement. At a Drehr Place dining room at four o’clock, the measurement that mattered was about 8 feet of usable depth and a sill near 36 inches. I stood still for 20 minutes. The room changed more than I did. If I had started with a style, I would have repeated standing square to the facade and calling it honesty, which is the local habit. That mistake makes old window glass loud and the porch dumb. The picture, or the plan, stops explaining anything. So the correction is physical. I move my feet, or I move the object, before I move a setting. Put the tripod where a guest would not have to step around an apology.
Standing there
Applied here, that rule means a chair left where someone sat stays in the story and the rest of the porch has to justify itself. I use a gray card as a limit. A limit is what keeps stair rails and the hand that uses them from becoming a tour of everything I noticed. The weather is part of the decision. A north wind has dried the porch for once. Ignoring it is how a Louisiana room gets photographed as if it were somewhere drier and kinder. The blue half-hour after sunset will tell you whether old window glass can hold a color for the hour you care about. I check the porch from the doorway, from the seat a person actually uses, and from the corner that is slightly rude. The rude corner is often the true one, because it shows what this mistake is designed to hide: standing square to the facade and calling it honesty. When I draw, the same corner becomes a section. When I photograph, it becomes the frame. The journal exists so those two notes can sit together. A workable test: can a stranger stand at a Drehr Place dining room at four o’clock and point to a chair left where someone sat as the reason the decision was made? If they point at a finish instead, I have decorated the problem rather than solved it. Humidity is not a mood in this city. It changes old window glass by the end of the day, and a plan that forgets that will look clever in April and tired in August.
What fails first
I would rather the note admit the season. September at a Drehr Place dining room at four o’clock is not a neutral background for stair rails and the hand that uses them. The porch wants one job in this essay. I do not also solve the storage, the art, and the future addition. One job is how a field note stays honest. The query I am actually answering is photograph stair rails hands. On the drawing table I write the rule in one line, then I try to break it with a gray card. If it breaks, it was a slogan. It did not break. Put the tripod where a guest would not have to step around an apology. The portrait of the work, if I need one, includes me only so the scale is human: a person, a chair left where someone sat, and old window glass under the blue half-hour after sunset. I am not interested in a picture that could have been made in any city. The live oaks, the porches, and the wet air have to be doing something. At a Drehr Place dining room at four o’clock, what they are doing is this: they set the contrast, they set the patience, and they punish finishes that were chosen from a screen. So I let old window glass look like itself. I do not rescue it in editing, and I do not specify a substitute that only behaves in a showroom. There is a smaller version of the same lesson in the hand. a chair left where someone sat either has a place or it is borrowing the porch.
The move I trust
Borrowing is how houses fill up. The architectural version is an extra door. The domestic version is a second tray. Both show up as the same kind of miss: standing square to the facade and calling it honesty. I time the correction. 20 minutes is enough to decide, and not enough to fuss the life out of the room. Fussing is a tell. When I notice it, I step back to a Drehr Place dining room at four o’clock and ask whether the porch still has a path through it. The path is the project. Stair rails and the hand that uses them is only the name of the path today. If you want a number, use 8 feet as the minimum depth before a porch, a rug, or a run of cabinets gets to count as a place. Use 36 inches as a reminder that eye height, hand height, and sill height are the dimensions people actually touch. Use f/4 only if you are holding a camera. The point of the number is depth you can name, not a setting to worship. I write the caption before I trust the frame. The caption has to mention old window glass and the hour. If it mentions neither, the picture is generic. Generic is the failure I am willing to be dull in order to avoid. A reader in Baton Rouge should be able to test this on the next Friday. Go to a porch, a kitchen, or a drawer and try the rule once.
What I carry to the next room
Put the tripod where a guest would not have to step around an apology. Then stop. Another improvement, added on, is usually standing square to the facade and calling it honesty in a nicer voice. The houses I pay attention to are ordinary on purpose. A drehr place dining room at four o’clock is not a case study with a client name. It is a condition I can return to. Returning matters more than coverage. Stair rails and the hand that uses them gets clearer on the second visit, when I am less excited by a chair left where someone sat. Excitement is a bad editor. The second visit asks whether old window glass still matters when the light is only the blue half-hour after sunset. Often it does. The things that fail the second visit were costume. I keep costume out of the plan, out of the frame, and out of the drawer. What remains is small enough to maintain in September, when the air is heavy and nobody wants a project. Maintenance is the part of architecture that photography can teach. A room you cannot put back in 20 minutes is a room that was never finished. Finished, here, does not mean decorated. It means the next person, or the same person on a tired Friday, can tell what a chair left where someone sat is for. That is the whole practice. Draw it, photograph it, or put it away, but do not leave it unexplained in the porch. I left a Drehr Place dining room at four o’clock with one sentence in the notebook and a gray card put back where it lives.
Further notes
photography Baton Rouge field notes