Akron, Ohio, 1970 by Bruce Berman

Photograph and Text by Bruce Berman

This was shot a long time ago. 55 years, in fact.*
Do things get better with age and time?
I look at this image and think, “… if I was grading this, if this was one of my students’ work, well, why didn’t you use HDR while shooting and in Post Production, get rid of the fuzzy glowing lights? Why didn’t you straighten out the verticals, in PhotoShop so it’s “architecturally correct’?”
And, of course, this would be completely missing the soul of the image! The charm is the ‘flaws.’ The charm is the youth that’s unaware of what the flaws are, or that there are such aa thing as ‘flaws.’
First of all, this was shot on 2 1/4″ film. There was no PhotoShop and no way in a darkroom to do anything about “verticals.” I had no idea, 55 years ago about any of that. AND, if I had, I’d have told you to go jump in the lake (Lake Michigan. If it was now, living where I live, I’d suggest you jump in the desert).
“I dig it the way it is and… so what!”
So, have I become a hypocrite?
Hmmmmmm… maybe.
Or maybe I just shouldn’t be teaching at all and just concentrate on my own evolution.
Maybe instead of picking away at these little “legalisms,” I should be worrying about what I’m doing now and what I’ll be doing in the next 55 years (!).
Instead of asking one –or myself– to do all these little tricks that are so easy in the Digital Age, I should be asking, “Do YOU dig it?”
That’s all that really matters, me thinks.

*BTW, while shooting this, someone –probably a bank guard– called the police, who arrived within minutes.They wanted to know what I was doing. I was a long-haired dude scoping out a bank in Akron. Of course they wanted to know what I was doing.
I just explained I was attracted to the night scene and the architcture was neat and that I was just an amateur (which I almost was).
On his CB he called into the dispatcher and dismissed the situation by reporting, “There’s no problem… we just have a shutter bug on our hands.”
Loved that!