Golden Summer
Buying Gold
I spent the summer trying to like it.
I know that sentiment probably sounds strange to many. It almost certainly would have been lost on my 10-year-old self who used to lay awake in bed worrying about the inevitable end to summer and the dreaded start to a new school year.
Summers as a kid were magical. I remember running barefoot around the neighborhood until the sun went down, and entire afternoons dedicated to Goldeneye on Nintendo 64 while blasting Smash Mouth’s All Star on loop. The long days, evening light, baseball games in the cul-de-sac, homemade snow cones from crushed ice and Mountain Dew. And then there was the annual neighborhood Fourth of July firework show, where people who hardly knew each other united over hotdogs and some obscure sense of patriotism. Splashes of pink coloring their faces as fireworks explode in the sky.
I’m not sure when my perspective changed. Probably somewhere between puberty and adulthood. But the older I get, the less I enjoy summer. And it’s safe to say it has become my least favorite season of the year. But this year I was determined to change that.
The inspiration for this project came during a camping trip in May. I brought my Hasselblad and a roll of Kodak Gold that had been sitting in the fridge for almost a year. If you don’t know, Kodak Gold 200 is a film stock known for its warm tones — perfect for capturing the summer vibes. I wondered if limiting myself to a single camera and film stock all summer could help inspire a different perspective on my least favorite season. Perhaps framing the summer through those warm golden tones could help recover some of that lost magic.
I went home and ordered more film, and then I spent the rest of the summer shooting exclusively on Kodak Gold 200 and my Hasselblad 500cm.
This summer was going to be different. This summer was going to be golden.
Inflatable Plastic
Limiting myself to a single camera and film stock for the whole summer was — well, limiting. But it freed me to focus my energy elsewhere.
I bought a small inflatable pool from Walmart that lived on our back deck most weekends and picked up a river float for Zion. Poe Springs became a favorite destination, and we spent many consecutive weekends swimming, splashing, and swinging from a rope into the Santa Fe River. One Saturday we saw a large church congregation baptizing people in the spring. I still regret not taking those pictures.
We searched for shark teeth in the Hogtown Creek, ran naked in the rain (only Zion did this), and ate watermelon on the front porch. We drove to Orlando for the Fourth of July to see the annual firework show. Zion made a friend, a girl a few years older who was good at climbing trees, and chased her around the cul-de-sac, everything coming full circle.
There is something to the magic of summer that’s impossible to restore — the innocence of childhood is a key ingredient you can’t recover. But living that part vicariously through my children seemed to help.
Prince Edward Island
Jenny and I celebrated our tenth anniversary on July 19 and took a delayed trip to Prince Edward Island the first week of September. I had decided months earlier that this trip was going to be the culmination of my Golden Summer project, and so I lugged my Hasselblad all the way to Canada.
Prince Edward Island is the smallest Canadian province. It was the home of L. M. Montgomery, a Canadian author who wrote Anne of Green Gables, a story about a redheaded orphan girl growing up on the island. While Prince Edward Island has its own charm and beauty independent of the story, Anne of Green Gables is, without a doubt, the island’s claim to fame. About a year ago Jenny bought a graphic novel of the story, and we have been reading it to Zion on an almost daily basis.
There were too many moments, too many beaches, too many Tim Hortons donut holes (called “Timbits”) to recall here. But one of the people I found most inspiring was Ben, a resident of Victoria by the Sea, a small town on the southern side of the island. Ben looked after the town’s lighthouse and crafted candles that he sold from his quaint blue shop across the street. We talked to him for a couple hours, and he shared stories from his teenage years on the island. He spoke about all the projects he had planned for the coming winter, and I related to him in that way. The endless backlog. I thought about how nice it must be to have a real winter, one that naturally forces you to slow down.
A world with Octobers
One of my favorite pages in the Anne of Green Gables graphic novel depicts Anne standing among trees of blazing orange as leaves fall down around her and she says, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers!”
Kodak Gold 200 was the wrong film and the Hasselblad was the wrong camera for many occasions. The camera is slow and clunky. Shooting indoors was almost impossible. But it was an interesting challenge.
Summer was still hot and humid and, at times, miserable. And I don’t know if I’ll ever fully appreciate it in the moment. But in a strange way, photography allows me to enjoy the moment after the fact, once the heat and humidity are distant frustrations and the memory has had time to mature.
I think that’s one of life’s paradoxes — not only do you not know what you have until it’s gone, but sometimes you can’t know. Sometimes it takes time for the moment to go through the refining process, filtered of all the impurities and ripe and beautiful for the taking. Pure gold.
I’m glad I made the best of summer. I’ll look back on these images often, and I’m certain the memories will become more beautiful with age. But I’m also glad we’re turning the corner on summer. I’m glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
