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First published April 3, 2021, on The Northern Dispatch website, by the author.
We’ve all been pondering what we were doing a year or so ago when started our Coronavirus lifestyles, and I dug back into some negatives. It was March 25, 2020, about two weeks into the stay-at-home order, and I was out walking the dog—a then-year-old Doberman who really had no patience (still doesn’t) for any human- or weather-imposed restrictions on physical activity.
After a day of rain, the night was haunting, foggy and worthy of a late-19th-/early-20th-century-murder-victim-beneath-dim-lighted-street-lamp kind of scene. The wife and I were binging Stranger Things on Netflix at the time, lending to the dark mood—probably an unwise selection at the time, given that we were at the start of what was then unknown, a once-in-a-century pandemic with the President (at that time) of our country detesting the science and reason with which to manage the fallout. We were entering the absurd Rumsfeldian philosophical realm: plenty of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” to come.
It’s hard to imagine what, exactly, I felt back then, because that year, like each one of the tRump presidency, only escalated in its stupidity, meanness and corruption, and in its final year included a summer of justified social unrest after the murder of yet another unarmed Black man by police in our twin city, the protest and violence of which during a couple June nights spilled across the river into our St. Paul neighborhoods. The protest and passion for justice and equity stemming from Floyd’s murder spread across the nation, and then, amazingly, the globe.
The pandemic ground on, of course. Those of us that believed facts and science, and who listened to those afflicted, wore our masks, social-distanced and still stayed out of restaurants when restrictions loosened. When Autumn arrived, we taught our kids from home (with the guidance and innovative lessons from incredible school teachers) worked and socialized via video meeting apps (the word “zoom” became verb, noun and adjective).
Our nation’s self-inflicted tumult did not stop, of course. Notably, a surreal election season and that same then-President’s disgusting attempts to cling to power, culminating in a violent insurrection attempt by his conspiracy-fueled cult followers, and a second impeachment trial for inciting that insurrection attempt.
While corrupted members of congress remain, after all that, we have a new President. Not an exciting one—literally just a good ol’ Joe. A decent man with 40 years in public service as a senator and Vice President—just the person we need to rebuilt a government hacked to pieces by incompetence and avarice. We’ve got our first woman Vice President, who also happens to be Black and Asian American. She is powerfully smart and competent, a former senator herself and attorney general of California—a state with a larger GDP than most countries. One can easily see her as president.
Anyway.
Back up to a little more than a year ago, walking that dog. With the new restrictions on tight, and everyone tip-toeing toward their pandemic comfort levels, there were very few people—no one, really on foot, even the dog walkers I would normally see loyally trudging with their hounds enjoying gentle summer breezes or leaning into an icy, gale-force, late-October rain were absent..
I was a block from home and thought I would grab the Pacemaker Speed Graphic and take shot or two at a particular intersection—a five-way tangle on the east side of Como Lake. Of course, by the time I walked home, grabbed my gear and walked back, the fog had lifted. With minimal traffic because of the pandemic restrictions, I was not terribly enthused. But, there was still some interesting glimmers happening with the reflection of street lights on the wet streets and the glow of recently applied cross-walk paint.
A bus stopped two streets over at the intersection during set up. The lighted windows revealed only two heads on board. I resolved to capture a ghostly image of the next bus and its few passengers—you know, begin exposure when it stopped, end exposure as it pulled away, then finish the exposure after it exited the scene.
But, alas, no “next” bus. Duh. With quarantine, few buses ran. I took a couple shots, then heard a siren. I could see lights flashing on the road south of the lake. Long exposure shots of highways has been done, and done, and done several times over since the introduction of decent digital DSLRs, but I am always ready to capitalize on someone else’s misfortune. All kidding aside, a thought did occur to me at the time: would we be hearing more ambulance sirens as the pandemic unfolded? As the vehicle turned north toward me, I popped the shutter, and left it open for 30 seconds or so at f32.
So there it is. A hot mess of lights from a fast-moving emergency vehicle. The strobes alternately blasting from its sides were caught vividly, and to me, captured visually the siren’s unsettling racket.
The kid likes it. And I do like the that there is good tonal range in the surrounding darkness—always a challenge. I didn’t own a proper spot meter at the time, but tested a few shots in our backyard with my Canon 80D DSLR spot-meter setting to make an educated exposure guess before my hike to the intersection.
At the top of this ramble is an earlier shot (f22 for somewhere around 20 seconds) at a slightly higher vantage point of a couple slow-crawling cars—both aging wrecks, one pausing as it turned to circle the lake (to the right) was a repeat. It was hard not to recognize that particular jalopy and its creaking chassis, its passengers looking at the fellow with a box on a tripod (me). I was reminded that night photography can come with risks, depending on where one shoots.
Both shots were with the Pacemaker’s standard lens, a 127mm Kodak Optar. I didn’t bother with ground glass focussing, and instead used the rangefinder on a lamppost mid scene.
