Splinker & Sprock

I have a bad habit of turning every outing into an assignment.

It doesn’t matter if I’m driving across the country or twenty minutes down the road. Somewhere between grabbing my camera bag and locking the front door, my brain flips a switch. I stop thinking about where I’m going and start thinking about what I need to come home with.

Will I make enough photographs or find something interesting? Is there an article here or would this make a good YouTube video? It’s an exhausting way to enjoy what is essentially a career, but for legal reasons is a hobby.

I’ve gotten better about it, but every now and then I catch myself looking at the world through the lens of productivity instead of curiosity. Everything has to become something, a photograph has to be worth posting or every drive has to become a story, a day out has to justify the gas money because that shit is expensive.

This time, every block was packed. This event was way bigger than previous car shows. Chrome reflected the afternoon sun into storefront windows, awn chairs lined the sidewalks and people wandered from one intersection to the next with ice cream melting faster than they could eat it because it was hotter than Satan’s taint. Every few minutes an engine would bark to life because someone wanted to hear it idle.

The town decided to throw itself a party, and the soundtrack made me laugh.

Speakers perched atop poles at each end of every block were all trying to play the same classic rock playlist. The problem was they were just slightly out of sync. If you walked toward the middle of the block, you’d hear the same song twice. One speaker was just a fraction of a second behind the other, creating this strange echo that followed you until you crossed the next intersection.

Technically, it was wrong, but it also felt perfect.

That little echo became part of the afternoon. It mixed with V8s rumbling in faded parking spots, kids laughing, conversations spilling across sidewalks, and the occasional squeal of tires from someone who couldn’t resist showing off just a little once they got by the police blockades.

I had my Ricoh 500G in my pocket and the Mamiyaflex C hanging from my shoulder. Normally that combination would make me feel like I had a job to do. I’d be scanning every street corner looking for photographs I hadn’t made yet, mentally keeping score of whether the day had been “successful.”

Nobody cared how many pictures I’d taken, and come to think of it, neither did I. I photographed when something caught my eye. Then I’d lower the camera and spend ten minutes wandering around aimlessly, occasionally talking to a familiar face, or convincing my wife I was actually doing something.

Photography has a funny way of convincing you that every second the camera isn’t at your eye is a missed opportunity and sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes putting the camera down is what makes the photographs matter in the first place.

When I think back on the afternoon, I don’t immediately remember individual cars. I remember the sound of music echoing between mismatched speakers. I remember someone waving me over from halfway down the block because they recognized me. I remember laughing more than I expected to.

I remember feeling comfortable. That’s probably the best word for it. Comfortable enough to wander without a destination and enough to take a few photographs, then forget about the camera for a while. Enough to stand around talking with people I’d only met once before as if we’d been doing this every summer for years.

I think that’s why I keep ending up at these shows.

It isn’t because I’m slowly becoming a car guy, although they are infinitely cool for someone else. It’s because, for a few hours, I stop feeling like I have to accomplish something.

There’s no pressure to make the perfect image, expectation that every frame has to justify the trip, no voices in the back of my head asking whether the day was productive enough.

There’s just an old downtown, a few hundred classic cars, a soundtrack that’s always half a beat behind itself, and a group of people who are genuinely happy to spend a Saturday together just standing around in the hot sun and marveling at mechanical engineering.

Maybe that’s what I needed more than another roll of film, or maybe that’s what I’ve been photographing all along: the rare feeling of being somewhere that asks absolutely nothing of me except to enjoy the afternoon.