Treasured Photos
Neil Young before concert at Massey Hall Toronto Canada 1971.
(click image to enlarge)
…the more treasured photos came after the concert when I was given dressing room access where I photographed Neil with family members, friends and relatives.
Which of your photos do you treasure the most? Do the candidates perhaps include an image that garnered first place in a photo contest or perhaps one that was selected for the cover of one your favourite magazines? If you’re a commercial photographer, maybe it’s a photo that got wide circulation in ads and billboards and generated attention and new clients, or perhaps it’s a stock shot that’s sold a gazillion times and warmed your heart with the royalty payments.
The question of treasured photos sprang to mind recently during a Toronto studio tour in which I was one of the participating artists. A woman who happens to be an accomplished painter flattered me by buying one of my prints. “I love this,” she told me. “I’ll treasure it always.”
Her declaration got me thinking. Which of my photos do I value or treasure the most? In the studio tour, I presented almost 70 prints on walls, easels and in canvas bins. I printed and matted them all and many were definite artistic favourites from my inventory of thousands of images. The image the painter purchased, entitled Killarney Bonsai and featuring a lakeside conifer on a misty morning (www.stottshot.com), is among those favourites. But is it among my most treasured?
The question is perhaps addressed by asking another question. If I was forced to select a couple of dozen photos for posterity, what would I pick? When you’ve been taking photos for decades, professionally and casually as I have, the choices are overwhelming. Still, after reflection, I’ve started to narrow the choices and some of my picks have surprised me. Certainly some rank high for artistic expression but just as many have been selected for sentimental reasons. One of the latter is seen above, a cropped photo of my son, Jeremy, leaping up to grab the ball in a high school rugby game a couple of years ago. I’ve photographed many rugby games since then but this was my first and though confused by the rules and nature of the game, I managed to capture a few “hero” shots of my son who was also getting accustomed to the rough-and-tumble contest.
Greg Stott’s son playing rugby. (click image to enlarge)
The shot was taken with a 500mm f4 lens, a lens I had used exclusively for wildlife photography up until that day. Trying to photograph a sports event was demanding because the play and zone of focus shifted from one moment to the next. Shooting such a long lens and hastily composing images on a tripod was no easy task.
What I treasure in this shot is simple. Like most parents, I take pride and a little ownership in my son’s achievements and it’s particularly satisfying to me that I’ve managed to catch one of his glory moments. The picture will be added to the photo album that contains many of his athletic highlights and, God forbid, when he’s my age, he’ll have a catalogue of memorable moments from his youth, all recorded by a father who cared enough to be there for posterity.
As I said, a surprising number of my most treasured photos are personal, a testament to my sentimental nature. When our son was ten months old, my wife and I hiked across Switzerland with each of us taking turns carrying him on our backs. The shots of us posing on mountain peaks remind of us of a challenging but memorable family adventure - our first with a child - and I like the photos because they remind Jeremy, now six foot, three and almost 18 years old, that there was a day when his parents were sturdier specimens.
Recently, while digging through my archives, I uncovered a bounty of old photos of rock stars and actors, all taken when I was a young reporter who happened to carry a camera and was given remarkable access on several occasions. One of those photo sessions involved rocker Neil Young at his return-to-Canada concert at Massey Hall in Toronto in 1971. A superbly-engineered CD was recently released featuring the entire concert.
I photographed bits of the concert from a privileged balcony seat but, for me, the more treasured photos came after the concert when I was given dressing room access where I photographed Neil with family members, friends and relatives. I don’t remember if I shot with an old Pentax or a Practica but the black and white negatives capture part of a mosaic of my twenties when I built a casual portfolio of subjects that includes a bearded Jack Nicholson right after the release of Easy Rider; John Lennon with Yoko Ono after the breakup of the Beatles; Sly and the Family Stone belting out their funk and blues; legend B.B. King resting backstage between sets at Toronto’s Masonic Temple. The technical quality is dubious in some cases but as photos of an era when rock and blues music were in overdrive, they remind me that I was a witness to at least some of the defining moments.
What else do I treasure? Well, there are vintage family photos that I didn’t take but have restored. Many were taken in the late 1800s and early 20th century. As a family historian, I’ve borrowed and collected hundreds of old photos that reveal the faces and recall events of members of various family lines. Over years, I scanned many old negatives and prints and used Photoshop and digital technology to give them new life. In some cases, restorations of old cracked and creased prints took many hours but the satisfaction in saving a decaying photo of, say, a great-grandfather has given me some sense of ownership. I treasure the photos as though I’d taken them and the albums of dozens of 8×10 inch black and white prints, complete with captions, is perhaps one of my most enduring photographic undertakings.
Perhaps my reflections on some of the photos I’ve come to treasure will get you thinking about which of your photos you most value, not necessarily for the revenue they’ve generated, but for their lasting artistic expression or for their emotional or nostalgic currency. The value isn’t just in the eye of the beholder. It’s in the heart and psyche as well.
© Greg Stott
June 7th, 2007 at 5:35 am
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June 9th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Greg, a great read - not that I would expect anything less.
Ironically, I just completed my installment and the piece was much akin to yours. How uncanny; maybe I should read the blog first!
Regardless, perhaps this will rouse that JA guy to attempt another spooky piece.
Cheers, Dale
June 13th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I’m not sure if a contributing photographer should submit a coment to his own blog but here’s an addendum I forgot to mention and probably should have. When I first started buying rock concert tickets for my son for birthdays and such, I got him tickets for a Neil Young concert. At the time, Jeremy was playing guitar in a school band that entered a Battle of the Bands contest at a local school. They won, playing Neil’s “Keep on Rocking in the Free World”. I still shake my head in wonderment that my son, along with his buddies, was channeling Neil’s music more than 30 years after I had my encounter with the rock icon.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Food for thought.