telephone pole genesis

​I’ve been using a camera (called myself a photographer?) for roughly 6 or 7 years now. An ex partner of mine had cameras and I was given access to a 35mm Minolta. I really had no idea what I was doing. I remember really liking the mechanical, physical aspects of the hobby immediately. I was close to train tracks, and have always been slightly infatuated with freight trains in general…so I was off to the races 

Most of the rest of the rolls developed at that time were my first foray into “benching”, which is a term used in graffiti and railroad culture that means to sit and take photos of shit you see in trains, whether it’s tags, throw ups, monikers, Simpsons characters, an array of expletives, or anything else. Some benchers you can find on Instagram have massive collections of tags from each artist that they’ve seen and captured with a camera of some kind. 

Anyways, that was my original aim, to take photos of trains, which I did. But I also took some photos of other things out of curiosity. And out of one of the first batches of film that I had developed at Dury’s Photo (rip), I got this one back.

I was obsessed with this photo. I think I took it because that day felt like a scene from Twin Peaks. The clouds were a swirling mix of grays and whites. I think it was about to storm too - it might have been the last shot I was able to get before I went inside for the night. I couldn't get over how the power lines looked against those clouds, either. I still pull over sometimes just to get shots of power lines or telephone poles like this. There's usually not much vegetation in them these days. Its just not as satisfying for me to look at and click a button over, I guess.