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.

ephemera: a definition

Hello to everyone who is reading this. I'd like to welcome you to this space, hiding in some server, probably sitting at the bottom of the ocean (it keeps the computers nice and cold). In this great new year of 2026, I'm trying my best to find a new place to post things that matter to me. I got sick of dealing with Meta's algorithm and feeling limited on how I interacted with people that I "share" with. There is also just too much digital yelling on those platforms for my liking. People upset about 15-second-long nothings. No conversations, just comments. I am completely over it. Anyways, this is a new place that I'm going to use to share photos I've found, photos I've taken myself, poetry that I've written, or as the title says, my STASH of EPHEMERA.

What is "ephemera" you ask?

As of 2026, Mirriam Webster's Online Dictionary defines ephemera as "items (such as posters, broadsides, and tickets) originally meant to be discarded after use but that later become collectibles". So like when you get dragged to the antique store with your Aunt Sylvia when you go to visit her, and there are all those old pieces of paper like old found photos for $5 apiece (outrageous) and old trading cards and postcards and pages of stamps and all that dusty old paper junk? Yeah. That's it. That's the good stuff. That's what "ephemera" means.

I've got my own stash, and this is where it's going to live digitally. Maybe I'll write about it when I post something, or maybe I'll just let you figure it out. Nice.

Here is my first photo that I'm going to share here. I took it myself on my parents' old film camera, and Olympus Infinity Zoom 105. It was at Edwin Warner Park and Nature Center. It was the beginning of Spring in Tennessee and the clouds were magnificent that day. Take your kid or your partner (or both) there and just walk the hell around until you feel way better. It seems to usually work that way for me.

I had prints made of this entire roll of film. It was a little overexposed (I might have hit the latch trying to figure out how to use it for the first time and exposed the film just a tad) but the majority of the roll turned out pretty well. There were a few shots of clouds from that day as well as telephone poles/wires, street lights, the usual stuff that I like to shoot. But I kept going back to this one...I remember looking up at the sky and feeling so glad to be alive that day. Do you ever feel like that for no particular reason? Like a kid on summer break? I hope you do.

Until next time...