Witchŵyr Woods

I never really had an interest in photography like I did with music, art, acting or writing. I had early and formal exposure to the latter skills, and photography was always prohibitively in the wings. That would change in 2011.

The apocrypha goes that there was a beautiful woman I liked in Dallas and she was into photography and I was into her and — you know what? It’s an very old, very cliché story; the point is, one day I came into possession of a used Nikon D40.

The first few bumbling attempts with the contraption were about what you’d expect, skillsets improving fractionally no matter how many hundreds of photos I took. Because of the glacial pace of progress, I found photography exceedingly easy to put down. Later that year, Christmas rolled around and I made sure to bring the camera with me back to Chicago, hoping time on the homestead would inspire grandes œuvres.

One frost-bitten December afternoon, I trudged out the front door and started taking pictures. The neighborhood, the garage, the house; it was all very rote. But when I made it to the backyard, it was like I was seeing it for the first time. I never realized how fantastically eerie my mother’s garden is when cast in monochrome and blanketed in snow.

I only snapped a few photos of the garden, not realizing their awesome macabre potential at the time. In fact, I didn’t even realize I had taken these pictures until I perused an old drive. More than just good practice with texture and contrast, this set was my first attempt to really capture a mood. Given the intersection of concept and execution, I would consider this my first official photography project.

…For if I do not… the Frog will… do things.

Curation

  • 2010 . Studio Age . Chicago
  • Nikon D40