Feature: Nice Shot! What’s for Breakfast?

Photo credit: Roger Goun

Photography is so many different things to so many people. I often wondered where I fit in.

After years of sorting through the maze, I came to realize that, at heart, I’m a Meetup photographer. That is, I love getting together with my Meetup group just before dawn – at a lighthouse, in the old port, or at a nature preserve; taking pictures for a few hours, and then going out for breakfast.

We’ve dined at Becky’s, The Good Table, The Portland Diner, and the The Port Hole. We share our favorite shots from the morning over hash browns and blueberry muffins. We talk gear and light and sometimes politics, but mostly just check in with each other’s lives. How are the kids? What projects are you working on? How was your trip to New Zealand?

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We eat pancakes, and French toast, and Greek omelettes with home fries and toast. Over coffee, we like to chimp (chimping is when you look at your photos on your camera and, with great delight, act as a chimp might – ooohhh, ahhhh).

Wiki: Chimping is a colloquial term used in digital photography to describe the habit of checking every photo on the camera display (LCD) immediately after capture. The phrase is most likely derived from a comparison between the sounds and actions made whilst reviewing images and those of an excited primate (such as a chimpanzee), e.g. "Oooh! Oooh! Aaah!"; or when a photographer is absorbed in the act of analyzing, admiring, or displaying a photograph.

I was close.

We shoot black and white. We shoot color. We meet when it’s 70 degrees and when it’s 7 degrees. We’ve travelled to Camden and Phippsburg, Freeport and Wells.

We are all levels of photographer. All kinds of cameras. From a point and shoot to a brand new Leica M Monochrom to, drumroll, film. The cool thing is, no one cares.

Sometimes 5 people show up, sometimes 15. Usually it’s somewhere in between. Some folks have moved away, some have dropped out, some have recently joined. We’ve had online arguments over ‘the rules’ of the group and even split off into splinter groups. It’s all ok. It’s just part of the natural progression and cycle of things.

We had an immediate and natural bond. We all know instinctively that we’ll stop at the crooked wooden fence just ahead in the path with the morning light hitting it just right, or the white peony opening up before us, or the orange maple glowing behind a moss-covered gravestone. We don’t think it’s weird to be walking, suddenly stop, drop to the ground and lie down in the grass to get a shot.

We definitely like being silly and hamming it up for the camera (one person in particular – hint: it rhymes with me). We pretend we’re the Beatles Abbey Road cover, we re-create high school class pictures, and we do the forced group shot for posterity. We go to each other’s photo openings and 50^th birthday parties and weddings and Hanukkah celebrations. We’ve met each other’s kids and grand kids.

After breakfast, we rush home to our computers and upload our photos to Flickr. We comment enthusiastically and generously. Great shot! Nice capture! Beautiful light!

We shoot together. We eat together. We talk about our passion for photography together. We met because of our love of photography and became friends over breakfast.