The Tough Mudder JetNo confirmation whether the race coordinators fly in on this thing...

I'm always looking for ways to spend more time with my camera in hand and I love the outdoors and anything athletic.

So - it seemed like a match made in heaven when I saw a call for action photographers for the Chicago "Tough Mudder" mud-run. I checked my availability and contacted the event coordinator. The job was Saturday 8 to 2 at the Rockford airport. 

I travel to Rockford a couple times a year for my kids' soccer, so I am familiar with the drive. Done by 2 and alone? I would finally have some time to go check out Rock Cut State Park, which I always stare towards longingly as I drive past, taking my tired family back home as quickly as possible. 

A little work, a little pay and time to play? Sounds perfect.

I showed up at 7:00 am that morning. It was overcast and muggy. I had driven to the backside of the airport, gone through an open security-gate, and found some signs pointing down a gravel road which in turn lead to a paved airport access-way and then to a dew-slick grass field where teenage volunteers were directing people to park.

I had been instructed to bring a lunch, which I had in a little blue cube cooler along with 5 assorted beverages. My little green canvas bag had two back up batteries, an extra memory card, bug-spray, sun-screen, a rain-coat, a camera-cover and a few other essentials I always have when I go out hiking. Attached to the outside of the bag with a clip was my old orange Chicago Bears hat (to keep rain off my glasses if it did start to pour.) 

What wasn't I ready for?

Maybe the fact that they were expecting 12,500 runners over two days!

After searching a little for my contact and then some hijinks finding a map and an ATV, I was dropped next to a field of soy-beans (which I recognize because it was one of my grandfather's cash-crops) and told to walk along a path that lead to a little stand of trees.

My obstacle-assignment was "The Berlin Wall." Basically a high wooden barrier that was totally smooth on the approach side and only had a 2" thick board to get a foot on for the back side. Not too easy under the best conditions for someone relatively fit, and there were athletes of all levels out there in the mud giving it their best.

I started shooting, trying to get 3 shots of each person (as instructed), but there was really no good place that I could get all three shots from. 

I decided that most would want a shot of themselves and their friends "conquering" the obstacle, so I concentrated on the moment of transition from front to back side.

Hang In There!Reminds me of that old cat poster...

If you love sport. If you exercise. If you've ever tackled a task that seemed like it might be impossible - you understand and enjoy the reactions on these faces and the simple heroism that just getting out there and doing something can represent.

I smile every time I look at this smile:

Smile!

I hope (but don't know how) the athletes find these pictures of themselves as they work hard at playing hard. I was basically constantly taking pics between 8 and 2. I know, if it was me, I would cherish a day like this for a long time and want the photos. Lots of folks posed or even asked for a group shot in their joy at having gotten over.

Mother/Daughter MuddersMother/Daughter Mudders

Someone didn't get the memo...Someone didn't get the memo...

When I was dropped off I was told to text if I needed a break. I never did. They just kept coming and I just kept clicking. I figured if they could run, jump and climb and then run some more, I could stand in one place and take the shots memorializing their achievement.

At 2:00, I was instructed to come back in and submit my photos. I finally grabbed a drink out of the little blue cooler as I carried it back across the field of beans. The cooler had somehow gotten heavier.  

I ended up taking 6,253 (Yes, 6253!) separate shots of the participants.

Someone's Getting New InkRunning out of calf-space.

In the end, it had been a hot, sunny day. 

In the car on the drive back, I ate the protein bar I had brought for lunch and drank all 4 of the other beverages I had packed for the day.

As for that side-trip to Rock Cut State Park - I'll check it out another time.

I have not golfed in years. I have a tendency to want to walk off into the woods and enjoy the silence or listen to the wildlife that is breaking up the silence. This, I am told, does not contribute to being a better “duffer.”

My dog, Bella, and I take a walk almost every day of the week, some longer, some shorter. I can certify that taking a beagle with you on a photography-walk does not make you a better wildlife photographer. It does teach you patience as well as the value of getting a shot while you can (admittedly two diametrically opposed things, but they are the yin and the yang of walking with Bella.)

My “daughter” is now 3 years old and, with some effort, I have her trained well enough to be off-leash in most situations. As long as I am paying attention to her, anticipating her next move or noticing what she will notice soon, I can usually keep her out of trouble.

Sometimes, though, when there is actually an interesting bird which she hasn’t scared away and I’m aiming my camera, waiting for the light and the angle of the head to be just right, I tend to focus away from her for too long. 

Mourning Dove

A few days ago as I was trying to get a good shot of a female red-winged blackbird on a marsh edge, Bella disappeared on me. I had thought that with the thick underbrush on two sides and the marsh in front of her, she had no way of escaping. Where had the little dickens gone? Into the marsh, of course - the dog that hates water and refuses to take a bath gladly foraged belly-deep in foul-smelling water. Luckily, I keep towels in my car.

As she ages, it can be difficult to get her enough exercise. Whereas I used to have to pull her back, we often finish our walks with me cajoling her along...

She seems most interested in following her nose:

She will still chase her orange and blue ball on days that I break it out early enough in the walk that she still has energy, but late enough in the walk that she is willing to take a break from sniffing everything.

Honestly, I never took the phrase, "Man's best friend" too seriously before Bella, despite loving just about every dog I came in contact with. Love is a reciprocal proposition and we really do enjoy our time together.

And...if she gets muddy while we're out, she knows to jump up into the open trunk and wait for me to wipe her off with one of the towels I keep there. Don't worry, despite being asked by one woman if I was going to make her ride in the trunk, I've never been tempted to close it on her.

Good Dog.

At the End of a Walk, I Say, "Up-Up!" and She Hops In the Trunk So Her Paws Can Be Wiped

the Poetry of the Image

Artist Statement prepared for Gallery Submission

KJGeisler

Introduction

As a practicing visual artist, "Conscious Re-Seeing" is my personal term for what I do and strive for in my photography.  This manifests itself differently from month-to-month, year-over-year and sometimes between "clicks," even edits of the same capture.

The first aspect of re-seeing is simply of properly documenting a moment or thing as it is so that it can be "re-seen" for as long as the work survives.  I admit to sometimes having a strange nostalgia for a moment as it is happening, often missing full contemporaneous enjoyment while trying to "think-back" to the present.  This springs from a personal self-awareness of how poorly memory can serve as a source of witness.  In poetry there is the elegiac, in photography we have golden moments.

In 2017, this manifested in a passion-project.  

Thinking back to my own experience with youth sports, I had a lot of great memories, but very few photographic records to help me share and reassert those memories.  Of the few photos that exist, very few meet with modern day journalistic standards. 

With my son going into his Sophomore season of high school soccer, I made a personal, yet inarticulated, commitment to document these moments for him and, eventually was compelled to increase the scope of the project to the entire high-school soccer program.  I started by going to the first pre-season game, continued on moving my schedule around to accommodate shooting and, before I knew it, I had photographed the entire season.  (Without ever really planning to.)  As the games wore on I began to take and post increasing numbers of pictures of the entire team.

This lead to my being asked to give the slideshow at the season-ending awards banquet - the sort of broad audience that had been furthest from my mind when I set out.  I felt great satisfaction knowing that families would be able to relive and remember these moments from what turned out to be the first conference championship since the 1980's.  It was a great learning experience for me, putting me out in mostly less-than-ideal conditions with an entry level camera and lenses trying to work the technical aspects of light and motion on the fly.  It reminded me how images affect the human soul.  And it awakened something within.  

Sometimes capturing a moment with no whisper of the artist's self is the proper treatment of the subject:

Re-Seeing, Writ Large

Long exposure of Kenosha Lighthouse

Recently I have had a desire to return to my roots in photography .  These go back to film and dark-room and the heavy lifting of shooting, developing and printing one's own work, often back then only finding that my artistic reach had exceeded the grasp of my limited budget. 

What could I do now with digital media and the latest editing techniques?

As a photographer, one alternately serves and attempts to control light much like a poet does with the Muse.  This has been a main focus:  darkness, light, shadows and insinuations of shadows.   

This type of re-seeing is rooted not so much in documenting what is visibly there, but in revealing the "is-ness" of what is there, or what might be there.  Although at first it felt like cheating compared to the limiting post-production capabilities of film, I now find great pleasure in working a raw image as if it were clay, especially on days when new subjects seem scarce.  It feels like - poetic license.

Also:  A Strange Fetish for Detail

Robin at Dusk, Focus and De-Focus

One of the things that keeps me fascinated with an image is the fine and sometimes esoteric detail that the camera can capture:  The strands of feathery substance around a young sparrow's eye, reflections of light billowing over smoothed out waves.  The way water turns purple and blue in the minutes around dawn.

In this, the camera outperforms and instructs me.  I can only approach my artistic and technical tasks in diligence knowing that, if I do, there will be miracles of minutiae that my aging human eyes cannot themselves perceive.  At their best, these details will have me staring at an image in that rare state:  revery.  

If all the elements come together (The Golden Moment, the Is-ness and the Fine Detail) I feel an inner stillness where my chest meets my stomach and that space begins a slow upward spin and I feel my own consciousness begin to raise, if only for a moment.  This is how I felt when I first read the works of William Blake, WB Yeats and Allen Ginsberg:  Don DeLillo's sentences. This is how I feel when I stand in the physical presence of a work by Marc Chagall or Vincent Van Gogh.  This is the feeling I'm trying to re-create for myself and, especially, for those that look at my work and hopefully are moved in a way difficult to articulate with words.

This, for me, is Conscious Re-Seeing.