I was planning on posting this anyway, apropos of leaving on vacation with my wife, Robin, today. Then I saw Steve Durbin’s entry, and realized it would be the perfect follow-up. It’s a piece she wrote for my blog last year, but I think only 30 people saw it at the time. Her advice deserves a wider audience.
Advice to photographers’ significant others:
- When on a shoot or on the road, always bring food, water, and a book. If the light becomes “perfect” (usually early or late in the day, or if it’s overcast in just the right way), your photog will be captivated by it. Do insist on your right to go to the bathroom, be dropped at the hotel before the light comes in, or have your basic needs taken care of.
- Don’t take it personally when he says, “The light is beautiful on you.” You could be a rock, or a stump, or a wall. But he probably loves you anyway.
- Don’t take it personally when you become the “foreground element”. It’s not about you. You’re just the one that’s there.
- Do take it personally, in the best way, if you become the object of many studies. Photographers connect with the world through their cameras. It is another way of being known.
- You don’t have to like all of the work, if you like the photographer. Doug has one body of work that is too visually complex for my brain to process. None of this work is in the living room. If your person needs you to love every picture, send him to therapy. If you think you need to love every picture, go yourself.
- Get used to schedule changes. Your photog might find out on Tuesday that he’s going to Ireland for two weeks on Thursday. Have friends to fill in the gap. Accommodations I figured out included putting in a watering system for the garden, hiring people to do some of his tasks, and letting myself be pissed about the changes, until I’m not.
- Keep in contact. In most places in the developed world, there are local cell phones for sale. Speak often. Email. Whine. Say endearments. Listen to whining. Support. Ask for support. It’s good glue. We talk almost every day. I especially like to bask in Doug’s excitement when he’s on a shoot and it’s going well. He does bliss well.
- It’s okay to demand that the geek speak stops, when you’ve run out of patience for it. Especially if they’re talking about digital workflows. It’s rude for people to speak in a language not shared by others.
- When he comes back into town with 4,000 images to process, make some dates to connect, but don’t expect that he’ll be fully there until the images are on a disc and sent away. Then you can have the coming-back fight and really connect.
- It’s OK to play the wife role, whatever your gender, on occasion. I do this at openings and print sales and during the big post-shoot image processing. Other times, be who you are, more than wife. Doug is the wife at my conferences and book signings and when I’m writing. It’s OK to be flexible. Don’t get caught up in the role. It’s not a full enough identity for anyone.
- If you’re traveling together, don’t think you have to be joined at the hip. Pursue your own interests, then meet later. Do ask your person to leave the camera in the room or in the bag for a meal or an evening. Suggesting that making contact with you might allow your photog to “get lucky” can help this occur. It works for me.
- If he’s been gone for a long time, and you’ve had the house to yourself, expect conflict on re-entry. It’s normal. It’s predictable. Just have it. He’s invading your space, after all.
- Dont worry about the “Bridges of Madison County” scenario. You know how he really is.
- A story: Several years ago, outside of Banff, after a full day of shooting, the light changed and Doug became enchanted. I was really hungry. After 45 minutes, I demanded to be driven into town for food. Reluctantly, Doug packed up his gear, and we drove to a 2nd-floor sushi bar. I was facing the window. The light was magical. We ordered anyway. Before the fish came, I saw a rainbow over Mount Rundle. I said, “Doug, get your gear and get out there.” He did. 20 minutes later he returned. Three minutes later, the second rainbow appeared, arcing over the other. “Get back out there, now!” The waiter didn’t know what was going on. He kept asking if everything was alright. He didn’t understand my explanation: “My husband is a photographer.”
Robin’s blog (on therapy issues, for other therapists–you think photographer’s use geekspeak?) is at Trauma & Attachment.
“Don’t take it personally when you become the “foreground element”. It’s not about you. You’re just the one that’s there. ”
I am laughing out loud (at work)! When I am hiking with my dad, an amateur photographer, I consider my role as “foreground interest.”
Doug,
The perfect follow-up indeed! Some doesn’t apply to me as I’m not a traveling pro, but the food angle sure does. I would rather photograph than eat, even if it’s all day long.
On our walks, Troels often is my ‘foreground’.
He also points out interesting stuff. As a geometer, he is sensitive to slopes in the landscape and to patterns in sand and water.
Robin,
Great advice, great story.
But what to do when both partners are photographers or artists with the same quirky needs, but directed at different subjects?
Dear Karl,
It takes differentiation and negotiation. The first several trips were awful. Doug felt the need to entertain me, wouldn’t do what he wanted to do, and would sulk. We’d have the bad fight, every time, that would end up in a good, differentiated place: “We don’t have to be joined at the hip, unless we so choose, for a while.” Now we know that, and it’s easy to go our separate ways, because we both can know and say what those ways are. “Meet you at the hotel/tent at 5?” “Great!”
I’m not an artist. I do psychotherapy. I am as passionate about my therapizing/ consulting /writing as Doug is about his work. We both absolutely support each others’ work and our own. And we both, after all these years, know that. It makes it easier. Most often, our needs are not mutually exclusive, if we don’t have be in the same place, doing the same thing. When we’re done doing what we do, we get to tell the other person about it. That’s the fun-together part.
Robin
What an interesting thing to say: …fights at reentry…
It is not just invading the space, it is also the abandonment issue. I saw the abandonment feeling most clearly when I left Karl (when he was about 2 yr old) with his grandparents while I went to visit my mother in Germany. When I came back, he first turned away from me.
Reentry is a big issue in my life now because Troels and I spend most of the spring and fall apart from each other.
Robin,
Doug does sound like someone who is good at sharing “bliss” well.
Birgit,
You’re correct about the “abandonment” issue. Though I don’t feel it much, anymore. Since I’ve trained Doug to call me once or twice each day, I rarely feel abandoned. We fight less and it’s most often little spats at the normal irritating things he does, that I’d gotten used to doing without.
He is good at sharing bliss.
Robin
Doug/Robin,
Because I don’t drive, when I was artist in residence in the wilds of Oregon last fall, Jer had to accompany me as my driver. It turned out that he garnered multiple roles in the process. He soon became my educator — as I painted, he read about the geology books and told me about his readings. The information he fed me became a vital part of my own musings and visionings of the landscape. When the wind came up, he rescued my papers and paints while I grabbed the painting. He became great at packing lunches for us because (I think) he realized that he could make the food decisions without interference while I packed the car. The Park Service pressed him into its volunteer work, signed him on officially, and gave him a shirt. This meant tourists could ask him freely about serious matters, like “where’s the rest rooms?”
Before we started the month I fretted that the residency was a bad idea. As it happened it was perhaps one of the highlights of our long established relationship. It helps that I always got hungry first and that our apartment behind the post office had a dial-up capacity for the computer.
Robin again:
Doug never gets hungry when the light is magic. Jer is lucky.
The story in the Sushi bar is priceless. Great read, thanks! A special thank you to “luisflorit” on dpreview for reposting a link. Nice job L.
Great read, thanks for sharing that!
I only wish I didn’t hate having my photo taken as my sweetie loves to do this!