Introducing One Square Mile
There's usually more than meets the eye in any one square mile. That's the idea behind this Substack handle.
I’m a photographer and a writer
When I was in the corporate world, a guy in the finance department shared how he was very comfortable with numbers but that a blank piece of paper that required words terrified him. Given that I headed communications, he commented how I obviously didn’t share his dilemma. “You can write stuff out of thin air,” he said with slight admiration (very slight).
Now I’m in my sixth year as a professional photographer. I love photographing people, places, ideas and pretty much everything. Crap, I even like to photograph clouds. But I often miss writing. It’s definitely part of my DNA. After all, when I was flunking out of high school, one of my English teachers asked me if I had ever considered being a writer. In my first college English class, the professor called out my name. I raised my hand. “Please see me after class,” he announced. I stopped studying in seventh grade so I was sweating out basic grammar and was certain he was going to tell me I had failed the first test. Instead, he commented, “I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your paper. Have you ever considered being a writer?”
Well, I may have just created expectation on your part - but don’t let me fool you. I struggle like everyone else and think Hemingway was right when he said that writing is easy, that all one had to do was sit in front of the typewriter and bleed.
What is One Square Mile?
The idea of One Square Mile came to me when my wife suggested I photograph Houston when I was not photographing clients. I was like, uh, we used to live in stunning Chicago and now you expect me to photograph Houston?
Houston and its miles of concrete are not known for its beauty. But it is interesting as heck. The people, the cultures, the food, the architecture. It is a visual smorgasbord.
As I thought further, I identified some areas that seemed to capture the city’s openness, complexity, sprawl, socio-economic and ethnic diversity, and can-do spirit. Within one square mile, you have rich and poor and young and old and… It readily occurred to me that the world at large also reflected this same thought - that within each square mile there is more than meets the eye, that life can be so very rich, and that if you’re bored, it’s your own fault.
My intent, when not shooting for clients, is to capture and share some of this thinking. Typically, I’ll try to center in on one square mile. But not always.
So let’s begin! Consider the image below.
See it? Large city? Small town? It’s a mere double exposure of a boring white wall as a truck passes by? Now look at some details.
The wall and concrete road have gobs of detail and texture. There’s a no parking sign, a clock tower, a driver whose identify we can feel but not see. I have no evidence but I swear I see the outline of the driver - a guy wearing a baseball cap. Oh, and the reflection of a sign in the truck’s window! “But wait! There’s more,” says the image.
In another part of the image, you can see that a thought-provoking film is playing at the Cole Theatre in Hallettsville, Texas. (Yep, it’s a small town.)
Meanwhile, just a few blocks away…
I just love the worn-out and cut-out blinds of countless hours and days…
Further down the road, on that windy, wet day, I feel I’m truly in Texas as waves of bluebonnets and Indian brush color the roadside. I feel lucky to have photographed a team of financial execs in San Antonio earlier that morning, driving backroads on the way home and ready to do it all over again the next day.
Well, that’s my vision of how One Square Mile might work.
It’s free but I’d of course appreciate any love or loose change to fund coffee or camera addictions. I’m also offering discounts for a while.
Subscribe for a year and if you’re in or passing through Houston, Galveston or southwest Louisiana, I’ll discount your shoot by double what you paid for the modest subscription fee. Uh, so if you pay $40 for an annual subscription, I’ll give you an $80 discount on a headshot/portrait session (typically valued at $200 - $350), family shoot (typically $350-$600) or branding session (typically $450-$750). I’d be equally grateful if you subscribe for free.
What's your excuse for deleting mine.