Michael, 66

'I Like Taking Pictures'

“I was a photographer [for the Marines] in Pensacola, Florida. I had been taking pictures for eight or ten years at that point. They started with view cameras, 4 x 5 view cameras. Then they went to 35 mm. Then … to two and a quarter, two and three-quarters.

Photography is great – I like it. I like to ask people all the time, ‘Do you know what photography means?’ They’ve got a camera in their hand. ‘No.’ You’d think they’d know what cameras are. Photo is Latin for light, and graph(y) is Latin for write – to write with light. And that is what it’s all about. Now, with digital photography, a lot of it is done outside of the darkroom with digitizing. I like two and a quarter, two and three-quarters stuff. Bigger negatives. Bigger pictures. 

We had a really nice darkroom when I was in [Yuba City, California] high school. It was like a quarter of a million-dollar darkroom. I like taking pictures, period. I like taking pictures of people. And they say, ‘Oh, that’s the best picture I’ve ever seen of myself.’

I was dating this gal – she was getting a divorce. Her husband didn’t really like me, for whatever reason, I don’t know. We took her kids up to the Hogle Zoo, and there’s this picture. Here’s a little kid, reaching up with his hand, on his tippy toes, and this giraffe is reaching down and grabbing this peanut out of his hand. There was something about capturing that moment. He [the husband] said, ‘I might not like that guy, but he takes the best pictures of our kids I’ve ever seen.’

I’m unhoused. Well, I’m at the Vill’ [The Other Side Village]. I’m not really a conformist. I don’t like working for people. It’s got to be the right kind of job. My buddy owned a hotel. I didn’t know anything about hotels or fixing them. Next thing you know, 10 years I worked there. That’s the longest job I’ve ever had. I like figuring things out. That’s why it worked for me. … A lot of people don’t like their jobs. If you don’t like your job, you’re not going to be good at it.

I build hourglasses that stand about that tall (motions with hands). I’d like to employ homeless people to do it; to assemble them. It costs six bucks to build.”

Photograph and story documented by Stephen Speckman.