Chapter Fifteen

It was a rare day when Gus Kesselmann was sitting patiently behind his Canon T3i camera body on a tripod awaiting for sunrise to appear. Sunrise. The Golden Hour, flipside. But here he was as Monday morning dawned on the sprawling city of Peoria Illinois, just down the river from his high perch across the river in East Peoria. Sleep had been elusive for him, with all of the days events, and he might as well get up and stay on plan as best as he could. That plan was for photography, his way. He wanted to indulge his creative side every now and then. He needed to self-actualize, as Maslow would say, even if it was self-indulgent and even selfish. He needed a day, even a moment, to sit still in the chilly September morning and just be. Just breathe. He needed to turn his brain off and create automatically, as he knew he could do.

It would be easier to justify if his hobby was a profitable one. Why don't you sell your photographs? People often asked him that, as if it was the easiest thing to do in the world. As if the ability to capture an interesting still photography – a skill honed through pressing the shutter button approximately two hundred thousand times more than the average joe did – equated to the marketing skills necessary to sell his pictures. Sure, he was a skilled salesman, when it came to selling the industrial services that he had grown up engaged in all of his life. But he had no idea how to run a business of selling photographs. Most photographers that made money at it, as far as he had seen, made money shooting people. Weddings. Proms. Graduations. None of Gus's pictures had any people in them, so....no one to buy the picture. Landscapes had a place, for sure. But, he just did not know how to ask people to buy his pictures. They were his art. He took the pictures for himself. Maybe, someday, he could figure out the stock photo market and see one of his best shots on a postcard or calendar. Maybe. Someday. He wasn't holding his breath.

There was one other possibility, and he reflected on it as he sipped his warm coffee and cycled through his camera settings again before dawn. Jocelyn and Mark had always encouraged him to set up a booth at Pekin's annual Marigold Festival. They'd been going to the Art in the Park portion of the Festival since they were in high school together, and he remembered many fine days walking and shopping with Jocelyn at the rows of white booths. Some years in good weather, some years in rain. They had some favorites of the arts and crafts booths, places that they shopped at every year. Jewelry and clothes, mostly. A tie-dyed shirt and a new ballcap for Gus every year. Home knick knacks for Jocelyn. Sports gadgets and Monster shirts for the boys. Every other year or so, there would be one or two art photography booths in the Festival. They didn't allow professionals to set up, but artists were in. They were his kindred souls, and there was nary a person in their shots either. Wow. Impressive. Gus was impressed. Not just with their photography – he was thinking that he had shots just as good or better than these in his website galleries. He was impressed with their gumption to actually get a booth and put their work out there for sale. He always bought one of their framed pieces by way of a standing ovation.

He almost joined them this year, he did. He almost got up the gumption himself to get his own booth for Art in the Park 2013. He even did the prep work. Gus thought back through the research that he had done. How do you even get a framework booth to set up for one weekend at an art fair? What did that even cost? Where would he get the prints made? He never printed out his work otherwise. They just lived digital lives online. Could he make a good markup on the printing prices? How about framing the pictures? Should he pay to have his photos professionally mounted? Could he buy cheap frames for each? Should he worry about the color of the mounting mattes, or just get them all in white? What sizes should he have available for purchase? A whole range of sizes, or a limited range? What would he price them at? A reasonable price for his friends, or extravagant art prices? Who would pay that? The most difficult question of all, of course, was: which images would he put up for sale? He had some four thousand quality images from the hundreds of thousands that he had taken and deleted. Most of them only a few people had seen, and only a glancing look. He knew what he had stored up, but he didn't know what would sell. He just wanted people to see them and appreciate them.

Gus heard the sound of a moving train coming to a stop in the tree line below the road. Brakes and a horn in the quiet morning darkness. He couldn't see it, as much as he strained. He finished his coffee, and allowed himself a moment more of reflection of what it might have been like to be an art picture seller at his beloved Marigold Festival. It would be living out his favorite saying by Henry David Thoreau:

“Most men live lives of quiet desperation, and go to the graves with the song still in them.”

That first part was certainly famous. And relatable. Ninety eight percent of modern America could relate to “quiet desperation” no matter how much you made or how many possessions that you have. It was that second half of the quote that made it meaningful to Gus, and caused him to reflect on it often. Going to the grave with the song still in you. That was the scary part. How many people got to sing their song, whatever that was. Maybe it was actually singing or music. More likely it was art or sports or entrepenuerial business success. Or photography, of course. He was convinced that much of social media chatter was people trying to sing their song to each other and trying to live a bigger life than they in fact did. Taking exquisite pictures was, of course, his song. Taking the interesting picture of an element of nature or architecture that everyone had walked past but no one had captured in that way. That was his song. He sang it every day. But, if no one hears you sing your song do you go to the grave with the song still in you? If no one saw and appreciated his pictures, had he in fact sung? He wondered about that now and then. Having that booth at the Marigold Festival would have represented getting his song out.

But, that was delusional thinking. He had always known that really, down deep. There were too many issues spinning in his life for that plan to come off as he had imagined it. What was he thinking? His sales route took a lot of his time and kept him out of town servicing his clients. Mark's struggles at college needed attention. Kurt had his own challenges in school. And that was before the accident that took him away. Gus stopped there, and let all thoughts of everything else evaporate. He was struck deeply in the stillness of the morning with how deeply he missed Kurt. What a privilege it had been to be his father, challenges and all. He would take the challenges again to have more time with Kurt. He pictured his face the way he had last seen him, smiling and laughing before he headed off to that fateful party. What a deep loss. What a painful separation to be without him. As he thought of his song, Gus bowed his head and prayed a short prayer that God would care for Kurt throughout all eternity, until he could get there. As he opened his eyes and lifted his head, the sun peeked up over the horizon and it was sunrise. It seemed to him an acknowledgement of his simple prayer. Thank you, Lord.

Gus thought rapidly through his four rules of travel photography, as he leaned forward and began operating his camera:

1. Travel. You can't get the interesting shots you want in your backyard.

2. Composition. Know the simple rules of composition that artists have employed for centuries. Think of your viewfinder of your camera as your canvas, and compose your shot right in the camera. Know, live, and love the Rule of Thirds.

3. Lighting. Contrast is the key to an interesting shot. Get the shot when the light is there, and walk away when it is not. Know your camera settings to take best advantage of all ambient light conditions.

4. Editing: The key to interesting photography. Don't show people your bad pictures, and they will think you are a good photographer! Delete, delete, delete in the digital age.

Gus had charged his battery, and had a fresh memory card in his camera. He made the most of the rising sun as it came up over Peoria and the river valley. He caught light reflected off of the downtown buildings in an early aspenglow. He caught the sunlight reflected off of the interstate highway bridge. He swiveled his tripod and caught different vignettes up and down the river from where he sat off of the road up high. He swapped out his lenses to get varying focal lengths and depths of field. He caught some of the contrails up high in the sky from the early morning flights to and from Chicago. He popped the camera body off of the tripod, put the shorter lens back on the camera, and played with some close-ups of the foliage around him. He even took a couple of shots of the road he was parked on as it snaked further up in the hills. He had learned over the years to look around him and find the unique thing whether it was near, mid-range, or close-up. Just compose the shot well. He would edit later back in the motel room.

What was that flying low over the downtown area? He would have guessed eagles, given that they were often spotted in various places along the river this time of year. But, they were on the wrong side of the river. He didn't see them downtown usually. Gus retrieved his 300mm zoom lens and attached it to the camera body. He snapped the camera back in on the tripod and pulled back to the widest angle to locate the flying objects in the viewfinder. Once he had one, he slowly zoomed in on it, keeping it centered on the screen as it flew. This wasn't a bird. It looked mechanical in nature. Radio-controlled aircraft? What would they be doing flying in the downtown area? They have their own park outside of town where they fly unhindered and away from danger. Gus followed the craft as it flew in a lazy-8 pattern over the city maintaining a constant altitude. He thought he had seen that shape of craft before. In the news. This was a drone aircraft, and a fairly large one, flying over Peoria Illinois. Did the local police know about that? Gus snapped a few more pictures, and as he snapped the last one he saw several small projectiles eject from the drone body. The much smaller craft stabilized into flight over different parts of the city, and the larger drone left it's station and flew off downriver toward Pekin.

Wow. Had he just seen what he had just seen? Gus replayed various events in his mind as he packed up his camera bag and tripod and headed his car down out of the hills. He thought about Carlo's conspiracy theory ranting at the gun range yesterday about how it was all going to fall apart soon and the government was going to clamp down on the population soon. Crazy talk. And now Carlo was arrested, and by the Department of Homeland Security no less. Was he really involved with a dangerous group? Were they stirring things up here in town. What was going on?

Gus stopped his car on the railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill, and rolled down his windows on both sides. This was a habit of his, one that he tried not to indulge when there were other people in the car with him. He looked up and down the track in both directions. There was often a unique picture to be had from this vantage point. The tracks going away gave a vanishing point feel. Proper composition could play that up into a nice shot. Depending on where the sun was, and at what angle, there could be a nice lighting effect playing off of the rails. Sometimes he could get the shot from his car seat. Sometimes he would leave the car parked on the tracks and jump out to get the right height and angle for the lighting to work. That all depended on whether or not a train was coming. Details, details. He hadn't been hit yet, and wasn't planning to be. A train coming would be a more unique shot, and he was the risk-taker to get it. More often than not, as was the case today, there might be an engine idling some distance down the track, and he could get a still picture that just looked like a train was coming.

Gus pulled up off of the tracks and over onto the side of the road. He grabbed the point-and-shoot camera between his seats, and jumped out of the car and tracked through the woods alongside the tracks to get a closer look at the engine. Someone had told him once that there was a law detailing how far you had to stay off of the tracks, and that this law had some hefty fines attached. That law was for the sheep to follow, though. They never got the interesting pictures that he did. Still, he wanted to see if someone was in the engine cab or not before he popped out to position himself for the shot angle. When he got close to the engine, though, his eyes were down the length of the train instead. There were four engines in total pulling the train, and the cars weren't the usual coal cars headed to the power plant. No indeed. These cars were all flatbed cars, with vehicles attached. Gus now recognized the shape of this particular vehicle. He marveled as he snapped a picture, as he counted twenty flatbed rail cars caring one MRAP vehicle each curving back into the woods. “Hey!” shouted the engineer in the lead engine cab, and Carlo scurried back down the tree line to his car. If you can peel out in a Taurus, Gus was burning rubber to get out of there.