Photo Results from Altamont 2012

It’s Tuesday night, and I’m driving up Route 20 to get to Altamont.  And a million thoughts zip through my mind, galloping like horses entering the clubhouse turn.

How do I explain these feelings to everyone?  This feeling, every year around this time, of going through twelve months’ worth of photographs, of choosing four that I think have the best shot at winning ribbons and money, and submitting them at the Altamont Fair.

How do I explain that as much as I would have loved to have attended last night’s TU charity fundraiser, I couldn’t.  I had to get to the Altamont Fairgrounds as quickly as possible.  I needed to find out if any of my four entries – The Dream Window of Kenwood Avenue, Black Starlight, Aslan’s Gaze and The Beat of Officer Harris – earned some love from the judges.

I’m driving up Route 20 to get to Altamont.  Eight miles away.

How do I explain that entering competitions like this is part of what I am?  Challenging myself.  Never giving up.  Never settling for second best.  Stand or fall.  Mistake or masterpiece.  Hot success or hot mess.  Celebration or a night of How It’s Made reruns.

I think about the photos I submitted this year, and how each one was crafted.  Four different ideas and concepts, four different images that weren’t part of my collective twelve months earlier.

Getting up on a chilly morning, driving to a small parking lot in Watervliet, and photographing the sun as it spans the horizon.  Taking in the neon signs of Lark Street on a breezy night, only to receive a parking ticket for my efforts.  Photographing a perky-eared nine-day-old llama on a farm that has seen so much joy and peace.  And working with mixed media and salvaged materials to create a collage of a peaceful morning in my 1969-era memories.

I keep thinking.  Why should I be so emotionally involved with this contest?  Why does this contest affect me so?  They’re just photographs, Chuck, just a bunch of pictures in a county fair.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  They’re not food, they’re not gold, they’re not a morning mist or a woman’s kiss.  Keep convincing yourself, Chuck, and it will be true.  But I can’t convince myself of this.  I know that anything I create – photographs, mixed media, writing, blog posts, cupcakes, whatever – is an extension of who I am.  All the good and the bad of it.

I’m driving up Route 20 to get to Altamont.  Left turn.  Altamont, five miles.

And I think to myself… you readers are with me on this journey.  Every one of you.  You’ve offered encouragement, you’ve offered support, you’ve offered chastisement when I needed it and you’ve offered your hand when I didn’t think anyone would.  If you’re reading this blog post, you also want to know what happened.  There’s some of you ready to celebrate if I earn some ribbons.  And I’m sure there’s a sizeable amount of people ready to celebrate if I get nothing.

Here I am.  Fairgrounds.  Parking spot.  Jeez, can it get any muddier here?  You would think this was the parking lot from Woodstock ’94.

Through the gates I go.  Up the main paved walkway, past the 4-H building and the Grange building and the rabbit hutches.

There’s the art building.  All I have to do is walk through the well-manicured garden in front of the building, and all will be answered.  I shouldn’t feel this nervous.  I’m not this nervous at any other photo competition.  Only with Altamont do I feel this much anticipation and apprehension.

Okay.  Deep breath.  Time to go inside.

It’s tough.  I’m trying to stay focused.

I look in.  And the first artwork I see is The Dream Window of Kenwood Avenue.

Not a good sign. I look around. There’s Aslan’s Gaze over on another wall.  Surely that got some “aww how cute” votes…

Oh no.  I’ve been down this road before.  Surely Black Starlight must have picked up some love somewhere…

Oh no.  Where’s The Beat of Officer Harris?  Come on, that’s got to have at least garnered an honorable mention…

It’s not on this wall, it’s not on that wall, it’s over here –

Nothing.  Four pictures, zero wins.  Failure.

Just like in 2010.  Just like in 2009.

Apparently 2011 was an aberration.  Maybe those ribbons in 2011 were given to me by accident.

And right now… I feel like crumbs.  I don’t even want to be around anyone right now.  I just want to leave the Fair and get away.  I don’t want to answer any texts, I barely want to drive home.

I can’t even think straight.  Everything I put into this… and it went nowhere.

I know that there’s something in the back of my mind that says, “Don’t give up, man.  It’s only a photo contest.  You’re better than this.”

Honestly… no I’m not.  If I didn’t care about how I did, then I wouldn’t have entered the competition.  If I didn’t care about what I put out there, then I wouldn’t have bothered submitting what I thought were my best pieces.

But at that moment, I felt like dirt.  No, I feel like mud.  No, I feel like manure.  Cow manure, horse manure, it doesn’t matter.

And I didn’t want to talk to anyone.  I didn’t want to say something that would have come out vindictive or spiteful or venomous.  I didn’t want to sit there and trash the pictures that did better than mine.  That would have been words said in anger and not in calm thought.  I didn’t want to call all my friends and say, “Hey, go vote for my pieces so that they can win the People’s Choice award, that’ll show ’em.”  No.  Can’t do that.  How many photographers in that competition that aren’t named Chuck Miller have a Times Union blog to promote their work?

Still, I feel devastated.  And angry.  And hurt.

I can’t blame the judges; they picked what they thought was best.  I can’t blame my cameras, I was the one who used them.  I can’t blame the framers or the hobby stores, they did excellent work.

The only person I can blame is myself.  I didn’t do a good enough job.  If I had done a good enough job, the pictures would have won.  Other people did better than I did.  They deserve the awards that they earned.

And that’s why, after all this, I had to take some time.  I had to take a breather and I had to seal myself away from everyone before I wrote this blog post.  What are people going to say to me?  “Cheer up, Chuck, it’ll all be better in the future?”  How?  Or maybe they want to know that my pictures failed so that they can have a party and celebrate my misery.  Wouldn’t be the first time and wouldn’t be the last.

And it’s not like those pictures aren’t going to find a home somewhere.  If none of the pictures sell at Altamont, three of them are designated for charitable auctions and fundraisers this fall.  So there won’t be a total loss on these.

But now I have to think to myself, I have to really understand…

I’ve got twelve months to try harder for Altamont 2013.  Twelve months.

And I’m already behind schedule.