Nearly forty years ago, I had the opportunity to take a photography course from Archie Lieberman, a famous photographer, who had made his mark with photo essays for Life Magazine. Among his projects was a coffee table book that contained photographs of a single farm family in Illinois taken over a 25-year period. His specialty was black and white photography and his camera of choice was a Nikon F-series 35mm camera. He was a big fan of Kodak Tri-X film and purchased it in 100-foot rolls, wound it into his own cassettes, and developed his film with a dark bag and a canister each night. For the class, each assignment was to produce a single 11x14 print, matted, but not framed and we set up an impromptu display in the class each week. The entire class shared the same darkroom, so you had to sign up for a time slot. Fortunately the darkroom was available around the clock and slots early in the morning weren’t popular, so I could usually find time to work. It took me quite a while to make my prints, choosing the cropping with the enlarger. The paper was expensive, so I didn’t want to waste prints. I learned to bevel-cut mat board and mount photographs with a hot wax roller. I learned to compensate for exposure mistakes with push developing and adjusting print exposures.

Most of those skills aren’t very useful in this day of digital photographs, auto-focus cameras, built-in light meters, computer editing programs and the like.

There is, however, a skill I gained in that class that I use nearly every day. It was a particular way of looking at the world. I never became even fractionally as proficient as Archie in portraiture, and I’m certainly no documentary photographer. I prefer landscapes and probably have taken more sunrise pictures than your average photographer. I’ve gained skill with taking pictures of water and, when I have time I can create some dramatic effects with adjusting shutter speeds and flowing water as well as capturing a bit of the world’s beauty with reflection shots on lakes.

Yesterday was a day when I didn’t take any photographs, but I was thinking of Archie and the class I took and one assignment in general. The assignment was to make a photograph of home place. I struggled with that assignment. Susan and I were living in a tiny apartment in Chicago - a place that never got to feeling like home to me. I was used to open spaces, not urban crunch. I was used to walks in the woods, not miles of city streets. I learned to enjoy our time in Chicago, but I could never think of myself as a Chicagoan and when people asked me where I was from, I’d always answer, “Montana.” I tried taking pictures inside of our apartment, of familiar items, such as mixing bowls and dishes that had been wedding gifts and reflected the love and support of our home community. I took a couple of pictures of my desk and books, that were my companions and a place where I could retreat from the city. I honestly don’t remember which picture I finally chose to submit for my assignment. It wasn’t very memorable to me.

There was, however, one picture that I’ll never forget. It was of a pair of old, but comfortable looking oxford shoes with frayed ends on the laces. It was perfectly focused and exposed and it was obvious that the photographer had made the photo of his own feet - the perspective was simple. While most of the class focused on architecture when asked to take a picture of their home and I had tried to focus on objects within my apartment, one person had simply documented that he was comfortable and at home in his own shoes. His feet were the foundation of his home.

Today is the last day of our brief visit to the place where I grew up. The downtown of our little community doesn’t much feel like home any more. The town is much more geared to tourists and those who have vacation homes than was the case when I was a child. I think that there are four or five art galleries plus a frame shop on main street. There were none when I was a kid. It’s obvious that the primary business of the county is no longer agriculture, but vacation homes. I think that there are at least four realtors on main street and at least three banks. There’s only one grocery store where there had once been three. There’s only one drugstore instead of two. There are no farm machinery dealers left in town and the hardware store is part of a national chain of home improvement stores. They don’t sell leather straps or harness rings or the kinds of specialty hardware we used to remember. There are no bins of open stock of nuts and bolts. You have to buy them in plastic packs of three or four at a time.

Our place by the river, however, seems to be pretty timeless. It feels like home when I walk over the rocks to the river or when I wander back into the meadow. It felt very much like it used to when I mowed the yard and when a thundershower broke overhead and the rain came in waves and sheets for a while last night. The buildings look very similar, though they are currently fixed up with all new roofs thanks to a hailstorm two summers ago.

But home isn’t really about buildings. The house in which I live in Rapid City is the building in which I have lived for the longest period of time of my life. My home is really in Rapid City, though this place still seems like home to me. I guess that I’m really very much like I was when I was in that photography class. I still don’t know how to make a picture of home place. I’ll probably take a walk with my camera this morning and do a bit more looking. Who knows, I might even finish that 40-year-old assignment to make a single picture of home place.

On the other hand, I’ve learned that it might just take a few more decades to figure that one out.

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