The Story Behind the Photograph - The Spillway

A Photograph is a time machine for it can in an instant transport you back to a moment from long ago. Details about where and how and more importantly, why the photograph was taken, instantly come to mind. It is amazing when you think about it how such insignificant obscure details suddenly flood back into memory. The story leading up to the capture is often just as important as the image itself.

Continuing with the focus on The Story Behind the Photograph, we will take a look at the dramatic water flow falling over the old Okmulgee Lake spillway. What might otherwise appear as an ordinary photograph of a scenic location, tells a much more important personal story...a story reinforced by a personal loss. When I absorb the image of this torrent of water, a lifetime of memories flood my thoughts. This will be the last in the series and I hope those who may have read these stories were not only inspired, but stopped to take a closer look at the stories behind their own photographs.

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My ancestral home is Oklahoma where the folks talk with their unique Okie drawl, and the landscape is as varied as almost any place around. There are prairies, pine covered rugged mountains, rolling mixed hardwood forests, muddy rivers and clear gravel bottom streams that meander across the state. Extremes of weather are the norm and Oklahoma experiences more tornado's per square mile than any place in the world. It's a distinction they would probably just as soon let some other place have for the most part, but the unpredictable and often destructive weather in the state is as much a part of life there as anything else.

Even though I now live in Kentucky and call it home, my life and times in Oklahoma still retains an important and powerful influence. Over the past fourteen years, as time allowed, my wife and I would return for a week or so almost every year to visit family and friends and of course I would pack my camera gear and spend as much time afield as I could. Places like the Tallgrass Prairie is a favorite location for photo adventures, but sometimes as is the nature of the Oklahoma weather, conditions would deteriorate to where making the drive up there is not practical. So it was on this occasion.

Oklahoma in general gets about 40 inches of rain per year across most of the eastern portion of the state and it progressively gets drier the further west you go. The problem with the rain is summed up by an old joke; yeah, we get 40 inches of rain every year, but it all comes in one night. Oddly enough, there is some truth to that old worn out joke. On this particular trip, Oklahoma was experiencing a rainy spell like I had never seen before. For days on end, it rained, hard at times. It seemed it just did not want to stop. So any trips to the Tallgrass Prairie were postponed as a result. Instead, I spent more time visiting my dad in the small town of Okmulgee, about 40 miles south of Tulsa. My mom had passed away a few years before and my brother had passed away about a year or so after that, so it was important I spent as much time as I could with him. He was 90 years old and pushing 91, but still got around pretty well.

Just west of town was the scenic Okmulgee Lake. Built during the depression, it has over the years developed a reputation of being a hidden jewel that few people know about except the locals. As a result of all the rain it was filled to capacity and the old rock spillway located at the northeastern end of the lake was putting on quite a show as tons of water flowed over its top. An artist must have designed the spillway because the way it was constructed, when there was a heavy water flow, there were protruding rocks and cracks and channels built into its face that forced the water into shoots and gaps creating a wonderful demonstration of a living and moving falling fountain.

One afternoon, I picked up my dad and took him out to see the spillway. Of course he had seen it many times before, but neither he nor I had ever seen it flowing with the power and energy it now showed. My dad was a photographer, in a way, with a long history of shooting film. He was pretty old school though, and digital cameras seemed a bit too complex for his 90 year old mind to grasp. But, he seemed fascinated with all the buttons and capabilities of my Sony A65 as I explained to him how it worked. When I would show him how I used Photoshop on my laptop, he was truly amazed. We had a good time standing in front of the spillway, but I could tell he was getting tired but I wanted to spend some time photographing this spillway moment.

It was a very dark, overcast day, but the low hanging clouds showed strong textures. It was still raining, hard at times, and the spillway flow seemed to just go on and on. I knew capturing this as a photograph would be a challenge because of the width of the structure was such, it was almost impossible to get all of it within the field of view of my 18mm lens, the widest angle lens I had. I moved around and backed up as far as I could without standing in the road. Being a dark overcast day worked in my favor as the shot required a long exposure which would give the flowing water a soft white appearance. I wanted to include part of the sky to capture the ominous feeling of the day,so I also used a 1 stop graduated neutral density filter to bring out more detail in the sky. Within a few minutes I had my shots, but before we left, I snapped a quick photo of him standing in front of the spillway. He always liked to clown around and on this occasion he struck an awkward pose and we both laughed at his silliness.

The Last Photo I took of my Dad

After we returned to his apartment, I downloaded the images onto my laptop and I showed him how I built the images from the raw digital files I had captured. He was again fascinated with the process, especially when I converted it into a black and white image, but he did not understand how any of it worked. His photography mindset was anchored in 1944 using an old 35mm Argus C3 rangefinder camera during the war. He still had one sitting in his closet, but never used it having graduated to a newer Minolta film camera a number of years ago. Even though he always retained a heart for adventure and the power taking pictures supplied to his life, he rarely took many photos any more.

We spent the afternoon talking about the spillway, the upcoming OU football season, his favorite television show, Bill Oreilly, and eventually headed out to get something to eat. We had a good day, but I had to return to Tulsa and connect again with my wife's family. A day later, on a finally bright and clear day, we made one more quick trip to Okmulgee and the spillway before we said good bye prior to returning to Kentucky.

He seemed frail and quiet while we walked along the front of the spillway and soon returned to the car as his legs were getting weak. After we dropped him off, he looked sad waving his thin arm at us as we pulled away from the parking area of his little apartment. It was like he sensed something, but I did not pick up on it at the time. Two weeks later, back in Kentucky, I received a call...he had passed away that morning, his heart simply gave out and stopped.

Most photographs I have captured generate a feeling of fun and excitement and so they should. When I take time to look at the spillway photo, my heart is always saddened for I know it was during that moment I was spending the last days with my dad. Today, I have his old Argus C3 and his Minolta film camera, they still work. They are precious tokens from his life.

All the family I grew up with are gone now, I'm the only one left, but I also have a time machine sitting inside several old large boxes. They are filled with a hundred years of photographs, and I can go back to visit the family captured on them anytime I desire simply by looking inside. I enjoy having a time machine.