Stephen A. Born’s first camera was a Kodak Instamatic camera that he received at a summer photo camp at Emerson Elementary School. Quite a jump from the iPhone he now uses to photograph Lake Harriet.
“I just upgraded from an iPhone 10 that I’ve been using for the past four years,” Born explained a bit past 5:30 a.m. on the edge of Lake Harriet. “I just got the 15 Pro Max.”
For a photographer that focuses on the details that most people would miss along Lake Harriet, a pocket camera seemed like an odd choice, until Born’s full routine came to bear.
As the former advertising photographer hunts for subject matter at dawn and dusk, he also gets a workout in. Carrying a few pounds of photography equipment doesn’t really work when you pause to do a few push ups.
“Ninety percent of the time, I’m down here doing something else,” Born said.
Born started his photography career at General Mills. He photographed Wheaties boxes in the 1980s which meant interacting with popular athletes like Michael Jordan.
Born said the attention to detail in setting up cereal shots helped him create an eye for detail he takes with him to Lake Harriet.
Born also writes a related haiku and digitally adds it to the photo.
“When I was walking around here a lot during the COVID pandemic, I started noticing details that I hadn’t seen before, just because I was coming down here every day,” Born said. “I was trying a lot of new things, working on a concentrated photographic essay in my personal time learning haiku, which I don’t claim to be any expert at.”
Born posts his work on NextDoor and Southwest neighborhood Facebook groups. There he says he hopes his work inspires people to “take a second look at their sur roundings and see the extraordinary in the everyday ordinary.”
Born chose to focus on Lake Harriet as a photography subject during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Five years into the project, Born says he still notices new things and will keep an eye on how things evolve.
“I’ll register it in my catalog and just kind of keep an eye on it during seasons, different lighting,” Born said.
A water fountain may not be an interesting subject to Born in the summer, but during the winter, it becomes a different object to photograph.
Photographing people at the lake
Born has come to know a lot of the regulars around Lake Harriet and has photographed some of them. He is also partial to talking with and photographing people fishing along the lake. A few of his photographs have also featured people in solace.
When Born posted his routine photo and haiku featuring an assumed unsheltered woman sleeping with her dog, one Facebook group had a difficult time processing the image and the group’s administrators took the post down. Born called the discussion “heated,” the Facebook administrators called it “inflammatory.”
“The reason I felt this photo was compelling is that we often don’t hear/see stories about unhoused women and the risks associated with their situation,” Born said.
It wasn’t the first time Born photographed a person alone and without their consent. Born said he’s that “typical shy Minnesotan photographer” and doesn’t show people’s faces when shooting from afar.
“One of my goals with this photographic essay is to illustrate the unseen or unnoticed,” Born said. “This may be something as simple as showing the subtle beauty of Lake Harriet, the progress of a construction project, or even the uncomfortable topic of homelessness and our lack of response as a society.”
Photographers can legally take photos of people in public; no one is expected to have privacy in public. Each photographer has their own approach to photographing people in public. Street photographers, for example, are known for almost ambushing people in public and taking their photos.
Learning to photograph
Born suggests people stick with their phone cameras if they want to try photography themselves.
“The iPhone allows for so many impromptu, quick photos,” Born said. “It’s just a matter of taking thousands and thousands and thousands of photos.”
Born said a person can start by exploring a favorite place and keeping their phone in their hand so the camera is readily accessible. Looking for unique textures, shading, and angles are things people can do when they go out to photograph.
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