The Camp Photographer
Originally published 2/8/23
Words and Photos by Michael Zurvalec
After almost a year of shooting and another spent thinking about how best to word this, I think the time’s come for me to finally share how I became the unofficial camp photographer so, here it goes:
Like many things over my time at Tahquitz, becoming the camp photographer started out as an innocent favor among friends one afternoon. Back then, every Scout unit that came to camp would have a group photo taken by a professional photographer during the check-in process and be given the option to purchase copies of it at the end of the week. As a scout I never enjoyed that process much, oftentimes it would take an unhealthy amount of shouting and pointing to get my zombie hoard of a scout troop lined up to take a photo and as a staff member I always felt bad husting scouts from the pool back to their campsites to get dressed for dinner only to have to make them stand still for a picture. At the same time, I always had a fair bit of respect for Gary, the older, bearded gentleman up on a ladder taking those photos week after week, summer after summer. Gary, as I learned early on ran his operation out of a small, rustic studio about 15 miles down the highway from our camp and had spent the last nearly four decades as the go-to photographer for most camps in the area so when the summer of 2019 rolled around, it looked like Gary would be shooting all our photos again too. I’d still packed my camera with me when I showed up for staff and assumed my “duties” would be limited to the quick shots I took of every staff member during training week and whatever photos I found time to shoot as the summer went on. I wanted to build off a set of photos I shot during a team building activity the previous summer and at the very least we could use those photos for social media content in the off-season.
As it turned out, that plan worked great for all of about two weeks before I got called up into the camp office one hot, dusty Sunday afternoon and I knew by the look on Christian and Jason’s faces something was up. They said they were really sorry to do this to me and asked me would I mind taking that week’s photos for them? Apparently Gary had suffered a medical emergency and would be unable to continue taking those photos for the rest of the summer and stupidly, I agreed.
I have a newfound respect for the antics that photographers go through now after those three weeks of herding cats and an incredible gratitude to the staff members who both kept me off the deep end and helped wrangle hoards of scouts into something resembling order to take a quick picture. Unlike Gary, I lacked a lot of the “professional” equipment one would expect to see for a job like that and shot everything on a mid-range Canon DSLR with a cheap kit lens and a Speedlite that dated back almost forty years to my dads time as a photo communications student. I would shoot the photos, spend either a late Sunday night or a hectic Monday morning between sessions of program sorting through upwards of two hundred frames into folders by troop and then deliver them down to Gary’s studio due to the limitations of camp’s internet connection. I don’t ever want to do that again, but almost four years aver the fact I can look back and say that while challenging, it was a wonderful learning experience that I feel fortunate to have had.
13 months later, after I’d sworn off camp staff, a global pandemic swept through, and the camp we all knew and loved nearly burnt to the ground I returned once again with the same old camera and became the unofficial camp photographer. This time however, I came of my own free will, I wasn’t forced into anything, and had a very simple assignment: tell a story.
I returned that day in October, again in November and again over several weekends during the following year to follow and document the process of dragging Tahquitz in some cases kicking and screaming out of Covid hibernation and getting camp back into shape for summer camp in 2021 and you know what? I loved every minute of it. Alright, maybe not the time I fell through a hole in the floor of the old Ranger’s House or the time I fell backwards into the lake but almost every minute of it. I got to experience camp in the snow for the first time, and capture not only my own memories, but everyone else’s too.
Out of all the hundreds of frames I shot over those four years, a few stand out as real highlights and a couple make me cry from time to time. In September, I took a group shot of all the volunteers who turned up to help welcome Joe, the new Camp Director to his post by demolishing the interior of his house and in November I got to experience camp in the snow for the first time as a group of us walked around and brainstormed ideas for the coming year. I took photos of my friends and photos of the place I called home for so many summers. In January 2021 I took a couple photos of my friends Max, Jack, Jason, and Josh when we broke out of quarantine for another day in the snow and in August, I rigged a remote shutter to take the staff photo for what truly became my last year on staff. Even now, its difficult to look at those photos. A week after that snow day in early January I received the horrible news that Max had died over the weekend in a terrible accident and in the spring of that same year I granted permission to use one of my photos as the basis for the staff shirt design. It’s a wonderful design, don’t get me wrong but If I had known then I was going to be on staff I wouldn’t have allowed it.
My time as an unofficial camp photographer was a crash course in everything from stress management and storytelling to time management and organization. I learned a lot in two relatively short visits to Gary’s studio and even more just wandering the camp property during those first few workdays back before summer camp and in the end, it was a way for me to say one last goodbye to camp before I moved on to bigger, more important, more “adult” things in my life.
