Cray McDaniel

Resident film junkie… Like the celluloid kind, not movies so much. Unlike the charade of “movie magic,” where nothing is truly as it seems, I like to work with film because it’s honest. Digital is fickle—it lies, it flatters, it hides the truth behind layers of computation and a committee of engineers’ interpretation of light and color. But a negative doesn’t lie. You either nailed the exposure or you didn’t. It demands that you show up, not only physically but also mentally, and that you see what’s really there. Like golf, you have to play it as it lies.

Playing it as it lies requires that the golfer “take a shot.” That is, to line up wherever the ball may be and, harnessing the best of his knowledge and experience, take a decisive action—which is ultimately a chance he takes on the summation of his abilities. So I don’t like the phrase “making a photo.” Photography isn’t about making anything—it’s about taking what’s already been made, taking a slice of light, taking a chance on your abilities in a moment that will never happen again. I believe a real photographer is a thief of light, not its author. That is to say, God has already done the creating; our job is to notice it, to bear witness to the beauty that’s been laid out before us, take a piece of it, and pass it on.

Being based in Yukon, Oklahoma, the majority of my subject matter is—well—Oklahoma: the backroads, the open plains, and the quiet spaces most people pass without seeing. Vernacular Americana is a record of the ordinary and the forgotten, where time and utility have left their own marks on American life. Much of it is fading—family farms, small towns, and the quiet evidence of analog lives once tied to the land. But beauty doesn’t disappear when the world changes. It just has to be looked for differently when it does.

When I am not working on photographic projects, I work as a freelance filmmaker and YouTuber. That same patience and honesty guide how I shoot motion. My YouTube series, “Oklahoma on Film,” follows that same idea—witnessing and hopefully preserving what’s left, one frame at a time.

I’m not interested in art as theory. For me, it begins and ends with beauty—and beauty isn’t an opinion, nor does it associate with the subjective; it’s a fact waiting to be seen.