I know I said I was declaring bankruptcy on all my 2024 photos, but I saw this little photoset and it jived with something I was thinking the other day, namely, why don’t I do black and white any more? It used to be a big part of my practice, but then someone told me digital black and white wasn’t real, and I kind of was buying everything they told me wholesale (a lot of it was very good and helpful) so I basically just haven’t done if for the last sixish years. I’ve done some film black and white and enjoyed it, but no digital.
All that to say, I think there is a time and place for it. Like, I understand what they were saying, that it goes against the essential quality of the thing, but also one of the essential qualities, for me, is the flexibility a raw file has once I get it into lightroom. In some ways digital black and white is better than film or a monochrome sensor, because I can use color filters after the fact to realize tonal control (oldheads will know this as the Zone System).
These specific photos were Dia de los Muertos 2024, the parade part in the mission. I showed up a little late and didn’t stay super long, it was cold and I wasn’t feeling super sure of myself. The light wasn’t super great, a mix of sodium arc and tungsten that doesn’t expose well and colors just look bad. This is part of why they sat there for such a long time. But tonight, I decided to try them in black and white, almost in passing, and the quick conversion was enough to get me to do a little more work on them, get them to a bloggable state.
Posted by matt on 2026-01-03T11:42:04Z GMT
New year, same me. On of my resolutions or intentions this year is to get off my ass and do more photography. As if last year’s fallow periods were my fault. Doesn’t matter, I still feel better when I’m making pictures. And part of that is getting rid of the backlog. So I’ve declared bankruptcy for anything that happened before new years day 2025 and moved on to things that happened last year. This was the first event I went to that I haven’t already blogged (I think I put up the NYE pics a while back).
A lot of people do year in review type things during this dead week between Christmas and new years, and, in short, 2025 was hard. I went from stage 4 to stage 5 renal failure, went on dialysis, had two surgeries, one for my Gall bladder and one to put in the dialysis port. I had to take a bunch of time off work for each of those, missed an important trip, and also had no energy from ~may until they got my iron deficiency taken care of in August. And then I broke both arms in September.
All that to say: it could be much worse. My work has unlimited PTO and both of my managers were very understanding of the various issues. I have really good health insurance, which covers 100% of my dialysis and transplant care. I have a lot of support, from Sophie and from all my friends. Finally: it’s still not scheduled, but I have a transplant in the works, so fingers crossed I may be able to close the books on all of this in a few months.
I think that’s it? Oh yeah, these specific pictures. Kawan’s birthday party, last year. A little over 10 months ago. House just packed with cool people, I didn’t get good coverage at all (note the only one sort of OK pic of the birthday boy). Still, these are nice, and I think reflect the feelings of the day.
Posted by matt on 2026-01-02T10:07:37Z GMT
I took these… almost two years ago now? They were supposed to be for a photo project, https://www.1in6by2030.com/, but I didn’t really have enough to submit for the prompt, which was something about retiring versus continuing to work. It was winter, in Santa Fe, and mostly I worked my normal job while house sitting for my friend Ben (sorry about your pepper plant, man). But the pictures aren’t bad, and deserve a moment in the spotlight.
Anyway. Blog is migrated to the new setup, old setup is done and dusted. Few bugs still outstanding, haven’t gotten RSS working quite right yet, not sure why. Need to do real deployment and logging, currently it’s pretty duct-tape-and-string type of setup. Ah well. None of that really matters.
Posted by matt on 2025-09-30T06:33:46Z GMT
