So this was only two weeks ago, pretty far down from my typical 2-6 months to get something posted (if you haven’t seen some pictures you were expecting from me from before, say, a month ago, they’re not happening here; reach out and I might be able to do something). I don’t know why, but I found these really hard to edit. The color in the location is hard, and I threw my hands up on that and went black and white. But I’m also emotionally invested in this event, I suppose, and I want to do a good job.

To that end, I took my hardest-to-use lens, and pitted it against really difficult conditions. It’s a 500mm mirror lens, f/6.3. I was shooting hand held, and it’s a manual focus lens. The focal plane (that is, how much depth of acceptable focus you get) is about 4”, and there’s about a 1/4” difference on the focus ring between 30 and 50 feet. So, about 12 thou, or 1/80th of an inch. I did ok; remember, you’re seeing the good stuff, not the outtakes (there were many). Even so, using that lens forced me to use a very high ISO, which, if I’d been using a lower one, the color may have been more manageable… anyway.

The salon was about abandoned things, from children, given up to an orphanage, to a whole island, in NYC, abandoned to nature. Stops include Paris and Angkor, with way stations at Sati (not a place, but an abandoned funeral practice), and Kepler’s best idea that turned out to not be true. At least two of these pictures I only barely got, because I was too busy paying attention to the talk being given at the time.

If you’re interested in Odd Salon, the Something Weird facebook group has more info on salons, past and future, as well as links to many of the talks that have been recorded.

Names and talk titles taken from the FB page, typos are my own.

Harvey the Wolpertinger in his natural habitat. Annetta, the fearless leader of odd salon. Christina Liu, talking about Ta Keo, Angkor’s Forsaken Temple Reigh Robitaille, the Foundling Tokens talk Sahil Bansal, talking about Kepler (Kepler’s so dreamy, I’ll admit, this is one of the talks I was too busy listening to for good coverage) Stuart Gripman, who curated the evening’s talks. This guy, as far as I can tell, was just on stage to show off his cool Fez. Matthew Nelson talking about The Paris Catacombs Wider shot, in one of maybe three photos I took with the short (40mm) lens I brought. Dhiraj Korwani, talking about Sati, the practice of widow burning, how it came to be, and how it ended. This is, I think, the very end of Danielle Baskin’s North Brother Island talk.

Posted by Matt on 2018-05-07T06:45:40Z GMT