Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking at Odd Salon for the second time. The theme for the night was Explore, and there was an emphasis on non-white-western-male explorers, and different kinds of explorers. My talk was on the surface a classic sea-fairing tale, “40,000 miles and a century early: The treasure Voyages of Zheng He.” There’s a video online here which I refuse to watch on the grounds that I went through it once already. Someone tell me if it’s okay to look. The main thrust of the argument wasn’t just that he was a great admiral that went all that way, but that he also exercised this continual escalation, from one thing to the next in his life, to see how much he could do.
You’ll notice I’m slipping towards three weeks of backlog (almost back up to the traditional month) and that means I’m almost back to the place where I feel guilty enough about the size of the backlog that it puts me off blogging because who wants to confront all of those pictures? And all the writing and such that also needs to happen with them? But I’m also in a bit of a slump shooting the last week, not terribly well rested and been missing my walks. So, I don’t have much beyond a new gimmick to report (put on a super wide rectilinear lens on, and point it straight up). So, all that to say I’m going to keep on putting up images, trying for a post a day.
I had some thoughts about this slump I’m having today, too. This is a thing that always happens with a new camera: get the thing, be very excited about it, and go out and make a bunch of good pictures with it over the first couple weeks. I even had a honeymoon period like that with the GoPro (an otherwise not very good camera for the sorts of photos I take), where I really just played with the thing and had fun. Then, about a month in, a slump hits. I can’t maintain that energy forever, and I find myself falling into old patterns of working, which means I don’t get as much energy from shooting, and feel kinda meh about the whole thing.
So, the insight I had today was that I need to figure out how to break those patterns of working, see things from new perspectives, etc. I might break out The Photographer’s Playbook and have some fun. I also need to start getting up early to shoot more San Pablo. Right now it’s not in a place where it’s a book, except maybe one of those boring art books that go with exhibitions and don’t sell out their first printings. It might be good as individual large prints, and I need to buy some paper to start playing with that too… so! There’s work to be done.
