Context: I took these 20 minutes ago, outside my house. It’s 8:53am local, which means the sun should be up AND THE SKY SHOULD NOT BE ORANGE. I believe the technical term for this situation is ‘fucked’, or barring that, ‘entirely fucked’. We may be well and truly FUBAR’d.
On some old pickup trucks, there was an option to lock the differential for use when in four wheel drive*. The idea being that one tire might slip where the others wouldn’t. You couldn’t use it for very long without unlocking, because the difference in the way the wheels spun would put twist in the axles, first loading up the drivetrain with spring tension and then causing something to break (at the right forces, any piece of steel is a spring, for at least a little bit).
But/And! impassable territory became passable, just barely. Drive, hit a rough passage, lock it down, drive a little, unlock, coast, lock, repeat, until you get past the obstacle.
That’s sort of how I feel about this here blog. when this blog is going well, there is a rhythm to it, a sort of A follows B follows C that kinda works. A smooth narrative from post to post, and sometimes I can keep that going for quite a while. But the world doesn’t fit a smooth narrative. Plans are lists of things that don’t happen. No smooth narratives here.
Let’s not think too hard about the metaphor. I’m not sure it actually extends to the territory being rough, all right? Sometimes it’s just that I get distracted by other projects, and they take over my time. Despite my efforts to never sleep, it’s still limited.
At some point in the last few weeks (maybe a month ago? time is a soup in a blender), I found a folder of images that was everything I shot from just after the trip to new york all the way through the beginning of december. So, starting from the top, here’s some stuff from Halloween night.
These are with the 35/1.4 voightlander, and I hadn’t noticed it being appreciably soft wide open, but these do have some glow. The close up portrait is nice, but the others… well, my technical game is always improving.
Current projects moving in one way or another:
Backburnered projects:
yeah. So two weeks ago, we went camping for the second time in the Pandemic, this time with a couple friends, Cason and Ryan. We picked a spot up in the sierras, where there was a lake nearby that we thought we’d be able to swim in. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out; the lake was a bit gross, with a lot of foulness from various fowl. But, as luck would have it, there was another place to get in the water, in the river we’d crossed twice to get up to the campsite; we’d noticed it and the people there on the way in, so we decided to check it out.
As you might be able to tell from the pictures, it was really great. Access was a little difficult, I can’t imagine getting down to the water if I was only on one leg, but then again I managed a lot on one leg there for a while, so who knows? Anyway, there was a large local contingent, but we kept a good medium distance most of the time, and figured it was outside so it was probably good enough.
So, we get home, everything is fine, I develop and scan all the film and post the photos to facebook, because that’s primarily where our friends who came with us are, and for some reason that’s just where I went with them first. On that post, I wrote:
Photos from the weekend camping trip. Mostly from the river. Ryan, Cason, Sophia, and a few others that I don’t have links to on here. I know travel is dangerous right now, and I could be an unwitting hazard for others; this was managed with as little close contact and going inside of buildings as possible. Probably as much risk going to the grocery store, spread over a weekend. Distance maintained from the people not in our camp; masks when needed (always when inside).
Honestly? The absolute best thing to do is still to just stay home. But I don’t think that’s sustainable even in the medium term; it’s the same line they give you in abstinence based sex ed, and look how well that works. Our government has completely failed us, and we’re not going to get any relief until 2021 at least (vaccine, new government). So, in the interim, we’ve gotta figure out how to live in this world, manage the risks, and not go crazy trying.
And then, of course, five days later, I get a fever and body aches and I start to wonder if my luck has finally run out. I quarantined in our spare room, and slept most of tuesday; started to feel better that evening, made crappy scans of a bunch of negatives with my phone, and felt mostly better wednesday. I still took the day off, because I was still kinda tired, slept, and also just frankly worried I might be dying. I went and got a rapid COVID test, which was negative, and was insanely relieved. I then spent a while worrying about false negatives, but as it turns out the test I took is about as good as the slower tests. Why aren’t we rolling those out everywhere, instead of having people wait days and days? I don’t know.
Anyway, yeah. Moral of the story is probably “Don’t Panic.” Or maybe this is another one of my stories without any point, that I just felt like telling. maybe I needed a lot of text to excuse posting a lot of photos with this one.
we live in the future update: it’s now 1:15 in the morning as I’m writing, and the lab processed my other test, the one I got on tuesday, and uploaded the result to onemedical, who updated me with the app. also negative! pass by failing, yay!
had a lucky streak tonight, and everything lined up so that I was able to see and photograph comet C/2020 f3 (NEOWISE) that’s almost at peak (closest point to earth anyway). No line at the grocery store, dinner was done and eaten in time for me to check the location a friend had given, realize it was almost an hour away, get my gear together, and drive out to it.
Then when we were there, a cop drove by the road we were parked on, came over the loudspeaker, and told everyone they had to re-park on the main road; it’s like, come on man, this happens once every seven thousand years. But whatever, he has a gun and can shoot me if he feels like it, so I move the car, grab the gear, and walk back to the same ledge, where the cop proceeds to periodically shine his stupid searchlights at us. Ugh. At least I had a lens hood.
Spent about 20 or 30 minutes photographing. I really should have done a bunch of 1-second exposures and stacked them for the long lens; I had to do some work in photoshop to remove the slight star trails. Also, the second image is a mosaic of 3 frames, so it won’t line up perfectly with a star chart because the frames were tens of seconds apart. There is what appears to be a meteorite next to the little dipper’s handle, too. A nice bonus.
Copyright © 2008-Forever, Matt Mills.
