Yes, a post full of sunsets. This was also mid-september, around when my parents were here. The second one is a stitched pano, from two images. At least I’m not committing the sin of HDR.
There are some problems with sunsets. First of all, they’re cliché. Like, forever and ever. Second, they’re the sort of thing anyone can look at and take a picture of that works. You look at a thousand of them, and there’s this dull sameness that’s like looking at glitter. Pretty, but not, you know, rising to the task of making art most of the time. (note here that I’m talking about my personal definition of art and artmaking, you do you boo).
BUT. There’s definitely a part of me that thinks all of that is bullshit, and shoots sunsets anyway (sometimes just on my phone, trying to pretend I’m not serious about it). Cliche? That’s just something a jaded person says because they can’t admit something can be nice without being impossibly niche and unheard-of.
AND. “A picture anyone could take.” But no, not anyone did; I was there. I chose this exposure, this framing. I chose a place to stand and took the picture just when the sun hit the top of the clouds. Every picture, moment to moment, place to place, is unique. Sometimes all I want to say with a photo is: “This is where I was, and this is what I saw.” It’s not enough to be taken seriously in some circles, but I’m fine with that. Not every picture is the cover of NatGeo or the New York Times; none of these, I suspect, will ever hang on a gallery wall.
Anyway, it’s a complex subject and I’ve just barely scratched the surface. There are probably much more interesting photos to be made (my favorite of these is definitely the first one, which is not really a sunset picture). Maybe I should learn the lesson of the photography workshop I just went to and limit myself to one picture? I do need to be doing tighter edits in general. No more 30 picture posts.
Posted on 2019-12-04T07:47:00Z GMT
This was… sometime towards the end of September? I was freshly out of the boot, but still not walking a ton. My parents came to town and wanted to see Muir woods, or maybe I suggested going? Doesn’t matter. Nature hike, relatively flat and nice. Short, too. Less than a mile. We got done there and had a little steam left, so we went over to Muir Beach, too. It was overcast by the time we got there, but still really pretty/nice. The ocean, with no memory.
Too many computers, and too many things happening to keep track of the photos, really. I need to spend some energy towards getting my photos from the last several months together. It’s like, the moment I got my cast off and was allowed to walk again, things started taking off, and I didn’t have any kind of routine in place to keep things organized, so they’re spread out over my desktop, laptop, and iPad, and also some still on each camera (all three have seen some use). So yeah, trying to catch up and make sense of everything. Pushing out photos as I do.
Posted on 2019-11-23T23:27:21Z GMT
So yeah, had a bit of an interval there where I wasn’t taking a lot of photos. Not the whole four months of injury/surgery/recovery, but for sure the two after surgery, and not a lot of the larger project (which I talked about a little in my last newsletter) at all, since it requires quite a bit of walking around. There are people that would have pushed through the injury to get to a place where they were still making work, but I’m not one of them. I’m really fortunate that I had the support of my dear wife through all of this, or I doubt I’d be anything but a shambles, still.
As it is, I’m recovered enough that the work is now, again, ongoing. I need to figure out the routine from here; what I’m shooting, and what I need to do. I had a really productive conversation with Sara Terry, the photographer leading the workshop I was at in NYC, about it, and at least now I have something like a thesis; something more than “it’s interesting” to go on. I mean, the people that fed me the story, more or less, said that to me, and I felt it was the sort of subject that’s good for sniffing around, photographically. Eventually you have to figure out what exactly makes it interesting, sharpen your tools, and work until you have the story. I think I’m there, or I’m at least one step further down the funnel.
Oh, and: The last three photos are with my new favorite lens, the Voightlander 35mm 1.4. It’s really pretty great. Zone focusing is good, wide open with the RF is good. It just feels less constrained than the 50. I’ve been a 50 ride-or-die person for two decades. This is pretty big, but I feel like it’s a focal length I can really do some work with. Expect to see it more in the posts to come.
Posted on 2019-10-28T07:10:25Z GMT
