I think I was still in the boot for this? I don’t actually remember, but I was not on crutches, I’m sure. Anyway, not a ton of pictures, since I was still struggling. But a few. Have to start somewhere.
EDIT: added the last image, which I missed. Can’t forget Pancho Villa!
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.
This was shortly after my initial ankle injury but before I was really taking it seriously; it was sprained at this point, but not really painful to walk on, so walk I did. It was later that week that everything came undone and I went to the doc for the initial consult.
The temple gorgeous and somehow ominous at the same time. Could just be me, but I was not feeling a great deal of loving vibes coming off of the place. The interior, which I wasn’t allowed to take photographs of, was fairly maze-like; it reminded me of a casino interior. Expensive and bad for the head. Also, at any given time, I couldn’t have told you which way was out without locating the ‘Exit’ signs. All in all, I was glad to get out of there.
Maybe the bad vibes was coming from the part of my brain that kept insisting that all of the things the tour guide told us were filtered through what they were allowed to say by the church, and the constant energy required to remind myself that it’s quite possible none of what was being said is true. Not the surface level stuff. I’m quite sure we were shown the room where they ‘baptize’ the dead so they can also ‘go to heaven’ (Someone should have a word with them about the golden statues in that room, holding up the altar. The god of Abraham was never partial to those). No, the mental energy was spent recognizing that the Mormons do the actions, but their reasons and expected result are so much smoke.
There was a lot of stuff like that, too much to really catalogue. And it’s late. Three posts in one day, that probably means I’ll take a month off.
Another three photos. I just spent the better part of half an hour trying to salvage a pano of a beautiful Jaguar I saw in Berkeley, an XK 140 of unknown but probably 1950s vintage. After spending all that time on it (playing with software is wonderfully soothing if not productive), I took a mental step back, looked at it, realized it wasn’t really saying anything worthwhile, just a shiny thing parked on the curb, and so I axed it. You’re welcome.
Some photos from last May that I didn’t want to disappear down the memory hole.
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