The world can seem blurry until you've had that first, perfect cup of coffee in the morning...

 Coffee prep. The "pour over." Leica SL + 50mm TTArtisan f0.95.  Not sharp until after the first dose.

A rift in the fabric of mannequin reality.

 

New Shoes. Starting out the next year on the right foot. Or the left...

 My favorite shoes for all day walking around are just about anything from Keen. These Targhee iii casual walking shoes were on sale for half price. I couldn't resist. I get about two years of wear out of most hiking shoes. I tend to put on a lot of miles and very few of them on smooth floors or carpeting. The soles eventually wear down. Resoling them isn't very cost effective. I'm not even sure it can be down. But this brand is one of the few with enough arch support and good tread to make me comfortable and happy. 

After wearing this new pair around for a week I could kick myself for not ordering a second pair at that price. It's a good practice to rotate through your hiking shoes to keep them from wearing down too quickly. Also, letting them sit a day or two after a long day's service lets the absorbing materials regain their loft for the next foray. 

I think we have three more days of good swim weather until Thursday afternoon brings the deep freeze to town. I made the most of today's swim. Attendance was sparse for the noon workout but that meant the three of us who showed up had more personalized coaching. Thursday morning's pre-storm workout should be packed. 

And for the those brilliant readers who follow swimming... I was excited to see Brendan Hanson on the pool deck today. He was giving a one on one coaching session to a lucky high school swimmer. I listened carefully between my sets.... 

Brendan Hansen

Personal information
Full name	Brendan Joseph Hansen
National team	United States
Born	August 15, 1981 (age 41) Haverford Township, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Height	6 ft 0 in (183 cm)
Weight	189 lb (86 kg)
Sport
Sport	Swimming
Strokes	Breaststroke
Club	Longhorn Aquatics
College team	University of Texas
show Medal record Brendan Joseph Hansen (born August 15, 1981) is an American former competition swimmer who specialized in breaststroke events. Hansen is a six-time Olympic medalist, and is also a former world record-holder in both the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke events (long course). He won a total of twenty-five medals in major international competition, eighteen gold, four silver, and three bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, and the Pan Pacific Championships. He was a member of the 2012 United States Olympic team, and won the bronze medal in the 100-meter breaststroke and a gold medal in the 4×100-meter medley relay at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Part 2. Cold, rain-soaked day continues on S. Congress Ave. Sadly, I passed up several good mannequin opportunities.... But...Holiday stuff galore.

I climbed out of the pool, dried off and got dressed and then headed out to the car. I took one last photograph at Barton Springs Pool just to show its proximity to downtown and I felt lucky to get a flying bird into the shot. I think it's a duck. I'm not sure...

I'm a bit bored by the street scenes in downtown and nobody's made much of an effort to dress it up for the holidays so I thought I try my street shooter luck over on currently trendy S. Congress Ave. On the other side of the river from the Capitol and the big downtown convention hotels. Seems it was too cold and wet for either the tourists, the shoppers or the street people today. But that's okay by me since there's always something new to look at and the square perspective and limited depth of field combo I was playing with today kept it fresh enough for me. 

Again, everything was photographed with the Leica SL (which has a stated IP52 weather resistant rating: don't try this with your Sony or Nikon. You have no idea what water and dust intrusion resistance their camera "might" have....).  I was using the TTArtisan 50mm lens I wrote about in the previous blog post. It's not rated as weather resistant so I wrapped a small slice of electrical tape around the mating of the lens and camera mounts. Seemed to work fine at resisting moisture. And by 11 or so the rain was less ..... spitty. 

Also, a shout out to Timberline waterproof boots. Nice on the foot and dry as a desert inside. Today? Black to go with the gray pants.... and dark gray hat. 

On this shot I'm working right down at the close focusing minimum with the 50mm.

Even at f1.1 the center area and, indeed, all the areas that are in the plane of focus

are adequately sharp.

Yeah. I don't get it either. But I find it somehow "charming". 

this is the front of Home Slice Pizza on S. Congress Ave. I included it because 

I found some really cool painted murals in the their parking lot and wanted to give

them a shout out. Unfortunately, lately Blogger has decided to randomize the order

 in which it displays my photos so the fun stuff follows this positioning/establishing 

shot. C'est la Vie. 

Love, love, love this mural (the one on the left!) since I actually saw Janis Joplin perform once 

at the Vulcan Gas Company (early Austin club) when I was too young to buy beer. The mural 

is well done in that Roy Lichtenstein comic books style. And the joke, of course is that

it's in the parking lot of one of Austin's most beloved pizza joints. 

Wonderful. 

this is the logo on the door of a newish seafood restaurant called Del Mar. 

The building used to house S. Congress Café.  I shot a bunch of food for the former

restaurant. It was one of the early digital shoots with the Kodak DCS 760 camera. 

Slow going.... And more than a few reboots. 

I love the logo because it combines a cute girl, who is a mermaid, and also sports 

a cowboy hat. The upside down fish on a spear tops it off.

And it seems now that every other store on S. Congress Ave. is now a high end hat shop.

The alternate shops are expensive cowboy boot shops. But not the boots you'd wear to work 

in the field everyday. Nope. More like the cowboy boots you only wear when you go out 

dancing at clubs. Or you're trying to look "native." 

On the ground. Actually, the sidewalk. I bought a bottle of this when I was in Reykjavik. 

It tasted like almost every other Vodka I've tried...

All the trees and tree decor are from The Austin Motel. 

They did an amazing job of decorating this year. Makes me smile.

My fingers started getting cold and I'd forgotten to bring along gloves ( or mittens? ) so I headed home and marveled at the difference in traffic from last, late December to this one. So much more crowded on the roads this year. I hope the people in all those cars are shopping locally and spending some cash to keep our economy from falling into recession. I'm always happier when things are going well..

More to come. Please keep reading and consider using my affiliate links...  Oh, that's right. We don't have any. Maybe you could leave a lovely comment instead. 

Happy Holidays! 

Defaulting to the square. A cold day in Austin with non-stop rain. What to do? How about photography at Barton Springs Pool?

 

I woke up at six a.m. with a sore neck. I crawled quietly out of bed, got dressed and headed to the kitchen to make coffee and toast, and to look at the news. Outside the window the rain was tumbling down, the wind gusting and the skies still dark. I got bored with the news. I made a second cup of coffee, walked into the library and pulled a random photo book off the shelves. It was "Twenty-Five Years. Photography" a retrospective of Keith Carter's work. I like Carter's photos pretty well but I love the writing in the book. An introduction by A.D. Coleman which situates fine art photography with insightful precision. But my absolute favorite part of the book is the collection of quotes and snippets from Carter as told to Bill Witliff back in 1996. The quotes are really great. Worth the price of the book. 

Keith Carter is a believer in the idea that you don't need to travel to far off places to find art and magic. Actually belonging to a place can be just as important as travel. I read Carter's interview responses and then grabbed an old SL body and that zany TTartisan 50mm f0.95, set the camera up to make square files and to write them to the cards as black and white Jpegs. Then I put on an old rain jacket over my worn, green sweatshirt and headed out to make some photos for fun. Just for fun.

It was still raining, but not too hard, when I pulled into the parking lot in front of Barton Springs Pool. The pool is spring fed, 1/8th of a mile long and open unless it's going to be below freezing for an extended period of time. I flashed my senior citizen swim card at the gate and spent some time watching water drip off the brim of my hat. And I made photographs for fun. Mostly of the pool and some of the old railings that have been at the pool for a long, long time. 

Even though rain drops peppered the pool and the wind made the day feel ten degrees cooler than the actual 42° shown on my phone there were three hardy swimmers doing long laps in the pool and two lifeguards all bundled up and sitting under big umbrellas in their lifeguard chairs a third of the way to either end.

coming down from the guard house for a shift change. 

These simple railings have been at the pool as long as I can remember.

My first swim at Barton Springs Pool was in the Summer of 1975.

That's a lot of water over the spillway. 

That lump on the wall is someone's bundle of warm, dry clothes wrapped up in 

plastic to keep dry. It's a good idea to get dry quick and bundle back up.

The water is warm enough to be swimmable. It's about 70°. It doesn't vary 

 much, season to season. But it always seems colder on the gray 

winter days....

The alternate shot of the "bundle" with the swimmer out of focus in the background...

A good warning to obey since the pool depth is two feet or so there. 

And the bottom is rocky... 

No takers on the diving board today. But it's there if you need it...

There is a spillway at the east end of the pool. The pool water continuously empties out 

into a waterway that leads to Lady Bird Lake. The part of the Colorado River that flows through 

the center of Austin. The divide between downtown and the once very hip South Austin.

Now painfully gentrified by techies from out of state...

Another swimmer's minimalist "bundle" is nothing but a pair of sandals to keep

their feet from freezing as they make their way up the long stairs to the open-to-the-sky changing

rooms. Nice on days when it's too chilly to walk around barefoot. 

I counted two pairs of white egrets. I wasn't fast enough to focus on them in flight. But then I remembered that I don't really do....BIF.

near the East end of the pool it gets shallow in places. At the middle and at the West end

it gets too deep to stand up in. Some people swim here every single day of the year. 

They get there as early as 5:00 a.m. when there are no guards and only a sign

which reads, "Swim at your own risk." No sissies before first light...

This guard was layered in clothes. And professional. And attentive of the swimmers. 

It's that dedication to make things work even if there is only one swimmer in the 

pool that makes Austin a different city than most. There isn't a quota or a 

limitation based on how much use the pool gets. It's just there for anyone 

who wants to or needs to swim. My swim bag was in the car. I wouldn't have 

felt right about photographing and then leaving. I had to get a quick, chilly mile in 

first. Made my sore neck for better...for a little while. 

When I came home from a swim a couple of days ago I tossed my "Marvel Comics/Super-hero" towel over the gate to the side yard to let it dry in the sun. Too bad I forgot to bring it in last night, before the storm hit. It's going to take a while to dry out with the first edge of the cold weather having arrived. 

All photos done with a Leica SL. Jpegs. Black and White. 

TTArtisan 50mm f0.95 lens. Mostly shot at f1.1.

Look at them bigger. The detail and also the focus fall off is more fun that way.