B. is in S.A. taking care of her mom. The refrigerator is still broken. No swim practice on Easter. The pool is closed. It's overcast. It's the perfect day to roam around downtown and play with a new lens.
I rounded up a spare battery, plugged the Voigtlander 58mm f1.4 lens onto the front of a Leica SL2, ditched my cellphone into a desk drawer, double-knotted my walking shoes and headed downtown. My intention today was to photograph everything I wanted to photograph while doing it in black and white, at ISO 50 and with the lens spot-welded at f2.0. I gave myself permission to try some shots at f1.4; just to see how it might work out.
If you are of a certain age you probably remember the Easters of your youth in the same way I do. All the stores were closed. All the churches were open. Some families dressed up with the little girls in pink dresses and matching shoes and the boys looking uncomfortable in hand-me-down jackets, choking-collared white shirts and clip-on bowties. Other families looked out the window at the earnest church-goers going by, with shaky dads holding the curtains open a bit with one hand while nursing a hangover with a can of beer in the other.
I had to go to church back then because my father played the organ there. He didn't really believe in any of the religious dogma but he loved wailing away on the big organ just behind and to the right of the pulpit of the church. We sat bored and uncomfortable, feet unable to reach the floor and looking vaguely forward to a nice brunch at a restaurant with white tablecloths, extra forks and spoons, tuxedoed waiters and an older African American man in a black suit playing "Alley Cat", "Mack the Knife" and other favorites on a much smaller organ. A restaurant sized organ. We got to order hamburgers and french fries. The grown-ups got shrimp cocktails with cocktail sauce, and then steaks.
At some point in the day either my brother or I got in trouble for drawing pictures of the Pillsbury Dough Boy with captions that read: "He Has Risen."
It all seemed so innocuous back before the far right started weaponizing religion again... Funny that "Happy Holidays!" is now a call to arms... so sad. So misguided. So....off message.
Sunday morning in Austin was quite different today. In fact, it seemed like just another day in a (cloudy) paradise. Torchy's Tacos was open so I was thrilled to get a bacon, egg and cheese breakfast taco and a coffee there. The restaurants were open up and down Congress Ave. and also Second St. The homeless on the streets were a deep contrast to the well dressed crowds hustling by on their way to hotel restaurants for Eggs Benedict and Mimosas. And the weather over all was comfortable but gloomy.
I walked through downtown with the camera over my left shoulder and my sunglasses hanging off the collar of my black shirt. The one with the demure Nike logo on the front. I was interested to see how the lens performed when I used it close in and wide open. Seems pretty nice to me. The contrast there is a bit low but that's why Adobe invented the contrast slider and the clarity slider in Lightroom. If you can correct for geometric distortion and vignetting in the camera's firmware is it any more "cheating" if you correct the contrast in your software?
I didn't stay long. I made a loop through the parts I thought might be interesting today and then headed back to the house. I was on a mission. I'd volunteered to bring along two nice bottles of white wine to have with fish at a friend's house later this afternoon and it dawned on me that I needed to chill the bottles and.....no refrigerator. In 2023, in an age of endless affluence, I actually had to go to a convenience store and buy some ice with which to chill the wine. Savagery. Despair.
To sum up: The re-delivered lens is great. That and the 40mm are a fun pair. Not having a functioning refrigerator has moved from being annoying and frustrating to being an interesting experiment in adaptation. With luck and lawyers the fridge should be fully restored by Tuesday. The lens doesn't need any repairs which is enough to currently endear any device to me. Car, camera, lens, water faucet.... If it works I'm a fan.
It's a weird holiday for me this year. Usually spent with family. Not this time. But it's good to have friends. The more the better. And I'm avoiding Peeps this year and embracing Cadbury Eggs instead. It's part of my theologically inclusive Easter diet plan.
It's not as much fun searching for Easter eggs if you have to hide them from yourself, for yourself.... Just a thought.
