But first, an off topic personal ramble. When I was in high school my friend, David and I were both on the swim team and we hung out together because neither of us was part of any discernible outlier cohort. We were resolutely normal. Middle of the median. One Saturday morning our swim coach, who had been an amazing college swimmer, and was the older brother of an equally amazing distance swimmer on our team, waited for us to meet him at a pool in downtown San Antonio for an all city, invitational swim meet. We'd be swimming against all the other high school teams in our area. This was back in the day when high school swimmers were expected to get to events under their own steam so David and I "borrowed" his older brother's Chevy Malibu SS396 automobile, grabbed our swim gear and headed on toward downtown.
When I say swim gear I mean each of us had one pair of small, uncomfortable goggles which, for some reason, were referred to as "Swedish Racing Googles." Maybe it's because they came from Sweden. We didn't really care, we were just happy to have goggles. We'd both swum all through childhood without any goggles at all. Not having bright red eyes at the end of every swim practice seemed like such a luxury at the time.
The rest of our gear consisted of one racing swim suit and one towel per person. Everyone on the team wore Speedos. There wasn't much else back then. They were tiny little skin tight nylon racing suits that left little to the imagination. But I guess that's why we always had a pair of baggy pants to pull on after our races. Just to cover up. Pants we didn't mind getting wet and saturated with chlorine. Again and again.
We were more or less model students and well disciplined athletes. All of the swimmers. We both maintained high grade point averages, never "underachieved" and always tried to do our best. Even when we weren't feeling 100%. The idea of not at least trying to place in a race was absolutely foreign and distasteful to us on a number of levels. Pretty much everybody on the team had the same mindset; the same ability to establish goals and work toward them. A large percentage of our high school swimmers went on to swim for their various colleges and a surprising number became doctors, lawyers, engineers and tenured academics. The rest just went on to become CEOs and company owners. Most benefited from the discipline they learned and developed through two swim practices per day, the first at 5:30 a.m., Monday through Friday and the second practice at the last period of the school day --- stretching out for two or more hours. Oh, and yeah, we also had swim practice on Saturday mornings. All were mandatory if you wanted to swim on the team.
In the years that I swam for our high school we won state twice. We didn't fool around. We were too busy with A.P. courses in math, science, English, etc. We got into the pool. Got our work done and then went straight home to study. Once in a while we'd take a Saturday afternoon off --- just to relax. But the bottom line is that we learned how to work hard, set and meet goals. It was great training for getting through STEM courses at the University (and here in Austin we say, "THE" University because UT is the greatest school of higher education in all of Texas. We would never have infantilized our alma mater by referring to it as "Uni."
I guess the real reason we didn't slack or goof off in competitions was that swim meets were scored with a system of points for each place. Each of the top six finishers got points for the team. So, even if you weren't first, second or third you tried your best to place so the team could win, overall, with high points. That's part of competitive team sports. Every place counts. Every race counts. And the racing experience you got was cumulative. Plus, winning feels good.
Anyway, David and I were heading downtown and we realized we were starving. We'd been swimming hard all week and we had both left our houses without much of a breakfast. We drove by a donut shop, looked at each other and then pulled a u-turn and slipped into a parking space right by the front door. We were reactive back then. We saw donuts and we reacted. We each bought something like a half dozen donuts. And not just simple glazed ones but also examples of creme filled and jelly filled. We also each bought a quart of milk to wash the donuts down with. I guess we thought we could digest these little hockey pucks before it was time for our events.... But we gobbled them down like.....donuts.
The pool we were swimming at that morning was at the Lone Star Brewery just south of downtown in San Antonio, Texas. The pool itself, a full 50 meters long and ten lanes across, was built into the side of a manmade lake. So, concrete swim walls with chlorinated water on one side (regular, regulation pool with lane lines, etc.) and an actual lake just on the other side of three walls.
We staggered into the swim area a bit unsettled from the massive sugar high and we stumbled right into our coach. He was tall and had amazingly wide shoulders. He also had a temper. Apparently we were late. Our events were coming right up. The only thing he was happy about in the moment was not having to scratch my event. It was set to go in about five minutes. I ran to the locker room to change into my suit. David and I had missed warmup. I'd never swum in this pool before. My stomach was filled with white flour donuts and endless sugar. Plus some weird donut creme. And milk. Lots of milk. A bad combination for an upcoming race...
I made it out to the deck as the first heat of our event got onto the blocks to race. I was in the third heat. The last heat. The fast heat. And it came up quickly. The race was 100 meters, long course, of butterfly. I was in lane five. I was less worried about finishing well than I was about losing my overindulgence of donuts in the middle of the pool. That would be embarrassing. And my coach of many years would demand to know "what the hell happened?"
A few minutes later our heat was called. We stood on the blocks. The starter called out: "Take your marks." And when we all settled he fired the starting pistol and off we went. I tried to ignore my gastric distress. We hit the first wall and everything was going okay. The last fifty yards though were agonizing. I got touched out at the finish by three other swimmers (eight per heat) and one of the timers told me my time. I don't remember the exact number but I'm pretty sure it was three or four seconds off my best time for the season. I knew my coach would be pissed. But at that moment there were more pressing things to attend to. I yanked myself out of the water and ran as fast as I could to the restrooms where I launched/divulged/out-boarded/surrendered the contents of my stomach. Again, very embarrassing. But in that moment I learned the importance of planning, scheduling and executing on those plans. And not doing things that are self-defeating. I was ashamed to have let down my team by not placing higher. I was crestfallen at having missed hitting my race goal by so many seconds. And it was tough to make eye contact with my coach.
One of my rivals that day was from MacAuthor High School. His name was Bob Davis. He kicked my butt. Many decades later I was hired to photograph the CEO of insurance and banking giant, USAA. Turns out the CEO was one of my competitors that Saturday morning, so many years ago. He greeted me at is office warmly and we talked about the race. The five minutes the P.R. agency told me I had in which to photograph Bob stretched out to an hour and a bit more. Swim connections. Powerful stuff.
When I showed up for workout at 5:30 on Monday morning, a couple days after the meet, and started warming up the coach came over to me with a small white bag in his hand. He stopped me and I moved over to the side of the lane to let my lane mates pass me by. Coach pulled a Bavarian Creme donut out of the bag and waved it in front of me. "Do you need another donut to motivate you for the workout?" He asked, words dripping sarcasm. He'd found out. I was humiliated. And he spent the next few days pushing me hard in workouts to drive home the lesson. "Don't Fuck Up." And never on purpose.
This story, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the aspect of photography I wanted to cover. It just seemed like the story wanted to tell itself. Kind of a nod toward taking some things in life seriously...
And, now, on to the photo gear essay.
Over the last few years I've been playing with more and more variety in my lens choices. Taking advantage of a slowing market to play more with angles of view that I'd never really warmed up to in the past. I know I'm a bit fixated on 50mm lenses and some slightly longer than 50mm but over the last three years I've dipped my toes into 35mm, the 28mm on the Leica Q2 and even a nice 20mm Nikon lens my friend Paul handed off to me. Now, after all the experiences experimenting with other than 50mm lenses I seem to have broadened my horizons a bit. Now the 50mm sometimes seems a bit long. The 58mm seems almost like a portrait lens. But I still am uncomfortable with 35mms. It just seems too wide to be serious but not wide enough to be....exciting.
I bought a 40mm rangefinder lens to use when I went on vacation last Fall to Vancouver and I liked the focal length but have some issues with the lens. It's too small to be comfortable. And the focusing is off which means no zone focusing. No hyperfocal shenanigans. On the advice of a commenter here I borrowed a Leica M to L adapter thinking the focusing foibles of the lens might be down to several bad/cheaper adapters but, NO, that didn't help.
I'll send the lens off to someone and get it calibrated some day. Or maybe I won't because I just recently bought the Voitlander 40mm f2.0 lens in a Nikon mount and I have to say that I really like the focal length but even better, I love the handling and even the look of that 40mm. The thing is that I've come to like a focal length that's in between. Not too wide for me and not too long either. It's in the sweet spot of focal lengths for me when it comes to an all purpose, "walking around" lens on a full frame body.
The 40mm seems special to me I think because one of the earlier Leica rangefinder cameras I owned was a Leica CL and it came equipped with a 40mm f2.0 Summicron lens. The lens was the sharpest and most contrasty lens I had ever experienced back in the very late 1970s. And I loved the way it looked when I was making black and white 11x14 inch fiber prints in the darkroom.
But I also like this new lens a lot because it's designed and built like some of my very favorite Nikon lenses from that era was well. A big, robust and all metal focusing ring. A bright and narrow metal ring you can grab to twist the lens on and off the camera, and a real aperture ring measured out in one stop clicks. The "closer" with this lens (and indeed also with the 58mm Voigtlander) is the ultra-smooth focusing ring. It's so just right. Finally, a lens with a lovely depth of field scale and well marked distances on the barrel. Almost heaven.
Yeah, it has always bugged me that 35mm is a little too wide and 50mm a little too narrow. The "normal" lens for 35mm cameras should be about 43mm (the diagonal measurement of a 24x36mm frame), but the lens manufacturers seem to have decided that rather than give us a normal lens, they would give us two lenses about 7-8mm to either side of that. I would have preferred 28, 42, 60 rather than 28, 35, 50, not that there's any reason anyone should have asked for my input.
ReplyDeleteApropos your swimming story. I was never any good at sports at school, but I was pretty good academically. I often read how successful people were good at sports in their youth, presumably that discipline helped them. It's something I want to teach my young kids. Not necessarily to be great sports people, but to keep practising at whatever it is they want to do. I think it's too easy to think that some people are just 'good' at certain things when actually I think that most success is down to a lot of hard work and dedication.
ReplyDeleteKirk as I have said before, you seem to be the opposite of Mike Johnson.
ReplyDeleteSee if you can buy a used Minolta 45mm f2 lens and a Minolta MC/MD mount adapter to L-mount. I got one for well under $50 used in mint condition and adapted to my Fujifilm 50S camera, its an excellent lens. Yes it fully covers the sensor.
Malcolm, learning discipline is one of the most important components for long term success. I tried to make my son into a swimmer. After 10 years of competing he quit. I was crestfallen. But he immediately went out for cross country. He ran competitively all the way through high school and college. I have never known him to not try his absolute best on every race. Or in every course of study. He even learned fluent in Korean in order to study at Yonsei, one of the top three Universities in Seoul, Korea. He spent a year there and did his advanced course work in Korean. He is now well employed at a data science company where he continues to excel. We set example for our kids, for better or worse. It's not the sport itself that's important but the discipline it imparts and the camaraderie it can build. Now, if I can just keep him from falling off climbing walls (bouldering) and breaking stuff.
ReplyDeleteCraig, MJ and I have different ideas about life. Some times I have to disagree out loud. Probably a bad habit on my part.
ReplyDeleteOther than not having aspherical elements, the later Minolta version of that 40 f2 for the film CL is reputed to be the better of the 40s…at least that’s what I have read. A shade less than the Voigtlander but pricey still for one in Mint condition.
ReplyDeleteReading of personal history events is fine, reflects and develops the whole person who also happens to be the photographer whose blog we read. Autobiographies are not a waste of time. Currently re-reading some Leon Hale whose prose is like comfort food, good for the soul.
College wrestling here. "Name" school that had the pleasure of being the first to beat Oklahoma State in Stillwater(other than OU) in years, at the time.
ReplyDeleteSwimmers were the only athletes we saw that spent as much time in practice.
Gymnasts were close. Football practice was easy in comparison.
Now, with Sports becoming even more competitive it is tougher than ever to excel.
Friend who wrestled and later became a major Coach would talk to the guys he was recruiting. Said "you can do well in Academics, Social Life and your Sport. Pick Two". The demands of University life and Wrestling with two a day workouts as well as extra time conditioning did not leave time for much else. Budgeting time became a hard learned habit. One that pushed many to success in Life's goals.
The 40mm focal length works well for me Kirk. My Ricoh GR 3x is just perfect for my street photography along with the 28mm GR3.
ReplyDeleteIt is so liberating going out with 2 cameras that fit in my jacket pocket.
An interesting data experiment would be to shooting with a medium zoom for a couple of months. That Sigma 18-50 on my new APS-C might be about right. Then look at the metadata for all the shots and find out which exact focal lengths you use the most. I might even try it.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a child not good at sports (running speed and sheer size are often the problems) then music may be the answer. Teaches both physical discipline and study habits, and it's a lifelong activity for many people. And it's endless.
I like the story and afree with the overall sentiment of disipline, staying power and giving your best.
ReplyDeleteAnd then comes a wakeup call. Some of us have kids with special needs/challanges who are neither bright or good at anything in particular. They try hard over and over again but are unable to succed. As a parent you just have to be there for them, give as much love as you can, listen to them, give gentle guidance, help them up when they "fall" and hope they can find their way to a good life.
We few who are both good academically, fairly successful in sport or whatever else we like to do or try are lucky in many ways - we probably won the genetic lottery and often had wise people around us.