A break from swimming posts to revisit the classics of modern life. (updated 5pm same day...)

There is life beyond photography. And one enjoyable part of that life is the highly curative and effectively focusing elixir we have come to call...coffee. During my long and near endless pursuit of  great coffee I have tried every imaginable brewing method, backed by everything from French presses to enormous, belching Swiss coffee making machines. But, in my opinion the best coffee (for me) comes from the simplest brewing methodology: the pour over. 

One thing that makes coffee enjoyable, and life itself manageable, is having predictable routines. To that end I've sampled hundreds of different coffee beans (roasted and ground) and have decided that one particular bean works best for me. It's an organically grown, Columbian Supremo, custom roasted at Trianon Coffee here in Austin to yield the perfect "medium" roast cup of coffee. Once I honed in on this particular variety/combination I have not wavered in years. And each morning every cup I brew is as close to perfect as I can imagine. Where coffee is concerned...I have become satisfied.

I was soaking in the aroma of the brewing coffee when I decided to commemorate one of my favorite pillars of consistency in life by making a portrait of the process. I grabbed an SL2 camera from the dining room table, set the Voigtlander 50mm APO lens to f2.0 and shot a few frames at the closest focusing distance. Ah. As blurry in the photo as my vision is pre-coffee... But the leading edge is in focus.

I know a few people who do not drink coffee...at all. I find that, subconsciously, I can't bring myself to fully trust them. They seem somehow suspect. As though they are shy about embracing life...  The same sort of people who profess to not liking to read fiction. The idea of never reading good novels is to me the same as saying "I am allergic to empathy and pleasure." (I make allowances for people trained from birth to "enjoy" tea...).

This photo of my Nikon F is included because I am thrilled to have found it. Again. I keep film cameras in an expansive file cabinet drawer along with old tear sheets and sample brochures from past projects. I was showing some direct mail pieces to a photographer a month or so ago and inadvertently covered up the free ranging F camera with some paper samples. Apparently I did a really good job burying the camera. 

When I went to find it to see if the modern Voigtlander F mount lenses worked on the oldest F body (they do...) I could't find it. That was two weeks ago. I tore the studio apart trying to locate it but was stymied at every turn. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what happened to that darned camera. Was I losing my mind? Had I passed it along to someone and then purged the memory of the event? Was this a symptom of some sort of mental decline? 

Today, as I was swimming a set of 15 x 100 yard swims, in the hot pool, during practice this morning, I was presented, halfway through a flip turn, with a clear and instant memory of my left hand moving a small stack of brochures over to one side in the drawer. And then (turn completed)  I had a clear vision, in the moment, of the camera ending up at the bottom of the messy stack of papers. When I came home I went straight to the filling cabinet, moved the stack aside and found the missing Nikon F. I was overjoyed for several reasons. Mostly the return of the camera and also the revitalization of a memory.

With that in mind I pulled it out of the drawer, blew off the dust with a bulb blower,  dressed it up with a similar vintage 50mm f1.4 lens (which is remarkably good, still) and photographed it to celebrate. Again, I pressed the SL2 and the APO lens into service. 

The camera sits surrounded by the ephemerata of my daily photo life. I am happy to have it back in the fold. 

I end most week days by watching the News Hour on  PBS. It's a pre-dinner habit of long standing. But lately (last five or six years) the news content has been mostly disheartening. My spirits are generally buoyed by my one other consistent, early evening habit; a glass of red wine before our evening meal. I sit on the couch, wine glass balanced on stacked books on the rough hewn coffee table and watch the last rays of sun waft through the first set of French doors into the living room and flow across the old, wood floor. I nearly always notice how well the backlighting outlines the shape of the glass. And I always consider popping a little bit of focused backlight through the wine in the glass to brighten it up. But at this point in the day I am usually too lazy to go back to the studio, grab the right light and modifiers and interrupt the newscast, trying to get just the right effect in the wine glass without changing anything about the good feel of the background. 

The news is on here from six till seven p.m. Dinner is usually at 8. Sometimes B. cooks and sometimes I cook. And sometimes we give up and retreat to our favorite neighborhood bistro where we almost always order our same favorites. Mine is a salad Nicoise with fresh Ahi tuna. 

And now that we've seen all the episodes of "Ted Lasso" on Disney and "The Diplomat" on Netflix we usually settle in with good books for hours beyond dinner. 

By habit, from our pst full-on work days, we are homebodies during the "work week" and tend to save our socializing for the weekends. It's more convenient for everyone. 

about photography. I had convinced myself recently that I wanted to pick up a Leica monochrom M series camera to play with. There are some relative bargains out there... But lately, with the heat curtailing or delaying my ability to wander around and make photographs of anything I think I've talked myself out of the idea. 

A day or two without adult supervision though might just shift the desire back to center stage. I'll keep you posted. 

Now sitting in a folding lawn chair next to the mailbox. A sun blocking umbrella in one hand and a sweating glass of iced tea in the other. Waiting (im)patiently for the arrival of the mail....

Passport delivered around lunch time. VSL Supreme CEO now happy. Thanks State Dept.