OT: The sky was lit up from midnight onward. And the rain keeps coming. But, we managed to eke out a swim practice anyway.

 I must have been startled awake three or four times last night. I'd awaken to multiple flashes of lightning and pounding thunder that shook the windows and sounded like cannon fire from the 1812 Overture. Of course I despaired of there not being a swim practice this morning given that it's in an outdoor pool and, well...lightning. 

But, ever optimistic I rolled out of bed, ate some toasted Super Bread with a slash of crunchy peanut butter on it, washed it all down with a cup of Columbian Supremo coffee, brushed my teeth and exited the house into the steady rain. But no lightning in the moment.

I pulled into the parking lot about ten till 8. The early group didn't show because there was thunder and lightning leading up to their usual start time of 7. The gate to the pool was locked and it was apparent that our usual coach woke up to thunder, presumed our aquatic adventure was cancelled, then turned over and went back to sleep. Not so for the more diligent swimmers. 

There were two people waiting in the parking lot when I got there but quickly more people arrived through the mist. Seeing that we were bereft of a coach one enterprising swimmer got on her mobile and texted one of the coaches who lives nearby -- and for whom the swimmer had a phone number. Miraculously our kind, substitute coach showed up in her pajamas seven minutes later, opened the gates and started conjuring up a workout for the twelve hardy swimmers now in attendance. She also hopped in and swam the workout with us. Her quick response on a dreary Saturday morning was very much above and beyond the call of duty!

Knowing we were racing against the clock, against nature, against the power of lightning and the cruel power of entropy we rushed in and, only five minutes past 8 we were all deep into the warm-up. Stragglers, perhaps sensing our determination from afar, started showing up and diving in. Our coach tossed a bunch of good, hard yardage at us and we ate it up like candy. 

At 8:53 we were stopped at one end of the pool to listen to the coach tell us about the final set when a blast of lightning triggered through the glowering sky. Judging by the delay between the flash and the peal of thunder it was about a mile and a half away. The thunder rolled on for many seconds. The coach called it a good stopping point and we all jumped out of the pool and made our way to the locker rooms in the still pounding rain. Rain that was about 20 degrees cooler than the pool water. That will wake you up if you aren't already paying attention. 

The entire time in the water I had only two thoughts. One was about that front catch on my freestyle stroke. I'm still perfecting that. The other thought was about whether or not I should just bite the bullet and order the real deal of M to L lens adapter from the Leica Store. I have two Hoage Macro adapters and they work well at all focusing distances but they do have focusing helicoids and I did have one quick episode where I accidentally turned the ring while changing lenses and caused a few frames to be out of focus. I thought I might benefit by having at least one "bullet proof" precision adapter to use when I'm trying to be a more serious photographer. 

When I got home I checked on line. Found a 9+ condition used one at CameraWest and bought it. Should be here next week. It's going on the Carl Zeiss 50mm f2.0 ZM lens that's coming from B&H. Might as well have a complete set of my favorite focal lengths in these tiny sizes for those times that I want to lighten my load but still shoot sharp. Or on the off chance that one of my readers here is so enchanted with everything I've written that they can't help themselves and they decide to send me an M11 Monochrom as a "Thank you." It could happen. 

I've been putting up new photos at my portrait display blog site. Wanna see em?

Sure you do!

https://kirktucksportraits.blogspot.com/ 

And here's a little something to inspire you to exercise: https://neurosciencenews.com/fitness-neuroscience-23228/

Swimmer portrait. Getting ready for Summer over here. New "Senior" swim pass obtained for all City of Austin Pools. In addition to the swim club. Gotta have options.

 Jennifer. Swimmer. Triathlete.

For the last couple of years I have been buying the Senior Pool Pass that's offered by the city of Austin. It gives me free access to every single municipal pool from the first of April through the end of October. It also includes a hang tag for my car which gives me free parking at the Barton Springs Pool. This is very handy since that parking is also convenient for long walks around the hike and bike trails and into downtown. 

Since I swim daily at a private club, with my masters team, I won't get my money's worth out of the swim pass --- if you just consider it a primary swim resource. I get the pass because it's occasionally fun to swim somewhere different and I have a number of swimmer friends who sometimes like to mix things up by swimming laps at Deep Eddy, a beautiful, WPA era, spring feed pool that sits adjacent to Lady Bird Lake. Just across the running trail.  It's 33.3 meters instead of 25 yards so that's fun to mix in as well. Fewer turns. More distance. 

I buy the swim pass for those rare times when our primary pool is closed. Might be for a kid's swim meet or to do some needed maintenance but as any addict will tell you the idea of having to go without for even a day is... uncomfortable. I also buy the pass each year because the money generated by the sale of the passes goes right back to Austin Aquatics (the city) and helps support maintenance and staffing. 

My swimming is getting expensive. I pay $110 a month to swim with the masters team and that's in addition to club dues and the original membership fees. I also spend about $50 a month for chlorine removing shampoo and body wash. Every six months or so I find myself splashing out for new goggles ($25) and every two years or so a new swim suit ($65). I add it all up and I'm maybe spending a couple thousand dollars a year to swim. At times I look at the numbers and consider that I should just cut out all of that and sit quietly at my desk, behind my computer, just waiting to die. And then I realized that I often spend more than all swim costs combined on one lens. Or 1/6th of a  new camera body and that puts everything back into perspective.

Then my accountant ( a long distance runner and a varsity track and field athlete during his time at UT ) calculates for me the average amount the average 67 year old spends on medical co-pays, drug co-pays, therapies of all kinds, lost opportunities from being in poor shape and the very real specter of shortened and burdened lifespans. The numbers are stark. The swim costs are ultra-cheap compared to all the alternatives. And swimming with a lot of like minded and very healthy friends is uplifting and so very social. Hard to be lonely and isolated when one is surrounded by 30-40 good, decades long friends for an hour or so every day. Even my CPA, Barry, couldn't put a price tag on that.

A fringe benefit is that my swim friends are of a large range of ages, all are in really good shape, and they are fun to photograph. So different from the majority of the people I see out in public. It's a nice additional feature for a swimming photographer. It keeps me feeling younger than I am. But that might be my recently diagnosed Maturity Deficit Disorder. Don't bother looking it up in the DSM, it's a new thing. My current perceived maturity is right in line with that of an 18 year old. At least behavior-wise. Sadly, (happily) there is no cure... (this is meant to be satiric, not actual or factual diagnosis...). 

Thinking of getting a GoPro to attach to the front of my kick board. Just for something fun and different. 

Senior pass in hand. Swam hard earlier today but now heading over to Deep Eddy Pool for some relaxed stroke work. And some pool side conversations with an alternate group of swim friends. Water good.

Oh gosh. I forgot to schedule any work or chores for the day. Oh well.

OT: After the big, life altering announcements here yesterday (sarcasm intended) I thought we'd slow down a bit, relax and just talk about swimming.

Home base. 

I am aware that endless talk about cameras and lenses is not the primary reason you come to VSL. I understand that secretly you want to know more about our swim workouts and you'd perhaps like to appropriate our workout parameters for your own use. That's okay. I understand. It's hard news. 

So, after dabbling in the Zeiss Lens universe yesterday here is a palette cleanser focused on a Thursday  morning workout with coach Jenn. 

Another gray morning that's finally giving way to some sunlight now that we're all out of the pool and trying to get on with our days...

Here's the warm-up: 

1x 400 consisting of freestyle mixed every fourth lap with an alternate stroke (back, breaststroke or butterfly). 

1x200 with training fins on. 50 yards kick, 50 backstroke x 2

1x100 = 50 backstroke, 50 easy freestyle. 

Main set: 

15 x25 yards of butterfly. The stroke people love to watch but hate to swim. Why? because it's hard!

The set is on a :30 sec interval. Meaning one 25 yard swim every 30 seconds. So, 375 total yards of butterfly... And it was supposed to be sprints. Yikes. If you are prone to chest pains I think this would trigger them...

3 x75 yards mixed = 25 freestyle + 25 butterfly + 25 freestyle. 

100 yards butterfly kick (dolphin kick) with no board, no fins, no nothing. 

100 yards freestyle as recovery. 

15x25 yards of backstroke, sprinting each length strongly suggested. Going slow? The coach will yell encouragement to you! I like backstroke so this was less daunting than the "fly". 

3x75 yards mixed = 25 freestyle + 25 backstroke + 25 freestyle

100 yards breaststroke kick. No gear.

100 yards freestyle as recovery. 

15x25 yards of breaststroke on a :35 second interval, sprinting each length strongly suggested. Going slow? The coach will yell encouragement to you here as well! I also like breaststroke so this was less daunting than the "fly". 

3x75 yards mixed = 25 freestyle + 25 breaststroke + 25 freestyle

100 yards breaststroke kick. No gear.

100 yards freestyle as recovery. 

200 yard freestyle warm down. 

===================================================

A nice set to swim in one hour. Just shy of two hard miles. 

Today's dissonance: I was the oldest person in the pool this morning. That just dawned on me. Young people --- they've got it made...

And here's a little something to inspire you to exercise: https://neurosciencenews.com/fitness-neuroscience-23228/

Taking a break to eat a big breakfast, oil a couple butcher block tables, not water a lawn, and write this pressing information for your enjoyment, and then it's off to Gold's Gym for an hour (more or less) of strength training. And that's pretty much the anatomy of the first half of the day. 

I did break up my morning long enough to return an email from a client. It was a lengthy bid. Not even sure I want to do the job. Mostly just going through the motions. 

Please feel free to steal the above workout for yourself. Might make your next swim more interesting. 

I'd talk about diet but I don't have much to say about it. Make sure you are getting enough K2-m7 and be sure to take it with vitamin D3. I find it beneficial for blood pressure regulation. But I'm not a doctor so take anything I write about food with a grain of salt (see what I did just there? fun). 

 Addendum: what was I thinking about while swimming today? I guess that would be visualizing how I should be using my Sigma 65mm f2.0 lens. And on which camera. Otherwise I was continuing to think about the front end of my freestyle catch.

By the time I finish writing this post the VSL blog will have hit 30,000,000 direct page views. We've also tallied up nearly 58,000 comments from readers (and trolls) and have written over 5500 posts. That's a lot.

 

Under the railway bridge in the park.

just another morning in Austin, Texas. And some guy with an older camera and a mismatched lens walking around in yet another pair of odd hiking shoes sucking in oxygen and snapping images of stuff he might like to look at more thoroughly once he gets home...

And here's a little something to inspire you to exercise: https://neurosciencenews.com/fitness-neuroscience-23228/

Hi all. We seem to have made it over the hump and hit my target of 30 million page views even quicker than I thought we would. Sorry for the King Charles post. I just couldn't help it. All the mass media was so damn serious about the coronation. Probably a lot more exciting to see it all in person than on a screen...

And I don't really hate pickle ball so profoundly. In fact, I don't "hate it" at all. I only dislike it.  A lot.

No one ever  uses mobile phones for their original purpose anymore so instead of chatting with an art director who has been slow to respond, and light on details for a scheduled shoot, my first task this morning was to get in touch, via email and give him a little push toward moving forward on an upcoming shoot or releasing the hold date so we can both move on, productively, with our lives. After that you know what comes next. Yes, it's swim practice. 

I went off script today and swam solo at Barton Springs. The big, natural, spring fed pool in the middle of town. It's about an eighth of a mile long, about 70°(f), and today was not at all crowded. I used hand paddles and a pull buoy because I was totally focused on the front catch of my freestyle stroke. I'm sure that's too much information for most but the front catch sets up the power of the full stroke and is vital to fast swimming. Every once in a while one needs to break from the group and concentrate completely on the fundamental techniques in order not to get sloppy. Sloppy leads to bad technique which leads to disappointment and micro-quitting. I wasn't looking for yardage; just working on technique, but I did manage to get a couple miles in before calling it a day.

The pool was refreshing and different from my routine. I am happy to say that I didn't physically run into any of the other swimmers and I consider that an achievement since there are no lane lines and no lines on the bottom of that natural pool to guide swimmers onto the straight and true path. Literally, not figuratively. 

After the swim I changed into walking clothes, dropped the swim gear in the car, grabbed my camera which I had (yes!) left in the car, on the front seat, along with a hat, and went for a short walk around the lake. The camera I was playing with today was the Leica SL which has become my go-to, favorite camera. I paired it with the new-ish 28mm Carl Zeiss ZM lens because I've lately fallen under the spell of the wider focal length. I never thought this would happen to me, especially since I've so often expressed my undying love for the 50mm focal length --- but there it is. 

There are several things I've come to like about the 28mm focal length. The one I have for the SL is made for M series cameras and I use it with an adapter. But since it's an M series lens it's much smaller and lighter than lenses made for DSLRs or big mirrorless cameras. I was worried at first about the corner performance of the CZ lens but have since found the lens profile for this particular lens in the lens correction menu of Lightroom Classic and am now very comfortable with all the optical black magic of the lens and camera combination. While reviewers who were incompetent enough to try and use the lens with a Sony mirrorless camera body and then announced that corner performance sucked I did make an effort to do a bit of research and to match the lens to a camera body that was engineered to compensate for the different way in which older lens designs interact with various filter stacks in full frame cameras. Everything led me to the SL and SL2 cameras as good solutions for overall imaging quality with what are, really, excellent quality lenses. 

The other thing I've come to like (again) with manual focusing 28mm lenses is the ability to stop down the aperture to f8.0, set the focus to 10 or 15 feet and get nearly every shot in focus from front to back with little need to tweak. But old habits seems to have me magnifying and double-checking many shots ---- because I have the time and --- just in case. Being able to effectively use the vast depth of field is so, so, so much better than being dependent on auto focus. At least for me. 

The weather here has been dicey as of late. We're constantly presented with forecasts of thunder storms only to go on getting gray skies and near misses. Just enough rain to put the kibosh on random outdoor plans but not enough to keep the lawns moist. The moisture thing is now forecast to happen in a big and dramatic way on Saturday; this weekend. The Met. Sages are predicting something like five inches of hard rain midday. Enough to cause flooding on many of the local, low lying roadways in the area. Not to worry, we're up in the hills here and 400+ feet above sea level. Any flooding we get is localized to puddles in the yards or small messes as a result of foundation lines being too low and water not moving away fast enough. 

But all the more reason to do my 28mm walk today since it's a lens that's not stated to be water proof or even water resistant and the use of an adapter compounds that deficiency. 

I am, overall, thrilled with the look generated by the 28mm as I used it this morning. It's sharp and makes very detailed files. The lens profile in the LRC lens correction menu is great and takes care of both geometric distortion as well as "dodgy" corners. I especially love how small and discreet the lens is, even on a bigger body such as the SL.

Rendering depth. A wide angle thing I think.

Rendering nice red. A Leica SL thing I think.

It's been a rough month for me. B has been spending half her time in San Antonio helping to take care of her mom. It's not fun for her and in my case it makes for a fragmented schedule and a fragmented mind. I'm always anticipating her arrival and then her departure and I can't seem to get much done. Other than clean the house and restock the now-working GE refrigerator. Clients are in the wait and see mode about assignments. They'd like to see if we're going to have a debt ceiling deal, see if we're going to head into a crippling recession, and waiting to see if they can just toss everything over to a staff member with an iPhone and a generative A.I. program. 

I don't really care which way the whole thing goes it's just hard to decide on a pathway in the moment. Too much is in flux. Not ready to totally retire but no longer ready to put up with much nonsense either. We'll call 2023 a year of research and exploration. 

Crappiest thing in the moment is the looming expiration of my passport. I need to get it renewed but I'm in that wilderness between deciding that now is the time to send in the old one with the renewal forms or whether I should make a few quick trips to get it out of my system and then apply at the very last minute. 

I explored the path of 'urgent' renewal but appointments to do that are far and few in the Texas area. I'd almost stand a better chance flying somewhere in Canada and then accidentally losing or destroying my passport and then throwing myself on the mercy of the consular system. But that would be unethical and maybe illegal. So I'll muddle through. With my luck the day I ship everything off I'll get asked to do a cool job with half naked super models in Istanbul or Tokyo. And I'll have to wave off the clients for the seven to nine weeks it currently takes to get a new passport back in one's hands; not counting the shipping.

I know, I know. It's very much a first world problem. I just remember fondly the days when there was a hidden office at the state capitol building that would handle this sort of thing for legislators. Little known was the fact that it was illegal to restrict the service from the general public so they just did a good job hiding it. I used it several times for renewals and one could get a passport in a week from start to finish. There was also a driver's license renewal service there. Both are gone now. But much mourned by me.

I got a lot of mail from people here who want me to continue blogging. I'll try to make it work as long as I have clients to talk about and am doing stuff that might translate into good blog material. The last five years, from around the time of my mom's passing, through the year and half of caregiving for my dad, followed by a couple years of Covid pandemic and now B's mom, have put a huge damper on my ability and desire to prospect for new clients and have limited the amount of photography, external to the central Texas area, I been able to accept. Seems like I always needed to be here waiting for "the other shoe to drop." It's a bitch being responsible and responsive. It sucks to always try and do "the right thing." But there it is. 

Food trucks. None of the amenities of regular restaurants but all of the prices. 

The average food truck price for a quarter pound hamburger in Austin now is

$12-$14 dollars. Makes McDonalds seem like a charity. And no restrooms...no air conditioning.

I do have a request for members here. I'm as much of a blog reader as anyone else but I've run out of good photography blogs to follow. MJ seems to be struggling to find a direction that's more about photography and less about personal trials and tribulations and while I will continue to read his blog and support him I am also looking for blogs that I may have overlooked but which you think have great photographic value. I like to read about new gear, techniques, new approaches to business, etc. If you have suggestions to pass along I'd love to hear them. At the base, here at VSL, I've tried to stay centered on the core strength of the blog which I think of as all things photographic. 

The one thing I am not interested in is constantly looking backwards at the recent and not so recent history of photography. I won't typically be directing you to a Walker Evans retrospective or an Ansel Adams show. We've all been there and we've all seen that. If you haven't you need to get a good book about the history of photography and dig in. I've researched it (deeply), taught it at "Uni" (which we Americans call: Universities or Colleges), lived it (Russell Lee and Garry Winogrand were both instructors at UT) and written about it. Now I want to see who is on the front lines today. Not who did something we all know about 40 or 50 years ago. Same with cameras. What's driving photography now? We can dive into recent cameras (last 20 years?) but I don't see myself pounding the keyboard to dribble out yet another article about how good the Hasselblad 500CM was back in the day... Nor pretty much about film of any kind. 

So, if you know someone good on YouTube or with a written blog and you'd like to share with us please put it in a comment below. It might help more people than just me. 

Loving those reds....

This "convenience store" on Barton Springs Rd. has been there for decades.

They are far more than a conventional quick stop store. They have a massive collection of good wines, fresh foods, real, fresh coffee, good quality pastries and much more. A treasure.

One should be able to tell that by their signage. 

Barton Springs Pool. What a wonderful place to start out the day.

Even without a first cup of coffee. But now there's a food trailer just 

outside the fence for that....

Notice the nice lens correction via the LRC lens profiles. Nice. 

Makes the lens much, much better. A good reason to shoot raw.

A walk  through paradise gardens. Now just need A.I. to add the little 

boy and little girl holding hands, a la Eugene Smith...

So, the long and short of it all is that you have me writing stuff here for the foreseeable future. First chance I get to travel abroad I'll be taking it and you'll have to suffer through some "hit and miss" delivery stuff. But for now, if I think it's at all interesting I'm going to post. Thank Bob A. in part. He's an inspiration to me now. Spent time on the phone with him early in the month. He's been reading the blog for a long time and let me know how he really feels about it. It's enough to make it work for me.

One thing though. I hate, hate, hate it when I write something caustic, critical or just mean and someone has to rush in and tell me how "disappointed" they are with me. If you think I'm a mix of Buddha, Jesus Christ and Ansel Adams then you've manufactured a standard, an expectation, to which I'll never live up and don't want to. If someone writes something stupid I'm probably going to point it out and since I've never worked in the diplomatic corps (close but no cigar...) I'm not going to be particularly politically correct and all warm and fuzzy. Call me on it at your peril. I am self-aware enough to know when I'm stretching the bounds of propriety and when I'm not. I don't need you to guilt trip me like someone's mom. If I step over the line I'll apologize, sincerely. But I define where my line is. Not you. If your delicate sensibilities will be hurt you might want to find a blander blog. They do exist. Still. 

Not that I want to be the Charles Bukowski of photoblogs but still....

This is as good a place as any to go for a run. The lake through downtown Austin

(Part of the Colorado River) has a series of ever bigger loops to choose from. From 2.9 miles to 12+ miles. All it takes is a pair of shoes and, in the Summer, a water bottle. 

Thanks to everyone who commented in the last month. The site runs on your energy as much as mine. When there's no feedback loop or metric of engagement my own writer-reactor system slows down and gets gummy. I appreciate all the hoopla lately. It's good. 

Signing off now to go do a "happy hour" with the former CFO of my old advertising agency. We've kept up for decades. Mutual admiration society. Or the expectation that the other person will pick up the tab for the bottle of wine and the cheese plate. Kinda works that way too. In a good way. We'll check in and make sure each is doing well. Then we'll toast to our long, happy ownership of certain equities we've held long enough to see a 3200% return from and we'll imagine (just in the moment) that we're smart instead of just lucky....

The under belly of the pedestrian bridge across Lady Bird lake. 

Cloudy days are good for shots like this.

OT: Pickle Ball. A fun "pseudo" sport or harbinger of the collapse of modern civilization. Discuss.

 I first became aware of pickle ball when my swim club re-configured an outdoor basketball court, installed by a vote from a previous board of directors, into a pickle ball court. Much smaller, dimensionally, than a tennis court and with a similar net crossing it and dividing it into two sides, the court is like a tiny tennis court for pixies who don't wish to move far. Which is probably a benefit to the people I have seen engaged in the game. They seem not to want to run very far or very fast when playing. They are further helped in this endeavor by the construction of the balls which are plastic and have holes in them. What we would have called a "whiffle ball." It's hard to imagine a person sustaining an injury from an errant whiffle ball strike as the balls are neither dense nor heavy. And have no sharp corners with which to put an eye out...

To my mind this new game is analogous to "water aerobics", a pass time for people who are not happy to "break a sweat" and who communally conspire never to raise their heart rates about 80 bpm. Although just spending time in the water might be more healthful.

Pickle Ball arrived on the scene and into the public consciousness as quickly as did Rep. George Santos. And delivered to me the same feelings.  I have just seen my first ads for real estate developments which brag about their shiny, new Pickle Ball courts. No doubt this will join bowling in the Olympics. Games shabbily masquerading as sports. Sports ingenuously masquerading as fitness. 

Maybe this droll game was introduced to distract people from inflation, the threat of recession and the instability of global alliances right now. If so it's, in my mind, a poor substitute for just heading to the local bar and getting plastered. At least in those instances there is money changing hands and at least tangentially buoying the local economies. 

I have nothing against people wanting to waste their time and energy. I have the same regard for croquet and snooker. But I draw the line when people who are soon to be demoted from friends to acquaintances, or from acquaintances to Trumpian, "I never met them. I have no idea who they are or where they came from!" badger me to join them in their misguided pursuit of whiffle activities. Or try to engage me in conversations about the positive attributes of whifflage. Or breathlessly (not as a result of pickle ball) exclaim that "it's the fastest growing sport in the country..." 

I can only imagine that this is yet another attempt to assuage the boredom of traditional religion by creating a (semi) active activity to replace it. 

I'm too busy to start pushing a legislative initiative to ban pickle ball but wanted my gentle readers to understand how pernicious this new activity is. This, along with other aimless faux sports, are dangerous because they give rise to the assumption that people are getting some sort of healthy exercise. 

There are few true sports. They consist mostly of running, swimming, track and field events, maybe basketball because the players run a lot, and, of course, swimming. Did I already mention swimming? 

Pickle ball serves to demean the real sports. We must be on guard.

Alert: quasi, but not completely quasi satire. Play PB if you want to just try not to talk about it in polite company. We really aren't interested. 

Do you play? Was it a court mandated punishment?

If the UK made no cars of their own would King Charles be willing to drive a Chevy Camaro? Not a stock, base model but the top of the line, in full sport trim! What car (other than UK models) do you think King Charles should drive?

He would be driving it himself in this scenario and not just riding in the back. And now that I think about it the back seats would be too cramped for a comfortable riding  situation.

Your thoughts?

Me? No dog in the hunt. Just came to mind as I was stuffing errata into my pockets in prep for a walk...

Is it really King Charles or is it "The Wiz"?

 

I saw this absolutely ridiculous, laughable, embarrassing "portrait" of King Charles in my news feed and it immediately reminded me of a Jerry Seinfeld episode in which the 'Elaine' character dates a guy who turns out to be "The Wiz", an over the top spokesperson on a TV commercial for discount furniture. The resemblance is remarkable. 

I guess it's okay to still have a monarchy. It probably beats the sheer horror of our previous president. But at the same time modern, sane and tasteful citizens of the U.K. must be very uncomfortable having their grown up leaders dressing up like this. Just an observation. Charles in full regal drag.

complaints about the post? See our subscription department...

Better camera? Or better frame of mind?

Eeyore's Birthday Party 2019.

I went to the big Spring celebration at Pease Park that's called, Eeyore's Birthday Party. It was about a week and a half ago. I took a fancy camera from a posh name brand. To be honest, just about everything I shot with the smart, well built, $5,800 camera was crap. Stuff I could have shot back in the 1980s on Kodak Gold color negative film and any old SLR. My brain just wasn't in the game. I've become jaded. It's been harder to enjoy plain stuff. Harder to be part of the crowd.

I didn't realize I'd become such a stuck in the mud until I came across this old folder of images from just four years ago. The way I've been thinking about things has been quite different since the death of my father, the Covid pandemic, the Trump years, and the general collapse of civilization. I know it's just my skewed point of view but when I can clearly see that I was having much more fun with a Canon G15 point and shoot camera than a gleaming Leica Q2 it made me pause and reconsider....everything. 

I've been writing a blog with no real road map and no plan. I endlessly (really, daily) moderate comments that tell me that: I'm not a particularly good photographer. My black and white works sucks. My observations are boring. My chosen subject matter is stupid. Disregarding my long and deep history with photography; both hands on, professionally and in academia, commenters still suggest I look up obvious, historic photographers to "help" me improve my "vision." The commenters only seem to like the most mainstream techniques. Any variation from the YouTube/DPR technical standards is met with ridicule and disparagement. My motives called into question. It's been about six years since I took away all affiliate links or ads of any kind from the blog and I still get accused, regularly, of being a "shill" for some camera company. Still accused of writing about some camera or lens as click bait for sales. I guess it's always been this way. It's just today, looking how much fun I was having back even in 2019 makes me a bit sad. 

I went back into the house a few minutes ago and found the G15 in my desk drawer along with three fairly recent batteries and a charger. I put a card in it, stuck the batteries on a charger and, after I see B off again (Florence Nightingale)  I'll head out and play with it, carrying with me a total disregard for any opinions the resulting images might generate. It's beautiful outside. I'm tired of writing unsolicited stuff about photography for an audience I've mostly never met. I just want to shoot some stuff for myself today. Turn off the news feed, unplug the landline, leave the mobile phone in the desk drawer and forget everything I've ever learned about doing photography "correctly." 

I know most of the VSL readers are smart, compassionate people. I know I should have a thicker skin when moderating comments. But that's not the way I'm wired. Taking a deep breath. 

 

A fun cartoon from the New Yorker...

 

It feels that way sometimes.