I put this blog on hold back in July but the last five months seems like so much longer a time. I thought at that point that I'd said everything I had to say about photography and thought, perhaps, that it would spur other formerly interesting bloggers to renew their enthusiasm and provide me (and everyone else) with some new, good content. Something fun to read between appointments or while waiting for the sun to get in just the right position. But no. I fear most photo bloggers are just aging out, have lost their spark and are just settling in to doing the only thing they really ever mastered. Writing about writing.
It would be easy to blame it all on the camera companies for not coming out with marvelous new "treasures" every quarter. The equipment reviews are so much easier to write... But many writers have just thrown up their hands and walked away. Mostly because the advertising revenues are drying up. The ones who remain seem to think that now is the time just for reminiscing. Gliding into oblivion while rummaging around in their closet of memories looking for a cozy cardigan, woven together with vignettes of the past, to keep them company while rocking in a favorite chair during the short, dark afternoons.
Can some writing, no matter how detailed and punctilious, be well described as...sedentary? I imagine so.
I was buying into the story that photography as it was meant to be practiced was in hastening decline. But then I took the cure. What is the cure? Suiting up in your favorite casual clothes, tying those walking shoes with double knots so they don't come loose just as something exciting happens in front of you, grabbing a well worn and favorite camera with a sparky lens on the front and heading out the door to walk the urban streets and see what's new. And on so many of those walks I encountered... real photographers. Not just keyboard jockeys writing multiple theses about those "golden years" but vibrant, young, old, and mostly enthusiastic practitioners who were just out for joyous walks in the real world. Well, as much as you could call Austin, Texas the real world.
So, I've spent the last five months not hunched over a keyboard and not occasionally having to toss out nasty anonymous comments from one particular person who has made it his new working from his parents' basement job to tell me I'm an asshole. It's been refreshing.
Here I'll make a somewhat sad confession. I missed two things in the five month hiatus. One was good written content specifically about photography, taking photographs and playing with photographs. There is so little out there that I sheepishly, from time to time, took a break from endless YouTube scrolling to go back and read my own work from years or even a decade ago. And some of it was good. At least I thought so. The second thing I missed was the straightforward process of writing. Of sitting down at my office desk and "talking" to my vast collection of friends, peers, colleagues and strangers who used to come by this blog to agree, disagree, preach at me about manners, and generally supply mostly altruistic give and take. My fingers missed caressing the keyboard. I am in the process, here, of warming up the fingers and reacquainting them with the pleasures of typing with gusto. Most of all though, I missed the regular and well considered comments all these friends and peers left. Well, except for the aforementioned asshole...
What have I been up to? Mostly the same old stuff. Driving the new staff car around to little Texas towns to catalog their hurried transition into new bedroom communities. Working with the same clients I've written about over the years. Billing outrageous amounts. Spending most of it on new toys. Trying my best to understand investing and it's scary opposite, withdrawing my own money and spending it. Which is actually kind of fun.
Have I wholesale switched camera systems? Naw. Still soldiering on with the two Leica systems. One new camera has been added to the mix but also a current Leica model. So, I've been using one brand of cameras almost exclusively since 2020. It's a record of consistency in camera ownership for me. I thought I'd chaff at sticking with a routine --- but no. It's fun to lean on the familiarity of the cameras and menus when you might enjoy turning off parts of your brain and just using your gear via muscle memory.
I've come back online here (my intention is to be more sporadic than in the past) to talk about a few things that I, as a photographer, am grappling with. One is the glide into irrelevance that I think we all experience once we've logged enough years and lived through so many revolutions in our practice; our profession. Another theme is how to maximize the fun of photography in an age of distractions and the utter diffusion of individual work into the ever-widening arena of shared images.
If you believe the propaganda from most hobbyists, bloggers, V-loggers, pundits, for profit photo websites, etc. You would think the entire world of photographers is hellbent on discarding all of their traditional, big tech cameras and rushing to buy the digital equivalent of point and shoot cameras as represented by popular models from the 1990s film days. A mad rush toward Ricoh GR111 variants and the ever elusive Fuji X100VIs. In the retro film space that would be a gold rush to find Contax, Nikon, Olympus and Canon point and shoot film eaters from the same time period.
I won't be writing nice stuff. I won't spend much time here digging into the past. All we have and all we are able to work with is NOW. The past is gone. The future is not promised to anyone. Now is the only thing that really interests me. I don't care if you used to be the president of your high school chess club or if you made 10,000 8x10 inch prints of something in your old black and white darkroom. Tell me what you are interested in right now. Show me. Archiving is something to get around to after you are dead.
One thing I'm really not tolerant of this time around is the idea that everything is too expensive. It is and it's not. If you are here and you have the time to read blogs about photography and other hobbies you are probably not a paycheck to paycheck working person anymore. You may think new cameras are expensive but you might also have just spent $50K on a new car without blinking. It's all about perspective. Not the skewed perspective of keystoning buildings and tilted walls but with priorities about what to spend money on. Let's not dwell on price here. Let's burrow down to the actual gear and not the perils of acquiring it. I think if you've made it to a certain age you might have more fun just saying, "Fuck it. I'll buy what I want." and be done with it. Life is too short to pinch all the pennies till they scream.
I'm writing this blog as much for me as I am for you. I don't charge anything to you. There is no firewall. No affiliate links to manipulate your buying business. No Patreon begging. But on the flip side I won't tolerate much nasty or uniformed feedback. Just sayin'
Hope life is treating you well. More mannequins and more tipping over high rise buildings to come...
But circling back to the current cameras markets... if you talk to working professionals and people who do photography as a real art, with a profit intention attached, you'll find that full frame and medium format, current, interchangeable lens cameras are still the mainstay. The world at large is actually filled with endless Sony A7, A-something variations along with Nikon full frame Z models and (hard to keep up with model designations) Canon full frame cameras. The one brand that consistently sells out of everything they bring to market? Well, statistically, that would be the Leica M, Q and SL cameras. Just try snagging a new model of your choice at any certified retailer's shop. Or online. I'm beginning to think they invented "the waiting list." And mostly you'll find that the good photographers are still working and making money. Weird, huh?
I spent a lot of time over the past five months working with and trying to play with the Fuji S50ii medium format cameras and a drawer that's filling up quickly with adapted Pentax 645 lenses as well as the occasional GFX lens. I've used the MF cameras on five or six daylong commercial assignments, mostly doing environmental portraits and I have to say that I much prefer working with the Leica SL variants for most jobs. The Fuji menus are a mess. The operational handling is profoundly middle brow. And worst of all, if you have the camera in direct sunlight and the temperatures are higher than 85° Fahrenheit you WILL get a temperature warning followed in short order by a complete camera shut down. Not a good thing in a "professional" tool. Added to that is battery life that makes most other cameras look competent in their power handling performance.
If I get around to it I'd like to write about the differences in handling, and also end results, between the Leica SL, the SL2 and the SL2-S. All different from each other but all the best but in all different ways.
I'm still swimming every day. I walk a few miles most days. I have no medical issues. And I am happy.
Hope the same for you.
