My preferred camera in 1978. The Canonet QL17. Used here in Avignon.

 @1978 Kirk Tuck

Paris with the EOS-1 and the original 85mm f1.1.2 lens.

 

You know that power plant I always seem to love photographing? You can't get this view any more. Why? It's surrounded on three sides by giant, high rise buildings. Layers and layers of them.

 

But at one time (2010) it was out in the  middle of a field and the nearby warehouses were old cinder block buildings with one or two stories and a lot of lonesome space in between. 

Time flies when you turn a city into a Boom-scape. 

Ceiling Detail at the Alexander Palace in Pushkin, Russia. Just 400 meters from the Catherine Palace.

 1995 was also the year I spent a couple of freezing cold weeks in St. Petersburg, Russia. I was there with a team from the World Monuments Fund documenting art and artifacts from the last palace of the Czars. While I was looking up and photographing this detail in the Palace (then the headquarters of the Russian Naval Intelligence Agency) I was escorted by my translator and a military officer who came complete with a sidearm and a list of things I could NOT photograph. 

One of my "fondest" memories was standing knee deep in snow in front of the Alexander Palace shooting Polaroids to share with the two tank crews who were manning the tanks just in front of the entry way. It was a successful bribe that granted me access to photograph the exterior of the building on a chilly February afternoon. 

One of my most used Hasselblads on that trip was the SWC/M. The one with the super-wide Biogon lens permanently attached to the camera body. Ah, the film days....

We were, I think, the first western survey team allowed in the Palace in about 70 years. It was an interesting time in Russia....

Summer passtime. Looking through photographs. Finding stuff I liked. Figuring out why.

 

Alanis Morrisette at Liberty Lunch for Sony Records. August 29, 1995

What I wrote a few years later....

"...The distinguished members of the photo-press operated in the space between the barrier and the stage.  As memory serves there were exactly three photographers at the concert. It was a time of film and getting fun shots actually required some.....knowledge.

All I needed was one good shot. I was shooting in black and white and I took two cameras to the event with me. One was a Leica M4 with a 50mm Summicron, loaded with Tri-X film. The other was a Leica M6 ttl .85 with a 90mm Summicron, also loaded with Tri-X. I didn't plan on shooting much with the 90 but it sure made a nice semi-spot meter with which to gauge exposure."

The keeper image for me was the one I posted here. I used up one 36 exposure roll of Tri-X film. Of course it was all stage lighting as flash in the press pit was not allowed. It was a time when you really did have to know how to measure light with a meter, how to focus on a fast moving performer and how to wait for the right moment so you didn't run out of film. 

1995 is a nostalgic year for me. That's the year Ben was born. The year I went to Rome on a personal photo adventure with two medium format Mamiya 6 cameras and hundreds of rolls of Kodak's new chromagenic film, T-Max 400 CN. along with my photographer friend, Paul.  

https://filmphotography.eu/en/kodak-t-max-t400-cn/

When we got back from our Rome shoots Paul and I both made big prints and had a two person show at Austin's best Italian restaurant, Madam Nadalini's. Nearly 400 people came to the opening. It was an amazing time back when photography/art still had the power to enthrall ordinary people. And back when openings were a big social draw.

And in the middle of all that year's fun I found myself sandwiched between the stage and the crowd at Liberty Lunch photographing one of the most popular musicians of the moment. It was August in Austin and we were all drenched in sweat. The crowd of young kids, mostly women, roared every time a song started. It was a bit intoxicating. 

I made a print in the darkroom the next day and that was the coda. When I look back to see what we could pull off with completely manual cameras and "slow" film I am embarrassed for all the "photographers" now who can't conceive of working with anything less than complete automation and endless technical "training wheels." Or limitless ISO sensors.

But I'm sure the guys who photographed out in the wild, with glass negatives in giant bellows cameras, a hundred years ago, would feel exactly the same about my generation of photographers. 

Context is helpful.

Exploring the 45mm Sigma on the Leica CL. Nice and long at a full frame equivalent of about 68mm. Always interesting to change one's point of view.

 

Heading quickly toward the mid-point of the year. Maybe I should do the second half in color. 

I was very intentionally photographing in black and white today. Jpeg only. No turning back. But then I saw this box in a store window and I just had to change over to color. I thought the subject matter demanded it. 

 

I decided to skip the Jan. 6th testimony today and take a walk instead. It was rather nice. I mean, how much more evidence do we really need before we start prosecuting the treasonous, the grifters and the riff-raff? I'd rather listen to the lovely, lilting, lyrical click of the CL's shutter...

 

It came to me in a dream. I should shoot more photographs with the Leica CL. And I should be more adventurous in my lens choices. Or something like that. 

Speaking of dreams, I've been experimenting on myself again and with interesting results. I've decided to go to bed one hour earlier than I have been over the last few years. Trying to give myself a fighting chance at getting a good 7.5 or 8.0 hours of sleep in before swim practice. So far the results are good and I'm not finding any real unintended consequences that I can peg back to the new regimen. But I am finding that I remember dreams much more than I have in the past. And sometimes the dreams wake me up.

I woke up two mornings ago because I was having a dream about swimming the butterfly stroke and I was working, in my dream, on my dolphin kick. But as my brain was dreaming about the kick my legs were actually doing the kick in real life. I woke up because I was getting frustrated (in my dream) since I felt like I was working hard but not making any forward progress. Today I woke up from a dream about my freestyle arm recovery. 

As a blogger who writes about photography it would have been a lot better for all of us if I'd been dreaming about some new and innovative way to make great photographs. Something I could share that would make you rush to your camera, hoist the strap over your shoulder and then run out the door to try out some almost unimaginably cool technique. But sadly... no. I'll see if I can "change the station" in my dreams going forward. 

In the previous blog I talked about using the Sigma Contemporary 90mm lens with the Sigma fp. A few people liked the way the combination rendered color and the way the images looked, technically. Even while mentioning the mediocre content...

I wondered if all that glorious technical performance was due to the Sigma fp camera or just how much putting the correct lens on a camera shifts the results. Today I put the Sigma 45mm lens on the CL and decided to see how much different this combo might be. But I more or less give up now. All recent cameras are fine. Most recent lenses are admirable. Put any of them together and the shooter becomes the weak link. How else to explain it?

Last night it ended up raining here for hours and hours. A wonderful continuous, soaking rain but with none of the wild gyrations, impetuous downpours or random flooding. The episode did wonders to clear the air across the city and my experience walking through downtown was downright pleasant. 

I am bored already with Summer. I'm tired of the hot days and the humid nights. I tried to book a trip to a far off city to visit a friend but when I went on line to book a hotel every single one of the hotels I wanted to stay in were totally sold out for the week in mid-July in which I wanted to travel. And then there is the uncertainty of air travel. I guess my next recourse to getting out of town is to head to San Antonio or back over to San Angelo. Someplace I can drive to in less than 4 hours. Someplace where there is always a vacant hotel room. 

Looking back over the last four or five years (factoring out Covid lockdowns) I find that June and July have traditionally been my slowest months for business. And that's sad because even though I have a big chunk of time in which I can get away I can't imagine a worse time to go to the kinds of places I'd like to go. Filled with tourists, Record heat waves all over the globe and every measure of uncertainty one could toss at the world. I know from experience that major cities like Rome, Lisbon, Paris, Berlin, etc. are much, much more pleasant in the Fall months, after the tourist clear out and the kids are back in school. 

We're aiming for that. In the meantime I'm happy to swim more. In fact swimming is becoming my major activity for the Summer. I just need to cut out the dream kicking before someone gets hurt...

If you are out traveling right now you are braver than me. Or just heedless and not very risk averse. But more power to you. Life is short and, if not now then when?

Me? I think I'll just maximize being a tourist in my own town. At least I know some of the good places to hit for dinner...