Snapshot gallery. June 30, 2023. From Martin Luther King BLVD to 29th Street and back. Shooting with a Sigma fp and a Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 ZM Biogon. Midday.

 

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.

 

Testing out cameras and lenses (and word processors) in anticipation of a month long celebration of swimming here on the blog!!! Inspired by a reader and frequent commenter who, I believe, just can't get enough writing and photos about swimming. Oh boy!

One could approach the topic of swimming from the popular stereotype of the sports photographer in which case I'd be auditioning fast as fast can be cameras like the Sony Alpha One or the Nikon Z9. In that case I'd also have a bunch of fast 100-600mm f2.8 sports lenses to try out --- even though, to my knowledge, no one even makes such a beast. I could take a page from David Burnett and try shooting moving athletes with a Speed Graphic or something like that. Or I could channel my inner Annie Leibovitz and set up a bunch of lighting at the pool with which to make black and white portraits of swimmers (while praying no one gets electrocuted....) but I think I'll stick to the way I like to shoot and just be.....leisurely about it. 

After a total immersion year of nothing but Leica, Leica, Leica I'm suddenly interested in a much more basic and unwieldy camera; the Sigma fp. Which I have coupled with some of those Zeiss ZM lenses I picked up a few weeks ago, along with some of those Voigtlander lenses I bought more recently. The camera is slow to use, slow to focus and I have the choice between Scylla and Charybdis of either using the back screen in dirty baby diaper hold or using the huge and ungainly optical loupe that Sigma makes for the camera. Haven't decided just yet. 

There are many detractions to using the fp. I'd start with fruit fly level battery life. Then go to sloooow AF. Segue to a boxy and uncomfortable set of haptics when not using a bunch of add-on prosthetics and finish up with eccentric menus. But on the plus side the camera is painfully cute, has wonderful, amazing colors and one of the lowest noise sensors I've ever played with. So, not all bad. Not at all.

I've owned one since they were introduced and for the life of me I can't seem to get rid of it or sell it or just leave it in a sock drawer. It's an addictive package. And an antithetical choice for a month of swim articles which is probably why I am so interested in using it for that. 

Male model above holding the Sigma fp complete with an ancient Canon 50mm f1.8 FD manual focus lens. Might just be the perfect lens for an artistic project comprised of swimmers and swimming pools. Expanded, maybe, to even include lakes.

Translation for the the nuance deprived: Not really going to do a month of swim articles. Just annoyed in the moment. It'll pass.

I have been overwhelmed lately by blog readers demanding more swim content. And images of my favorite pools. And details of our workouts. And, if possible, these posts should also be larded with camera information of some sort. Okay! I hear you!!!

 

this is Deep Eddy Pool. It was built by the Work Projects Administration back 

in the 1930s. It's situated about fifty feet from Lady Bird Lake but it 

does not use lake water. All the water in the pool is spring fed from

deep wells. No chlorine. No salt. No itchy skin...

I've been on a roll lately with my swimming. Today is the 12th day in a row I've been in the pool swimming either a workout with my team or (today) doing my own thing in the Deep Eddy pool. This morning is a Monday. Our competition pool  near my house is closed on Mondays so I've taken to getting up in time to be at the gates of Deep Eddy Pool when it opens for lap swimming at 9 a.m. 

It was one of those mornings where sleep was elusive so I started the day with some yoga and chased those routine pretzel poses with a nice cup of good coffee. Grabbed the swim bag and headed over to Eiler's Park to join the queue. The first batch of swimmers through the gates numbered about a dozen. Followed in quick order by a dozen more five-minute-latecomers. All I brought with me today was a kick board and a pair of goggles. And a swim suit, of course. 

I kicked off my shorts and t-shirt, pulled on my goggles and slid into the chilly water in the deep end, grabbing the lane at the furthest east part of the lap pool. As you'll see in photos below the pool is divided into a large lap pool and an even larger recreational pool. The rec pool starts shallow and gently slants down to about four feet of depth. The lap pool is walkable on the west side and 12-15 feet at my side (far left, above, and below). 

I flutter kicked for a mile and was thrilled to not have to wear my goggles the whole time. I was there to enjoy the 70° water more than anything else but I'm one of those horrible people who likes to stay compulsively busy/productive so I just had to get the kicking in.... I had the lane to myself because on that side of the pool there are three ladders spaced along the wall and it's a tight fit. Adding more people makes the lane tight and some people have trouble avoiding either the ladders on one side or their fellow swimmers on the other. There is something so soothing about having 33.3 yards of clean, fresh, cold water in front of you that's just wonderfully motivating. 

Why all the kicking? I've been spending too much time on the top half of my stroke and wanted some balance. Also, I was at the gym yesterday and did a long, long strength training workout that was mostly upper body. My arm, chest, shoulder, back and ab muscles took a beating and I'm a bit sore today. Nice sore. Happy sore. But all the same I thought I'd give those muscles a break and work the kick for fun.

the view from the bathhouse. That was my lane, over on the left...

the pool has evolved over the years. It used to be a free for all but now there are nods to 

the serious swimmers. One is that the entire pool is designated "lap swimming only" from 

opening till 11 a.m. No kids, no floats, no games, no silliness. 

Today, at the opening, the pool manager stood next to the person who either accepts payment for entrance or checks pass cards and asked each person he didn't already know if they were aware that the pool was open strictly for lap swimming. No other use of the pool until 11. Such a refreshing clarity about

the highest and best use of a pool. At least from a lap swimmer's perspective...

I only hit Deep Eddy Pool once a week. I'm flexible though, I guess I could come more often.

But Monday's are the only day of the week we don't have a coached, competitive swim practice 

at my primary pool. I'd almost always choose a coached and well attended practice 

over "self-paced" even if the water is cooler at the "Monday" pool...

But that's just me. I have swim passes for both..

Photographer needing out trying to capture the "feel" of the cold, clear water.

I generally love having "the rules" all spelled out. This is the one 

pool I know of that brooks no nonsense. From portioning lanes and the principles 

of sharing lanes to what you can and can't do in each lane. Love it. 

No gray space...

Looking across the concrete bulkhead from the rec pool on the right to the 

lap pool on the left. We might have some blisteringly hot weather on tap but

the pool temperature never varies much from 68-74° and that's a prime comfort zone...

if you keep moving.  Too chilly for leisure floating...

Standing on the west end looking east over the rec pool to the lap pool. 

Sweet water today!

Interestingly, during lap swimming here and swim practice at the other pool

I feel totally comfortable leaving my clothes, pocket clutter and random stuff in the changing room 

without having to lock everything up. Everyone who comes to actually swim 

is serious and focused. And not inclined to larceny. 

The long stairs down are part of the show. Swim hard and the long flight back to the upper level

sneaks up on you....

The VSL high performance studio car got the best space 

this morning. At least where proximity was concerned. 

But I guess the real winners were the ones who got shade....

I'm sure this was exciting and fun for you to read and look at. Now for the photo part. 

As I think you are aware it's rare for me to ever leave the house or the studio without a camera in hand. I try to bring the camera with me when I leave the car but that's not always possible. Today I brought along the Leica Q2. I had a thought that the clear skies, and rumors of a newly cleaned and filled pool, might presage some good images and I knew I'd want a wide angle perspective for most of the shots. 

No one bothers to dry off with towels in Texas these days. Exit the pool and the heat will dry you off by the time you hit the top of the stairs. I pulled on my tattered, khaki shorts and my gray t-shirt and tromped out to the car in my all terrain Birkenstocks ("chick magnet shoes, for sure..."), grabbed the Q2 from the passenger's seat of the car and headed back into the pool facility to snap away. Since I saw little need for selective focus I stuck the aperture at f11 and shot in .DNG. The camera, as usual, was flawless. The operator --- less so. But still. I got what I thought I wanted. Tweaked them up a bit in Lightroom and here were are. 

After having used this camera for six+ months now I have to say that I fully embrace it and understand the advantages of having a really good, all-in-one photo machine. I have to say that I'm not going to cancel that pre-order for a Q3 but I wish I had a crystal ball. I'd love to buy a "Reporter" version if they are planning to come out with one... But any version will do nicely. Well....maybe not the 007 version. Or the Seal version. But how cool would it be if they made a chrome version? A black one for Winter months and silver one for Summer. 

Stay tuned. I have a feeling we're going to have an exciting swim practice tomorrow and I might take along a different camera. So much excitement at one blog. 

By the way, Thanks for all the travel suggestions. I'm working on a plan as I wait for confirmation of a delivery date (this week) for the much sought after passport. Please remember as you make suggestions that I am not a landscape/nature/wildlife photographer --- and I don't need a famous blogger to tell me that. So, if you are suggesting a destination because of the natural beauty and majestic landscapes I'm not sure those will make the cut. Love urban life. Love compact cities. And, no. I won't be sleeping in a tent. 

Hope your Summer is fun and safe. But not too safe or no one would have stories to tell......

Swimming. How could you be unhappy if you can swim every day?

I went to the bank for something. I tried my hand at interior architectural photography. I used a snapshot camera. Security was oddly quiet...

 

I was feeling chipper one day while walking around our quiet and messy downtown and I decided to drop by my bank and ask my bank officer for a ten million dollar line of credit. Did I have anything in mind that I wanted the LOC for? No. I just thought it would be cool to have one. You know, just in case; maybe an impulse purchase of an airplane. Or a big stretch, like a complete, collectible Leica camera system or something nice for the wife...

After my banker finished laughing and calling people into his office to share the story with he calmed down and he asked if I was now insane or if it was just the heat talking. We chatted a bit about masters swimming (we've both swum on the same team for at least the last decade) and then there was a long silence which I interpreted as a signal that I should get the hell out of his office. I left with the assurance that he would keep my account open. For now.

I stepped out of the bank lobby and into the main lobby of the tall building which houses both his bank and several others. The lights and curved railings looked, in the moment, appealing so I took the Leica Q2 off my shoulder and set about making a series of shots. Architectural shots. (Here is where a famous blogger steps in to tell me, with intense directness, that I am NOT an architectural photographer. The fact of which I am well aware...). 

In times past when I have pulled out a camera and blazed away on private property, inside a building bristling with banks and law offices it has elicited an almost immediate response from security workers hellbent on telling me where to go. And what not to photograph. Which is their right. I guess. 

But nothing of the sort happened on this occasion. It must have been the authoritative look of those Birkenstock sandals. Or maybe the relative cleanliness of those khaki short pants. But truthfully I think it's the white hair and the bi-focals. I was exuding enough "old guy" harmlessness that I'm pretty sure I could have set up an 8x10 view cameras, ducked under the dark cloth and still not prodded the security team to stand up from their padded chairs and investigate. 

Either one of those reasons or....maybe my bank officer called them and told them not to worry....

Shot in medium sized Jpeg set to Monochrom HC. The start of a new career..... not.

Even Better than a new camera!!!!! My new passport has been sent out for delivery to....ME.

 "You don't miss your water till your well runs dry..."  - William Bell, 1961, Stax Records. 

1978. Three months backpacking through Southern Europe.

I never thought I'd miss a piece of I.D. as much as I have missed having my valid passport. We renew every ten years and in the past it was a fairly quick turnaround process. When I last renewed my passport in 2013 I used an expediting service which turned around the document, from application to passport in my hands, in about ten days. 

I was shocked when I went to renew it this year and the State Dept. website showed a message which  stated that expedited passports would take seven to nine weeks to turn around. And that was predicated on shipping your application to them via Express Mail, and having all your ducks in a careful row...

Armed with this bad news I was unhappily settling in to "worst case scenario" mode -- wherein I presumed we would bump right up on the nine weeks and then I'd be notified of some sort of glitch which might require me to re-submit and head to the back of the line again. I am nothing if not an ardent believer that everything related to my life will, at one point or another, fall into the worst case ordeal imaginable. But oddly, it almost never happens. In fact, maybe only once out of every thousand times. Or less. The odds have become background noise and yet I still steadfastly imagine, at every important step in life, that the roof will collapse, I will be arrested, hacked or delayed and I will lose my boarding pass somewhere between the food court in the airport and my departure gate. So I am constantly vigilant. Or as my favorite swimmer/psychiatrist friend couches my condition: "Hyper-vigilant." But with a massive balancing dose of optimism and sense of entitlement. (Not sure he meant "entitlement" as a compliment...in fact, I'm kind of certain.). 

All of this to say that while I thought I'd be trapped here all Summer I won't be. To my relief, joy, happiness, etc. I find that my passport zoomed through the process in just a day or two over one month's time. I conjecture that having been through background checks by the Secret Service on four different occasions, connected with photographing U.S. presidents, helped with whatever vetting process/background checks the State Dept. uses. And I'm sure it didn't hurt the processing schedule that my Global Entry/Trusted Traveler credentials are up to date. Still, I'm thrilled that the folks who do the work under-promised and over-delivered. 

But, in keeping with my posture of gloomy hypervigilance I'll maintain a worst case scenario right up until the minute I pull the passport out of the mail and hold it in my hands. 

Looking back over time, which is a bizarre and disquieting exercise, I find that I've held valid passports all the way back to 1963. I was seven and a half years old when I got my first one. I needed it when my family moved to Turkey for two years. And using Turkey as a home base we traveled extensively in the middle east...many stamps on that old book.

One sad note about passports in the current age is that we no longer get stamps on the pages in most countries. Everyone is going to electronic verification and even last year when I was in Vancouver and I asked for a stamp at Canadian border services I was told...."We don't have stamps anymore. Sorry." (But being Canadian they were so very nice about it). I'm glad now that I have kept all my old passports because with their inky, blurry stamps they are like a truncated travel log reminding me of trips with family, trips with a college girl friend, a honeymoon and many subsequent trips abroad with B. They are also like a journal of jobs from those travel focused years with a roster of corporate clients. Weird business travel everywhere. From St. Petersburg, Russia to the Dominican Republic and dozens and dozens of destinations in between. 

Now, without the stamps, I'll actually have to become one of those guys with the little, black Moleskine notebooks and a dubiously/messy and unreliable fountain pen,  sitting at a sidewalk table at a coffee shop busily recording each step of progress on a trip. Wiping the leaky ink, inadvertently, on my pants leg.

After getting my tracking number from the State Dept. website I rushed into the house to tell B. about the anticipated arrival of my coveted travel doc. She suggested I get busy planning a shooting trip to.....anywhere. Now. She's not traveling this Summer. Taking care of her mom in San Antonio and splitting her time between there and here. But she was adamant about me getting out the door and taking some of that photographic gear that seems to be stacking up with me. Being the optimistic pessimist I am I'll start looking immediately but I won't book anything until I have the document in my hands. Then? All bets are off. 

I really enjoyed my time in Vancouver recently and think that might be a fun break from the heat. Unless they too are forecast to reprise their own previous Summer heat wave. There is an Air Canada flight that's direct from Austin three or four days a week. Four and a half hours in the air. That sounds almost luxurious. 

But we may just roll the dice and see what comes up. 

The only hesitation I have is the labor intensive task of picking the right camera and lenses to take with. Now that's a real dilemma. But I have some ideas there too. 

Just thought I would share today's happy news. 

Makes the heat that much more bearable.