Currently on Medical Leave. Nothing too big. Just a bit of knife play...

 Went in for a follow-up with my dermatologist. The squamous cell tumor had come back. Right there on my face. We went over the options. I elected for the most savage and barbaric of the choices. A deeper scoop with a sharp blade --- right there in the chair. The probability is that we got it all. The betting runs to 70-80% good chance. That leaves 20-30% chance of try something else. What's left? Mohs Surgery. Been there once before on a different spot. Not so bad if it happens. 

Dermatologist advised that I'd have a little divet where the offending intruder had been. I can deal with that; I'm not currently dating and my on-camera movie career never took off. On the upside, I know a beautiful plastic surgeon and she'd just love to fill in the pothole left on my face...

But any procedure is disheartening to a certain extent. It chimes with the distant sound of mortality. A creeping disintegration of the corpus. But at least I'm not battling sleep apnea, obesity, hearing loss, diabetes, heart failure, or any of the other common ailments of aging. I can still remember where I parked and how to compute compound interest.  So I'm ahead in those regards.

But the tragedy of yesterday's run in with medical reality is that I've been advised not to swim again until Tuesday the 3rd of June. Almost a death sentence. That's five days out of the water. Five days of implied sloth.

But the CFO of VSL reminded me that I have running shoes and five miles of sweet running trails around downtown's lake. That I have weights and stretch cords. And a gym membership. I guess that will do fine until Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. 

But I figure that if I'm not having fun then I'm certainly not going to sit down and write stuff so that you can have fun reading while I'm in the midst of hard core swim withdrawal. So....adios until Tuesday afternoon. But before I go I thought I'd share some images from this morning's massive walk through everywhere.... All with that puny Leica DLUX 8. I'd say it's growing on me but I've liked it since the day I pulled it out of the box. 

Austin was the victim of a huge, quick storm last night. Hail the size of hen's eggs, wind gusts up to 70 mph, 2-3 inches of rain in less than an hour and lots and lots of subsequent damage. The big tree that sat in front of this old building was here two days ago. It's gone now. The power was off for 30,000+ electric utility customers. Whole streets are blocked off around town because the wind and hail tore down utility poles, branches and whole trees. And the low water crossings filled up quick.

I walked around downtown this morning to see what everything looked like. It was hit and miss. The VSL headquarters  over here next other the house was spared. But there is more weather coming back tonight after midnight. This is the season for crazy atmospherics in central Texas. 

this stuff fell off the roof of a six story apartment building. 

The old power plant was unscathed. It was built to withstand hurricanes and bomb blasts.

And, at least for this afternoon, blue skies are back in fashion.

big and happy news for me today! I walked by the main library and there's a brand new café business in the spot that had the original café. The first one closed as a result of both Covid and a relentless hounding by homeless men. The new version, under new owners is polished and nice. 

They just opened and have a limited menu of coffees. Both "real" coffee and espresso based coffee drinks. Also pastries. No surprise here because every coffee shop in town gets the exact same pastries from Quackenbush's bakery over in Hyde Park. Even the other bakeries are not above importing "anonymous" pastries...

I had a cappuccino. It made by face feel better. Fractionally.

the Leica DLUX 8 is attracted to fun t-shirts. In real life you can see every thread and every bit of fluff

and texture on every thread. It's really a nice camera.

the wind came through fast and furious and in my back yard, as I watched, it looked like swirling gusts. Like mini-tornados. No damage at my place. All our trees are equipped with titanium reinforcement rods, but look what the wind did to this tree down in front of the Hilton Hotel. 

and this power pole.

And this tragic little minivan.

Changes have been made to historic East Sixth St. Now it looks like a crappy construction zone all the time. Thanks City Council. What next? Tear down the 20 year old Convention Center? Oh, that's right; that's already in progress. Or de-progress...

People still use the word, "Gnarly"? Amazing throw back. What's next?

"Groovy"?

And then, apropos of nothing, here is my favorite Parking Garage --- designed by M.C. Escher. 

Radical. 

So, I'm sitting by the pool (not in the pool) sipping Cuba Libres, hanging out with the busload of super models who came by to check on my progress, and counting the money I'm making betting on the TACO tariffs. Such a life. 

Back in touch on Tuesday. 

Does your local museum have one of the first photographs ever taken? How about a complete Gutenberg Bible? Really? No? Well here, I'll share.

On most days, between 10 and 5, anyone in Austin can walk in off the street, go through a small lobby and step into a booth which contains one of the first photographs every taken. You can enlarge the image above to read the details. The image is in a dark environment but it's on display all the time. It's hard to make out just what is happening in the frame but I guess that's part of the curatorial fun and games. Right? It's comforting, as a photographer, to know that this historically important relic is right here in my own home town. The rest of the collection of photos is awfully impressive as well. A collection of amazing depth and quality.

And while I was in the lobby, and since I am so devoutly spiritual, I had to stop by another light controlled booth and take a gander at the HRC's copy of the Gutenberg Bible. One of only five complete copies in the United States of America and one of only 48 remaining in the world. Hard to turn the pages through the thick, protective Lexan case in which the Bible resides. I had to use all of my psycho-kinetic powers to get back to Genesis....

But I'm betting you have one of these in your local library as well....

The HRC houses literally billions of dollars of rare art, manuscripts, photos and artifacts. The building has state of the art fire suppression and maintains a net positive pressure. Higher pressure inside than out. You would too if you had collected so many fragile prizes. Right?

But my story is more about this grating you see in the image just above. 

When I first came to UT Austin in 1974 I was following in my older brother's footsteps. And two years later my sister joined us there. My parents were paying for tuition, room, board, books and fun for three children simultaneously, and did so all the way through graduate school. After my first year (and remember, this was before the discovery, or the consequences of, climate change and atmospheric temperature rises!) I decided to move into a huge corner room in the ancient Roberts dormitory. Just across the creek and a wide street from the UT stadium. The room was bigger and I had the whole space to myself --- and it cost less than the previous room I shared with a roommate. 

How could that be? Well my previous room was in the Brackenridge dorm which was...air conditioned. The Roberts dorm was completely un-air conditioned. Warmish. Thermally challenging. But much cheaper. 

The problem that cropped up was...seasonal. Even though we didn't have many hot days with temperatures over 100°, late August and most of September could be ... challenging. The most challenging aspect that I found was how hard it was to study if you're sweating and uncomfortable. One evening my girlfriend at the time, and I, were walking across campus and we stopped over by the HRC. We spied these giant grates that run around parts of that huge, bunker-like building.  The positive airflow out of that building was air conditioned. Well air conditioned. Chilly. Cool. Comfortable. On the hot evenings and nights we'd grab our books (real, physical, printed books) and head over to sit on the grates and get our studying done. It was, in a way, a glorious thing. Far less crowded than the libraries and one could be both outside in "nature" while also being adequately chilled. Climate controlled. 

As I left the HRC today I remembered (fondly) the many evenings over the course of three years that I spent comfortably ensconced in the flow of the great/grate air conditioning. For the next four years I was able to enjoy the miracle of AC. I didn't drink coffee back then but if I had I might have gotten out of UT in just six years instead of seven if I had. But you don't give up comfort just for expediency's sake. There are limits. 

I should have asked for a key to the HRC building back then. They have nice bathrooms inside. And if I got bored with Milton's Paradise Lost I could have stopped and browsed through that musty old Guttenberg Bible... 

The idea of not having air conditioning in dorms now seems unthinkable. But we made do back then. We generally always do. 

 

Abandoned Red Shoe. Now an art object. A found construction. A not so subtle reference to the disposable economy. The start or end of a story?

 I was walking briskly. Walking with purpose. Playing with Mario Street Kart diligence in the crosswalks. Paying attention to pedestrian traffic signals. Dodging the perennially unobservant drivers. And then I saw the red shoe lying in the middle of the middle of the street. I looked left and right and then stepped out to make a quick shot. I wonder who lost it? And under what circumstances? And what happened to its partner shoe? And whether the previous owner had to hop home on one foot after a late night of partying? And why no one had come back to claim such a glorious shoe?

I can't know any of these things but I know when I'm having an Eggleston Moment with my camera. Here is my "Suburban Tricycle" writ large. 

I exhaled with great satisfaction and headed over to Medici Coffee a few blocks away, on the drag across from the UT campus, and celebrated with a cappuccino. The counter help asked if I wanted to have my coffee in a ceramic cup or if I needed it "to go." I replied that while I did want it in a paper cup I was looking forward to savoring it there. They laughed. Sometimes questions feel too automatic. 

Image above, on a sure glide path to a major museum, was taken with my old, crusty Leica Q2. Cropped in camera to a 75mm equivalent. Jpeg. Vivid. All done. 

"Mannequins" go Old School. Baring All. NSFW?

Today was Museum Day for me. After swim practice and a hearty breakfast I drove over close to the UT campus and parked in the shade. You would have looked for shade too. It was hot and sticky today...

Slathered up with sunscreen and wearing my most ridiculously protective hat I walked about a mile over to the Blanton Museum of Art, nestled on the edge of the campus, just off Martin Luther King Blvd. There was plenty to see today. A great show of artists who worked in collaboration with each other. A new show of print making families' work from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Scultures and paintings by Isamu Noguchi. Along with new works in the upstairs Contemporary galleries.

But as you have become painfully aware, I am more of a sculpture fan. Precisionist sculpture (yes, there was an art movement in the 20th century called "Precisionist Art"), though I do love Noguchi's abstractions. 

After looking through all the galleries in the Blanton I was drawn back to a small room on the first floor where there are examples from the Battle Collection of reproductions of ancient sculpture. These were the predecessors of the mannequins we've come to know and love in the 21st century. Anticipated several thousand years ago by the Greeks and Romans. Cool way to channel the past. 

It was hot and I walked everywhere today so I only took along the Leica Q2. What am I saying, "only!!!"??? It's a remarkable camera to take along on a Museum Day extravaganza. I tamed it down for the ancient mannequins and shot in black and white. Or.... monochrome. 

Next up. What I saw at the Humanities Research Center, AKA: The Harry Ransom Center. 

 The ancients. Rich in art and literature but too poor to buy clothes...

Interesting times. We do what we can to change what we don't like but there needs to be time to do our own work. The kind of work we imagined we'd do.

Chalk artist on the street in Berlin, Germany.

The USA, it seems to me, is heading in an uncomfortable direction. Rights and benefits are being stripped away and the impact is mostly being felt by the most vulnerable. Time to write checks to the food banks and the non-profit health clinics. Time to flex your giving to support local electoral candidates who have ethical visions about service and the ability to follow through. Time to volunteer. But once you've done all you can do to help fix the big picture stuff you have to take care of yourself. 

You only get one lifetime and if you let yourself get overwhelmed by every issue in front of us you'll spend all your time worried, anxious and paralyzed. And that's probably not anything you envisioned for yourself. Not a goal most of us want to work towards.

In times of stress most people tend to go into "hunker down" mentalities. Circle the wagons. Stay home. Watch movies on TV. And sadly, fret about the health of their 401Ks. 

This afternoon I caught myself fixated with the live, serious weather reporting. We have a big, big storm coming towards Austin from the Northwest. It's already generated baseball sized hail, non-stop lightning and possible tornados in the counties it's struck. I worry about storms. I worked in a few bad storms to document the work of the Pedernales Electric Co-op. Driving through rain and hail, dodging possible twisters and working hard not to get boxed in by fast rising water in low lying roadways. Deceptive, those low water crossings... 

When we got a serious alert today for probable severe weather I wanted to make sure the skylights around the house were protected, as well as the cars. I made sure the drains were cleaned out. That leaves weren't blocking the French drains on one side of the office. That we had batteries charged and knew where the flashlights live. We're supposed to get up to 3-5 inches of fast falling rain and the chances for big hail are pegged at three out of five. In 2023 hail damage in central Texas cost nearly $600 million dollars!!! We're in the hail zone. That's for sure. Oh, and 60-70 mph wind gusts. It just gets better and better.

When I've done everything I think I need to do to mitigate disaster I try to remember that what I really want to do is take photographs, share photographs and interact with interesting people. And then photograph them. If I'm paralyzed by all the sudden emergencies popping up I'm not going to get a lot of the stuff done that makes me happy and feeling worthwhile. 

So, after I did my storm work I came back into the office and started looking at recent work, old work and favorite work. I planned a few trips. I processed some files that I made in the past decade because I've gotten better at processing and the applications I use have gotten much better as well. Thank goodness a lot of what I shot was in Raw. So much more potential to revisit and improve many favorites. And that's really fun to do.

The rain will pass. If tornadoes damage the house, well, we're insured. Same with the cars. And if worse comes to worse and everything is destroyed, locally we'll start over, I'll buy a new computer and download all of my favorites back down from the cloud. And I'll continue to play with the images. 

I have some Texas vacations planned for this Summer while all the rest of the folks hop on airplanes and flock to crowded hot spots in the tourist world, traveling at the most expensive and least hospitable time of the year. Not me. I'll be out driving around savoring the coast, the mountains and the deserts. With a stop in our neighboring state of New Mexico for some art browsing in Santa Fe. 

But all of it is an excuse to do what I like best which is to grab a camera and lens, some extra batteries and free time and then head out to make photographs that I'll enjoy. 

The images above were done while I was in Berlin testing an ill-fated camera for Samsung. I was supposed to be in a little van, packed with other photographers, going to yet another "spectacular site" but I demurred, faked a headache. Went out on my own. For myself. And took time to photograph an artist at work. Unplanned. Discovered by turning a corner. And I really enjoyed it. 

So, put a bit of time aside to change the world. Put some more time aside to help fix your local issues. Crack open that bank account and donate to your favorite causes because you know you can't take it with you and there are only so many Leicas and Porsches you really want to buy. And then ignore every bit of external stress and get back on track doing what you love. It's really the only reason we're here. 

 

This old post came up in the blog stats today. I wrote it back in 2011. It's more true today than ever before. Lonely hunter. Better hunt.

 https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/10/lonely-hunter-better-hunt.html