somewhat inauspicious start to the year today, I’m typing without my left index finger because it’s got some kind of infection, the antibiotics taking their sweet time to take it out. hopefully I’ll be back up to full strength soon. I have a heck of a backlog here (as always). I started writing a year in review of last year of just the places I travelled to and lost steam by the time I got to June. I probably am just going to give up on that since posts about last year as a whole are no longer timely. this has never been a news blog, despite my aspirations and what my highschool journalism teacher drummed into me.
I realized looking at these photos though, which are from roughly October, that I’m missing some stuff from Sardinia and Porto. I need to chase though down. I probably have them edited (initial selects in photo mechanic) and just forgot the final step of dragging them into lightroom.
My current workflow is a little convoluted, mostly because lightroom is slow and bad at organizing photos en masse and the other tool I use, Photo Mechanic Pro, is not a developing tool. So I do an ‘ingest’ step with Photo Mechanic, and that’s when I usually do a round of initial selects. just page through the photos in the loupe view and hit 3 (number on the keyboard, marks the ‘star rating’ in the EXIF) on anything that I think has potential. Then I can filter the light table view by star rating and select the ones that I’ve just marked. Then I drag those into lightroom (select all, drag to the lightroom icon) and in LR I can do the exposure, color adjustment, and dodging and burning.
Of course, I have ADHD, every step in the pipeline there is prone to me walking away and not coming back for some months. Shooting is a constant, but other than that I offload from my SD cards as I can remember to. Used to be an every day ritual, now it’s once every other week. I just don’t shoot as much.
Anyway. this was supposed to be just a quick post, drop some photos and go to bed.
Posted on 2024-01-03T08:00:39Z GMT
something like october 2021? I know, I know. I was looking through my collections in Lightroom and realized I may not have ever published these? I wish I had an image search that was just for stuff I’ve published here. Anyway.
This trip was a weird low point for me; I’m pretty sure I’d started at [REDACTED] and kinda hated my life. I had a gout flare while we were there, which didn’t help anything. I think I was still on a lower dose of the Allopurinol. So I probably had the kind of shame spiral about the photos from this trip that I did about other things, just had a lot of bad feelings around them and never got to giving them a proper edit.
These are all my in-laws, the Lewis clan. A fun bunch. Even though it was rainy, we had a good time; sat around and played card games, walked to the ocean, all that. Went for a drive before the gout set in, that’s where all the moody seashore pictures are from. I think I tripped and fell at one point, and that was what set off the flare. I don’t remember but I might’ve spent a whole day of the trip in bed? That sounds crazy but it is the kind of thing I did when I was having flare ups often. Haven’t had one in quite a while, fingers crossed.
Even with that, it was still a nice trip. Nice airbnb, good company, good food. Had to be wheeled through the terminal on the way home, but I did buy another Pendleton cardigan (turns out they’re made in china now, unfortunately).
This may be too many pictures of a brooding coastline, but I didn’t have time or energy to pick between what’s here. This is only half of what was in the looser edit, at least.
Posted on 2023-12-15T10:58:09Z GMT
once again posting old shit. this was last… march? before it dried out in the spring. Roy’s. I was there with Damaris, Grant, Sophie’s mom, and of course Sophie. Good day in the woods.
I’ve been neglecting my photography. building lots of things though; finished the keyboard i’m typing this on (typos are my fault, the board is great), mostly finished another small bag, shaped a couple knife blanks and hardened them. doing stuff for christmas and for myself. The house is a mess. Now that I’ve spent three days neglecting it I’ll have to spend two getting it back in shape. Laundry. Dishes. That sort of thing. If I time it right tomorrow I’ll still have a couple hours to go and finish that bag. Then I need to start designing the next one, which is a big departure for me. A backpack, for a big honkin’ lens. Not mine.
In fact, I think started thinking about this backpack on this day, back in March. So, if you want a bag from me, that’s the kind of lead time I have. About 9 months to start patterning and prototyping.
That may get worse here pretty soon. Gonna have some things going on in 2024 that will oblige me to convalesce. Take it very easy. I’m going to be getting a new kidney, and at some point they’ll also have to take the old ones out. Yes, I know that’s not normal. Anyway, the hope is that after all that, plus recovery, plus an amount of exercise, I’ll have some measure of my old energy and strength back. No more gout, for one.
Anyway. This is a very wordy post! don’t get used to it. or do. maybe I’ll write about the experience of getting a transplant. maybe do some kind of photo thing with it. we’ll see.
Posted on 2023-12-14T10:16:57Z GMT
I had these edited last thursday, exported, and then forgot about them. This was the week before we left for europe for vacation. Anyway, just before that happened, Kawan came back to town. Not just for a visit this time, but really moving back. It’s really great to have him around, at least as much as we manage to see each other, being like, busy people with Important Things™ to do like having a job so we can sleep indoors and making silly art or other interesting objects.
I feel like I used to see people more often? Maybe this is the last bit of pandemic recovery, re-finding my social calendar. People matter, and I miss seeing a lot of them. Towards that end, tomorrow there’s an Odd Salon, which is always a highlight, just a bunch of delightful folks. Anyway, if you actually want to hang out, get @ me.
ok gonna push publish and go to bed bye
Posted on 2023-12-05T10:10:18Z GMT
A lot of the time, moving through the world, I just think, like, oh, that’s interesting, take a single frame, and move on. It’s one of my worst/best habits, because really I end up with like, pictures of fences and random signs and things that aren’t part of any story. Also, a single frame is almost never the photo. Or at least the first one isn’t.
I may have talked about this before, but there’s this thing called ‘working the subject’ where you take one picture, move around, take several more, different compositions, points of focus, and really nail down what attracted you to take the picture in the first place. If you think of photography as asking questions, this is the first one: why did I want to take a picture of that?
But/and, I also find it natural and normal to work this way; take a moment, compose a single photo, get it, and move on. I don’t think either way of working is less valid, but I do know the overall quality of my work goes up when I work a subject a little. That’s the way I see it, anyway. There’s a braggadocio school that says you should only need one shot, but we can dispense with the macho bullshit, just between you and me, right? Like, maybe someone is good enough to get it in one. Or maybe they stopped at one and just have no idea where a little exploration would have taken them.
Really, for me, it’s a bad habit I learned early on, when I only had one roll of film at a time, or one a week to shoot. Film was expensive, processing was also expensive, at least until I discovered the magic of the 11-reel developing can in college. That and bulk rolling black and white film changed everything. Not worrying about running out was incredibly freeing. But sometimes I still fall back into that scarcity mindset.
It’s not film or even hard drive space that’s scarce these days, but my time. Do I have time to pause and take 20 photos of an unpainted picket fence? Probably; at 4.5 frames a second (max speed for the Leica), that’s less than 5 seconds. Really working, though, it’s closer to two minutes. It might not be 20 photos, but 10 wouldn’t be out of the question. When I intellectualize it, think about it and put it into words, it doesn’t sound like much at all.
Of course, I don’t work with words when I make pictures, and there’s the rub. I’m just feeling my way through all this. The scarcity mindset is a trauma response of sorts; doesn’t just go away. I’m not a psych, so I don’t know what to do with that, other than keep shooting and try to remember that there’s plenty of time and space for what I need to do.
Posted on 2023-11-27T10:04:21Z GMT
