New Film, and Floods.

In case you haven't heard, and if you have been listening to national media, there's a good chance you haven't, Nashville flooded this weekend - the entire city and environs of Nashville. It's a 500 year record apparently, although I'm not entirely sure how they know that. I'll write more about that, but I have to make up hours at work tomorrow and get there ridiculously early, so I must sleep soon.

I picked up five rolls of 35mm film yesterday. I'm excited. I have seen some of the pictures and I am sure I will be posting more soon. I knew it was raining pretty hard, but when I drove to Wolf on Saturday, I realized it was a lot worse than I had thought. I didn't get to pick the film up until Tuesday, and as of today, Wednesday night, large parts of Nashville are still underwater.

But.... I am tired. More on all that soon.

The World Keeps Turning...

Photography puns aside, my life feels out of focus. Everyone tells you that life goes on, that the world keeps turning, even if you stand still, and that is true. I feel like I have to go with the flow and the rotation of the Earth and all that, but it's making me a little dizzy.

I haven't taken many pictures this week, and perhaps that's why I'm feeling a little ungrounded. I should get out on my lunchbreak tomorrow and snap some pics of the river near my workplace. Today I sat and contemplated the turtles sunning themselves and then dipping back into the water for a swim. I have to admit feeling a little jealous as I sunned myself in my business-casual attire on the riverbank, trying to extract joy and relaxation and sunshine from every moment before I had to go in and wither under the fluorescent lights.

I have a new job, in case I failed to mention. That's really how much I care beyond the obvious need for a paycheck. However, the people in this place are really nice and the job is at least marginally more interesting and doesn't call for me to consistently question my morals and the state of health-care in this country, like denying medications to elderly people on Medicare did at my last job.

This week has flown by. I always think on Mondays that it will drag on forever, but the days have gone conveniently by, and work hasn't seemed too much of an imposition on my actual life, although it has robbed me of much needed sleep a couple of times this week. I have been out a couple of times with the aforementioned guy with whom I went on a date the day after my birthday. I guess I'm getting to know him now, and I still find him interesting and fun to hang out with. I have zero expectations and I hope he has zero expectations of me, but the time has passed with great conversation, good laughs, good food, lots of beer and a movie or two. He is very smart, as I've said before, and also extremely sweet, but genuinely above-board about his life and his situation in it. He's not too happy with his life either, and like me, not really in the place he wants to be, so we have something in common there, and it's nice to talk about how to improve our relative situations. I don't know how I feel about any of it, but I went out with him on Monday, and I actually (gasp) called him to suggest Happy Hour imbibing yesterday, which turned into a much later night than I had bargained for. Oh well, I can sleep when I'm dead, right.

There's no word from the ex-boyfriend (The Aforementioned Man Who Unceremoniously Dumped Me, or AMWUDM) - a friend of mine called it "radio silence," and that's a pretty good way of describing it. He booted me from Facebook, which I suppose was expected, although I'm surprised it took him so long. Perhaps my posts were annoying him, although I suspect they were doing something else, but hey, I won't get into it.

I've been honest, to a fault I think, with this new guy (we'll call him New Guy I'm Hanging Out With or NGIHOW) and I came up with a drunken, yet appropriate analogy in which I compared my heart recently to the post WWII ravaged fields of France, which has now naturally progressed into the Cold War. I think honesty is the best policy. I haven't promised him I won't freak out at some point - there goes the Cold War analogy again - and I have said explicitly that I am simply not capable of a deep emotional connection with anyone right now. My heart has not been set right, and there are certain things that will have to happen before it will be. Right now, I am in a period of stasis. I don't actively feel any healing going on, and I don't think I will, but I am learning coping mechanisms and I am learning to just do, even if I don't feel - perhaps that will come later. That goes for relationships, getting out of bed in the morning, remembering to eat, laugh, and see the good surrounding me - I am going through the motions, but generally I still envy the turtles and their easy life and that convenient shell under which to hide.

My Response to Mr. N.

I love the points Mr. N. brought up, and even though he intended them as "an argument," they really validated what I was saying. I don't think film in itself is inherent to true camera knowledge, but rather, I believe that having manual control over your shutter speed/ISO/aperture gives you an insight into the way light works, whether you are working with light hitting a piece of film or a digital sensor. I love the way he has explained how working with the manual focus and a low aperture has forced him to become more creative in his portraits of tango dancing. I am sure that shooting inside and shooting moving and unpredictable subjects in low light forces choices that otherwise would just make it easier to shoot the more conventional way with a pop up flash and action stop. Here, as he said, you have to plan for mistakes and learn what works and what doesn't, and I'm a believer that only that absolute control can really give you that, just like only driving a manual car can give you insight into the way a car shifts gears.

He also said that as he shoots more, although he still manipulates in photoshop, (which I am learning too), that he finds he has to manipulate less and less. I totally agree with this - as you learn the control, you learn to get it right the first time, because you inherently know what will work and what is beyond the realm of real possibility, but you also learn, with this, what IS within the realm of possibility and you learn to make creative choices based on aperture and shutter speed, and you can picture the kind of photo you're going to get. This does guide your choices. You can say: I know I have a shallow depth of field, but I know I can capture this movement and I can capture one particular piece of it, so that might make a more interesting photograph than capturing the whole scene.

I am curious what happens if he employs a pop flash with this, or what happens if his camera has rear flash synch (yay, great modern invention). If you pop a flash manually, you don't have to worry too much about aperture and it gives you the freedom to be more creative visually. But the rear synch flash would make the motion make sense, even though you would sacrifice the weird unpredictable bulb/pop flash thing. So hey, Mr. N., I challenge you to the results.

I would like to say that I would love him to post some of his pictures on here to illustrate what he is learning.

I always find those kind of situations challenging, and as you can probably see from my current photo postings, I shy away from taking pictures of people, and I have a lot to learn. It's something I've never been good at and I would love to see how his pictures progress as he gets more comfortable with the method and with the people. I'm hoping he can teach me something.

And Mr N., I too have a 50mm lens with a 1.8 that I haven't busted out yet, but it is an amazing lens - I once heard that 50mm is the closest to how we actually remember the scenes in our lives, and that's why it was so popular, but that super-shallow aperture gives such a dreamy quality that can't be equaled. I'm currently in love with my 2.8 24mm lens, but I shall have to dig out the old 50mm and give it a try too, especially when I get a chance to take pictures of people.

Manual SLR Smackdown!: New Reality Show.

I know I have been waxing nostalgic about my Nikon FE2, but a little Internet research backs up my claim. My FE2, from 1983, commands a higher price on Ebay than my Nikon F100, which cost about $1200 new in 1999. I really wanted a professional grade camera at the time, and got one for my 21st birthday, and although I loved my new toy, I never felt the same way about it as I did about the FE2. I love that camera, and still do.

My dad bought it for me because I was taking a photography class in my junior year of high school and was getting really into it. I was using my mother's old Olympus Trip - it was a rangefinder from the late sixties, early seventies, and is a great camera, but it is made for convenience and quality and not control.

I was reading a post about the FE2 online, and it sums up all my feelings about it. I know at the time Nikon made it, they intended it as a semi-professional camera, but professionals used it because they saw the combination of control and ruggedness. It had features not available on cameras at the time, no matter what the price-point - like a flash sync speed of 1/250, affordable lenses at 1.8 aperture, and TTL flash metering.

My dad bought it from a professional photographer in Jamaica in 1993. He photographed car races, so he included an amazing telephoto lens, a 50mm lens and all manner of bells and whistles. I think my dad paid $250.

This camera was a total surprise for me. It wasn't a birthday or Christmas present - it was just something my dad came back from Jamaica with because he knew I needed one. I remember him telling me that it had been loved and used by a professional for years, and that when the guy bought it in 1983, it was top of the range. It wasn't until I started researching it later, and showing it to photography professors and people generally interested in photography and getting "ooohs" and "aahhhhs" that I realized what a gem I had.

Truly, this camera, in 2010, is still top of its game. I still love it above all others. I don't know if it's because I have used it forever, or because it is just an inherently pleasurable camera to use, that I feel so at home and "in the zone" taking pictures with it. The pictures it takes are better than my F100 ever took and I don't know if it's because I am (I'm getting cheesy here) at one with this camera, or it's just a better camera. What I read online backs up my thought that it's just a damn good timeless output from Nikon - Nikon at its best. I feel so much joy taking pictures with it. I know its quirks, and it has some. The light meter is perfectly calibrated, but I know if I underexpose the ISO by a third of a stop, I get pictures more consistent with my aesthetic. I've been doing that with it for at least ten years.

Tonight, I went out around the lake and took pictures. The light was gorgeous. It was about 6:15 when I started and about 7 when I got home. The light was that spring, just before dark, ethereal magical light and you can't help but take good pictures with that. I find myself very drawn to water lately, and I keep going back to the lake. I love the way in smells in spring. There's something about listening to the water and smelling it that helps me get in the right mode for taking pictures. I just let my right brain take over. I love my right brain right now because it doesn't think - it just takes in the elements and reacts to them. When I am out there, fiddling with technology and trying to express myself through it, I don't have to think - I can just be. That's why I am doing this - it's the only thing that lets my brain stop.

This isn't my exact camera, but the closest image I could find to it. I'm sure it looks like an ancient dinosaur, but if you actually know how to take pictures in the first place, and not just digitally manipulate them after the fact, this is the camera you need.

I could go into a rant, like I did earlier today, about digital photography. In fact, I probably will go into that rant. Here it is:

I don't have a problem with digital photography, at all, but I am glad I came of photographic age right at the cusp of the change, and I am glad I actually had to learn about the way light hits film. I did learn with film, but the concept is similar for digital - it's just hitting a sensor instead. However, the way digital cameras are set up is inherently based on the increasingly obsolete language of film. If you don't know film, you don't really know how digital cameras work either. Digital cameras still use ISO (even though there is no film) and shutter speeds and aperture, although in a weird way, it shouldn't really matter with digital - it can capture the image no matter what. The limitations were set by film.

I'm glad I learnt those limitations because it taught me how light works - it taught me to look at the light at different times of day and taught me about the optimal film, the optimal times of day, and the optimal creative choices, and I still base my aesthetics upon that. I'm sure if I had a digital SLR, I would and could stretch those boundaries, but shooting for years with a manual SLR taught me to seek out the moments when great things are really possible, not just shoot, hope for the best, and hope I can fix it later in Photoshop.

I've heard this so much from people lately, and although I see the advantages inherent in digital, and I do like them, especially the lack of expense from processing and scanning, I still think it is better to get it right in camera than to go to the effort and time of fixing it afterwards, and that is what I hear so much from people. If you can do it right, and you know the way a camera works, you shouldn't have to fix it. The art is photography, not fixing your mistakes after you've taken the picture. Maybe I'm bitter because I had to try hard and I had to take many rolls of bad film in order to finally start getting it right, but I don't think so, because those bad rolls of film taught me how to do it right, and now,  it engenders a confidence with my equipment, even when I do shoot digital. I know what's going on, and it doesn't bother me if I can't see the image straight away because I already have an idea, from my knowledge of how light works, of how it's going to look before/if I see it on an LCD screen. That's what's missing, and I think sometimes that the instant gratification from that LCD screen kills creativity and negates the adventurous spirit required of a photographer when shooting film. I know it takes practice and a certain amount of blind faith, and a certain amount of failure, but the knowledge gained from that is invaluable.

I had a teacher at Watkins College Of Art and Design who believed in the absolute truth of slide film. Slide film has very little latitude for error, so he said, if you can shoot slide film with confidence, you can learn how a camera works and make fewer errors in exposure. It forces compliance and competency, and honestly, that was the best lesson I learned about the behaviour of light and our ability to capture and express with it. I think it is still true. I think it would be a good experiment to take everyone who thinks they are competent with a digital camera and make them go out with a manual SLR and shoot slide film. It could be a new reality show! That might be one I would watch.

Days Off

It's been a great couple of days off. Not working this weekend, and getting all the adventure out of my system allowed me to have a great couple of days just hanging around the house, doing laundry, cleaning, and listening to music. Although the only place I've ventured in the past couple of days has been Aldi, I haven't felt confined or bored. The whole house is clean. Mr. W. came over tonight and we grilled a delicious pork tenderloin on Stephen, the grill (yes, I named my grill), plus some of Claire's special potatoes in an aluminium foil pouch, complete with newly sprouted chives from the garden. The weather has been gorgeous and I've had the windows open for two days, much to Martin's delight (he's the cat). He is currently running around the house like he's on a mission; there must be another cat outside. It's a funny sight to see this cat running (it's more like jogging actually) around the house because he's huge, and just a little rotund, so it's not entirely a graceful process, as one would generally expect from a cat.

I haven't taken any pictures since Monday night, although Mr. B. and I were talking about someone he knew who made it her prerogative to take at least one photograph every day, just to get back into photography, and I think that's an excellent idea. I plan to take the FE2 to work with me tomorrow and find something to take pictures of. I may get to pick up my CDs from Wolf tomorrow during my lunch break. Picking them up after work is not possible because of a tutoring appointment right after work, so I think I can swing it on my lunch break if I get to work early tomorrow. If so, there will be pics to post tomorrow.

The storm of bitterness is not quite as bitter as expected, but it's getting there. I am trying to adjust my thought processes accordingly. I guess I'm just not a bitter, vengeful person, and I've been through several relationships and done many stupid things, and in return, had many stupid things done to me, so in a sense, I seem like I at least understand the motivations behind the stupidity. I wish I didn't. I wish I could just hate, or find reserves of anger I don't seem to have. It just hurts, as raw as it was the day it happened. I'm coping with it better, but it still feels the same, and all I know how to do is channel it into some sort of creativity. I hope that works. I guess you'll know I'm angry if I start taking really angry pictures sometime soon.

Yes, he is most definitely gone, and I have to believe that he is gone and he is living his idyllic little life with nary a thought of the past seven months. I just don't exist for him. He has just wiped me out. I have to do the same.

The Old Yazoo Brewery

Here are a couple more. The one in the middle is City House. Once again, I took that in colour, but it looks better in black and white. I so feel like I'm cheating when I can push a button and it's suddenly a gorgeous black and white picture, but seriously, this is the digital age, and I need to get over my dinosaur self.