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Art & Life

Today at the pump

The Sole Prop's Sister?




   


Under here.

May 14, 2010

With Photographers
Friday. Foggy out, this morning, not unusual. The sun usually arrives in the mid to late mornings around here, the night fog cooling things off and allowing one and all to sleep comfortably under the covers while still enjoying warm summer days. That's the direction I'd take if I were doing PR for the area, not that I don't find it true. That business about visiting and freezing your ass off in San Francisco on a summer day, well, something I suspect they don't talk about at the Chamber of Commerce.

Yesterday was a good day, although running around San Francisco tuckered me out a bit and slowed the brain for finishing up the journal, requiring a few minor edits and corrections this morning. Now we'll see how this day evolves. I did have a lens (the 24 - 70mm f 2.8 G) lose contact with the camera yesterday (somehow) resulting in some lost and almost lost photographs.

It's a problem I've noticed before, the lens allows just the smallest amount of rotation when it's seated, so something I'll have to have fixed. Today is a good day to look at it, see if I can't take care of it by Carnaval this next weekend, although I could certainly photograph without it. I'd normally carry it on a second camera, but use it sparingly. I generally shoot everything with a 70 - 200mm to get close ups of the participant's faces, the 24 - 70mm more an afterthought. And I've got a backup for the 70 - 200mm. Hmm. Actually I have a backup for the 24 - 70. What am I rambling on about? Minor thoughts of minor problems on a Friday before a weekend, don't you think?

No thoughts whatsoever for the day ahead. A nap maybe. Not sure how much sleep I got last night, but if a nap's in order the body will tell me. I mentioned the photo paper I'd ordered for the framing project arrived yesterday, a good day to run a few and cut my first mat. I'm actually going to have to do the thing now that most everything required has arrived. There are still some custom cut black metal frames on the way (they had a sale online I couldn't ignore) and there's that little thing about glass. Or acrylic. Minor stuff not requiring any real effort on my part.

The more you talk about this, the more you realize how much effort you're investing to put off what amounts to no effort at all. Frame a picture? People do it in their sleep.

That would be nice. Do it in my sleep. Couldn't complain about that, now, could I?

You'd find a way.

Hey.

Later. It's still quite overcast and a bit cold but I went on automatic pilot and hopped a bus downtown, had a cup of coffee at the Fountain Café in the City Center taking one lone picture just to say I'd taken one, I guess, a walk then most of the way back before catching a bus, now in the apartment at noon looking out at an overcast sky. My, my. Maybe I will take a crack at this framing project before this day runs out.

Later still. The sun is shining nicely, although it took somewhat longer to show up this afternoon. I've run some prints on the new paper, nice paper, doesn't cost all that much when you think of the size, 11.7" x 16.5". Why that particular size I don't know. But again I experimented running a couple of older images, two in color and one in black and white, looking at them with the disinterested eye some years distance will bring. Why did I adjust the color in that way? Why didn't I do this, why didn't I do that? A run through then of some of the artandlife images. OK, there's a dozen I can use, certainly, tied together with a visually common thread, but again, looking at them made me wonder what in the hell I've been doing all these years.

Enough of that. Depressing. An adjustment is in order, no need to beat yourself over the head. The further I get into this the more and the less I know. Some days you're hot and some days you're not and some days the sun comes up later than you'd like. My bucko.

What does that mean, exactly? Did you fall off your chair? Hit your head? Skin your knee?

It means maybe I should go back to the old Brownie Hawkeye and start over. But I won't. Start over with the old Brownie. We'll keep the current gear and slog on. I'm sure there's a song out there somewhere, “Slog on! Slog on!” but then it's probably some kind of military ditty, nothing to do with photographers.

 
The photograph was taken of the Three Heads Six Arms” sculpture by Zhang Huan in the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza with a Nikon D3s mounted with an 24 - 70mm f 2.8 Nikkor G lens at f 7 at 1/500th second, ISO 200.

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