I realize two of these are basically the same picture (the middle two), and I really should just pick one, but it’s 3am and I’m trying to get to bed. The last one demanded, loudly, that it be left in color. Still playing with the film presets, which I always swore were silly, but they’re really not bad when you’re trying to crank something out. It’s hard for it to not still look like one of my pictures anyway.
I’ve been sick all week, making what was supposed to be a very productive time into me, sitting on the couch watching marvel movies and the expanse. Rather annoying, but it’s really important to listen to when the body says stop. I’ve been to the hospital more than once because I ignored what my body was telling me. Anyway, this is just a particularly bad head cold, with associated exhaustion and some joint pain and headaches. I’m feeling a little better now, although the pain in my knees is a thing this evening.
The Serra sculpture at SFMOMA, officially Sequence, really loves the 15mm. It’s large and close, so it works. The super-sharpness of the lens isn’t really an asset; here I’m using a preset meant to make the files look like type 55 film, but also tweaked a bit from there (I can’t help myself). For me it’s all about the interplay of light and shapes in that space. It’s hard for me to imagine the machine that bends a 20-foot wide piece of 4” plate like this. Just a massive impossibly violent machine, but very calming on the viewer.
So, this was now more than a month ago, and I can’t seem to catch up. I should post double or something until I get there. Or try not to get sick any more. That might work too.
Here’s today, anyway.
Monday, I get to work and there’s a package waiting for me on my desk. I’d actually tried to come pick it up on sunday, to have for the party, but there was some kind of power outage in the building, which meant that my key card couldn’t open the doors. In any case, I survived a day without my lens and made it to work the next day. The power was back on. The package contained a brand new 15mm Voightlander, which if you follow me on social media, you’ll have seen some photos from it already.
What can I say? This is a lens that demands a lot out of the photographer. You get a lot in the frame; more than you expect, even using the external finder. Which means managing composition and arranging the frame is quite difficult. Also, it has a tendency to become a little gimmicky. I found myself reaching for it and… but I’m getting ahead of myself. That was later, in other pictures. For now, let’s say I save it for special occaisions and leave it at that.
The majority of these photos were taken at the new Transbay center, where more recently there has been some hubbub about cracks in the steel. I’m not an expert, so I’m not going to try to guess what’s going on with that. I have a guess, and I swear I’ll tell you if I was right as soon as they say.
So, we came back from that camping trip on that saturday in order to be in our own beds and closer to this on sunday. As the title says, it was friend Grant’s birthday, and he had a lot of delicious smoked meat and really good barbecue sauce for us. It’s a rare thing out here in california. I know, it’s a particularly stereotypical thing, for someone from somewhere other to come and say the food is no good, but there really aren’t any restaurants that do barbecue sauce right. Grant ordered all of his from Oklahoma.
Anyway, it was a nice afternoon and evening, and I really was having a nice time relaxing, so not to many photos. The one of the stars, there at the end, was taken looking up from their patio, with the 50mm wide open.
I’m now a month behind again. Anyway, here’s today.
Copyright © 2008-2017, Matt Mills.
