shortly before japan

This would have been something like 3 or 4 days before we left for Japan? So that makes me almost six months behind the moment on posting. Ah well. I really like the first image, all those different faces kind of lined up. The second one has two of the performers we were there to see, I think they were friends of friends of Christa’s? The projector had like a bazillion dead pixels; the lines in the smoke-filled bar were kind of better than the projection.

I decided with these to just let them be sort of whatever contrast they were, and not mess with them too much. The one of the two people doesn’t have sufficient depth, but I like their expressions well enough. I also don’t understand why there were spotlights in the bathroom, but there were. I don’t think either one of us was really feeling the vibe at this club, so we ducked out pretty quick.

Oh yeah: I’m selling my Leica. I started having those thoughts, all the stuff I was talking about in the previous post, and I was just going to put it on the shelf for a while, but then our taxes came in and we owe enough that coming up with the money other ways was going to be difficult. So, it’s on ebay, along with the summicron. Oh well.

I’m a little bummed about it, but really the kind of images it’s good at making aren’t really what I want to be doing. I mean, look at this post: Side-on photos of people in the train, one slightly blurry portrait, and a couple static scenes. I want to be making good portraits. That’s not to say the Leica isn’t a good portrait camera, but it doesn’t work that way for me.

shadows in the city

I think I may have a weird mental block around the Leica. I did a little shooting this weekend with the Fuji again, and it was a lot easier to work with. I think actually the thing that made it easier is autofocus. Call me lazy, but I think it’s actually faster than I can focus. When I was younger, I could almost always beat the AF, but maybe I’ve lost a step, or the talent has atrophied. Either way, here I am. People move around a lot, and also they are often closer than 2.5 feet from the camera, and I noticed that too. I took three lenses and only used one, the 35mm ‘Fujicron,’ which is a 50mm full frame equivalent (roughly ~52.5mmE, but who’s counting?). It’s an excellent lens.

I’ve been watching this youtuber Thomas Heaton and in particular this video (although I’ve been watching since he was reviewing a camera I was curious about) where he talks at length about going down a wrong path with his channel and his photography, obsessing over gear and chasing likes and not really just focusing on making good images. It’s a good lesson, and something I myself am continually re-learning. I think some people can obsess about this stuff, but it’s not something that’s healthy for me.

So here we are. These, incidentally, were taken with the Leica, not that it matters.

I need to shoot more portraits

I need to shoot more portraits. I know I’ve said that before, but dang. All this street stuff and the not-street kinda landscape-y stuff has dulled my portrait sense. For a while there, it was like a superpower. Gotten soft, I suppose.

Anyway, I put these together for a blog post the other night and then the internet went out and since it was 1:30 already I just went and passed out. Here they are.

palace hotel strike

This was also last fall, and while I generally avoid posting pictures of people’s faces protesting, I don’t think there’s a good reason to do that here. It’s in one of the most heavily photographed areas of San Francisco, and there were tons of other people around shooting video and stills and posting them to whatever social network. It’s been months, and the strike is won. That out of the way…

So in the last post I was like “yadda yadda no major site updates here’s some photos” but I realized I didn’t say way that was, or what might be preventing me from actually doing those updates. And instead of just going to edit that post, I figured I could just throw up another post instead.

So, the reason the whole blog redesign/replatform isn’t happening yet is that I’m working on several other projects and I also am back to work, which means during the day, I’m workin’ for the man. The first project, and definitely the one I’m most excited about, is the tiny laptop. I’m making a laptop in a roughly 4.5”x9” footprint, to serve as a travel machine. I’ve got some of the parts inbound and some more of them already here. Also, there’s the solar light project that I’m working on for a friend. Not sure how much of that is under wraps, but it’s a thing, and I have a raft of browser tabs open and I’m working on parts in Kicad.

Finally, there’s the bag venture, which is still a thing. I’m looking at Dyneema fabrics for the next one, which will be a similar style to the last one, but I’m also waiting for the fabric to be in stock. I’ve got a whole bolt of Codura in black, I’ll probably do something with that also.

Fun times. Things are happening here at Mills Studios. Not a lot of them photographic, although all that work is also ongoing; I may have my first lead on a portrait subject for PROJECT SAN PABLO. I need to come up with another photo project to work on in the interim, since that’s kind of stalled out. Something will come to me, it always does.