More from the same early morning walk

Grey herons, Onsala last Saturday

40 minutes

I realised a couple of years ago that the 40 minutes of FREE time that is created when you bring your kid to swim class is actually perfectly suited to read a book. Once a week you have a determined slot were you can immerse yourself in the book that's been on your bed side table fighting for attention with twitter, netflix, podcasts... (and always loosing).

Yesterday I brought my camera instead and took a short hike in the woods close by.

I highly recommend finding a small fixed window of time every week where your phone does not get to participate and you dedicate your time on some form of 'old school' activity instead. (Or just sit there quietly meditating over a cup of coffee). 

Naive

I know that I was naive.
I know that I was fooling myself.
But a little part of me thought that when I left the mail-man gig I would be a lot less tired. And that I would be able to use that energy in lots of creative ways.

I would start blogging again.
I would photograph more.
I would complete more projects that I am usually so good at starting but almost never finish.

But of course the physical tiredness has been replaced by mental tiredness. Being a (more than full time) student where half the days are spent in a school observing, or giving, lessons and the other half taking classes (and the rest of the day reading, preparing, writing..) does take its toll.
It has even gone so far that I happily bike home in silence some days (compared to a month ago when I went crazy if I could not fill every woken hour with podcasts streaming straight into my brain).

But then again.
I did finish a working (prototype) of my camera trigger that I have been planing for more than a year.
And I did go on a fifteen minute walk to document the demolition of the school next door with my camera last Saturday.
And here I am, writing away on a blog-post for the first time in ages on a Friday evening. 

Topless

Had some time today. Some free time. Some me time.
Short day at the office and no kids to pick up after.

On my meandering way home I wandered into a thrift store and started to look around for something interesting. After a while I had picked up a Bonsai book and a nice Jenga game but then I noticed a box. It was a bit rugged and not really something that I would buy but I opened it up and it turned out to be a box for ~6x6 photo-negatives. There was a lot of empty photo sleeves. I saw the sticker, 150 sek for a rather boring box, nope not going to pay that. But I took a second look inside and noticed two negatives. Two negatives of a woman. A topless woman. Probably done by a serious photographer by the look of it. So my mind started to try to convince me that yea, maybe the box is not that bad, it might be worth the asked price. It might have a place in my collection of old cameras and other photography paraphernalia. And maybe the photographs are from a famous or not yet discovered photographer (like Vivian Maier who was discovered when she could not pay the rent on her storage locker where she had over 150 000 negatives). Or maybe the girl in the photo is famous, it might be a topless photo of Billy the kids girlfriend. It might be worth Millions! But I managed to lull my brain back into a more reasonable state and I actually put the negatives back into the box, closed it up and returned it to the shelf for some other lucky person to discover.

Or maybe I'm having a short day at the office tomorrow. With no kids to pick up after work. Maybe I'll go back for a second look...

Lego art installation

Saffron

Thinking that saffron must have some interesting spectroscopic properties during the baking yesterday led me to dreaming about my old lab. In my dreams I found a laptop that once belonged to me. I got the password in my first attempt and all my research was right there. Then someone loudly announced that he needed help with the blanket and I awoke to a rather gloomy day... 

Södra sveriges högsta vattenfall

Stalpet, södra Sveriges högsta vattenfall (20m), fick sig ett besök förra helgen. Nästan lika imponerande som Niagarafallen var när jag besökte dem för 15 år sedan...

Pact

Some time ago I went into a pact with a friend. We were to push each other to be more creative, my friend was to write and submit something to some contest, and I was to submit something to a photography contest.

And swooosh, the deadlines that we had put up said as they rushed by. Swooosh. No contests yet.

But maybe, just maybe, something good will come out of it. I have recently signed up on a new (to me) photography site. I hope that it will be as good as usefilm.com, that disappeared a year ago due to a catastrophic server crash (back up your shit folks), was. The idea is that you can submit photos and get and give critiques and ratings. The good thing is that you learn a lot and get inspired and encouraged. The problem is that you look at some really good work and get discouraged because your own work does not measure up...

Anyhow, I intend to build up my portfolio from scratch, and if you are interested you can have a look here.

Black and White

So, I started thinking.

If taking photos was not so easy. If it would cost me precious time and money to develop each frame. If it was not just a matter of sticking the memory card into the computer and importing the shots into the photo database software. Would I then stop making the same misstake of taking photos that I know will be bad and actually start to think beforehand?
Should I go back to my old Minolta and shoot, and develop, Black and White again?

I thought about this for a time in my bed, and then I got up, turned on my computer and started to brows through my b&w collections from way back (before 2008). And man was it a lot of crap! Sure, I did find some that I could put up here without totally embarrassing myself, but the main bulk of the work was, hm, not that good.

Is it possible that a second go at it could be inspiring, fun, worthwhile and a big improvement over the crappy frames of poorly exposed artsy shots of stones at the shore with water stains from the amateurish development that this is just one example of:

Me, the photographer

So, I take a lot of photos. The amount varies, but lets just say that over a period of a couple of months, it stacks up to a lot. Now, most often, one of my children are in front of the camera. Sometimes with a prop. 

But I do try to do this once in a while as well.

And yea, sure, sometimes, I happen to stumble and get some nice results even if I just fiddle around without tripods, lighting equipment and all other stuff that I should really learn how to use in order to get to a level that I want to be at.

Too often I take shots that I know will be bad. Handheld macros with insufficient light will never be good, but I keep trying. Boring shots of boring stuff in boring light will never be anything but boring. But I keep trying. Pictures of people inside, with poor lighting, whilst they are moving about will not be sharp, even if I use a 1.4 aperture (it might be sharp somewhere in the frame, but hardly ever where I want it to be).  So why do I keep trying?

I don't know.

I should learn more. I should study the classics. I should get better at using my camera, my flash, my image software. I should learn how to direct people. I should learn more about composition than just the 'rule of thirds'. I should stop taking photos that I know will suck.

Mars

This is the best I can do with my current equipment. I clearly need better stuff. A telescope perhaps? Or wait, have I not been down this road of thought quite recently?

 

Quite fittingly it is now Mars the month. Thankfully the ugly February is over, the light has returned to us in the north and spring is soon upon us.

What a day!!

Today was the first day that I left Tage alone at the daycare. It was only for half an hour, and it went all right. I mean, it wasn't fun to walk out the door and leave my kid crying in the arms of someone else, but he calmed down after a while they told me. But that was not what brought on the title of this post, it was something that happened during this 'free' time that I got.
 
I walked around without a real goal, just staying away and trying to not obsess too much over the fact that my kid was crying. I happened to walk by a grocery store and thought 'maybe I should just pop in and get me a chocolate bar, I deserve that don't I?' even though I am trying to loose those damned extra Christmas pounds that currently flapp around my waist. So I walked in to the store, but when I saw the fruit I actually changed my mind, I was going to have some bananas instead. But they did not have any ecological ones, and since bananas are one of the things that we only by if they are eco, I changed my mind back towards chocolate again ( I do admit that the logic here is not very sound, especially since sweets are not one of those things). Anyway: On my way back from this little detour in the healthy section towards my original goal It happened.

I walked by a cart with some wares that were marked down due to that they were going out of sale. 'Hmm, a bottle of fish sauce. That I do not need.' I thought distractedly at the same time that I, for the hundredth time the last fifteen minutes, checked that I had reception on my phone and that there were no missed calls from the daycare personnel. Just as I was about to walk on something in the back of my mind told me to look down once again, there was something in that cart, something very important.

And my mind has never been more right.

It was a product that I learned to love a couple of years ago. A product that inexplicably vanished from the stores maybe last autumn. A product that I wrote an unanswered mail to the manufacturer requiring about. A product that I have searched for all over the country. A product that I put a Wanted ad for, right here on this very blog. A product that I had lost all hopes of ever owning again. 

There they were, what might possibly be that last two jars of Chipotle paste in the country, in a sales cart, going for 10 SEK each. If they only knew what I gladly would have paid for them they would cry themselves to sleep for a week. You better believe that I bought candy to celebrate!

Duplo

Ok, I wanted to share this image with all of you, and tried writing a nice blog post to it, but it did not pan out. Basically what I wanted to say was that:
I play a lot with duplo these days.
I built this sculpture some days ago and then took a photograph of it, or rather through it.
It turned out pretty nice.
And then I wondered if you could figure out how I did it.
Can you? (Oh yea, I only used regular 2x2 and 2x4 pieces.)

Turbulence

I snapped this during our vacation on Gotland this spring. Except for the crop and a little tweak of the colours I did no edits. Sometimes a little turbulence in the air is a good thing.

Project

I decided during my stay at my parents house this summer that it would be a nice little project to scan all their old photos (or most of them anyway). Mostly it was so that I could get some photos of me when I was Tage's age for comparison, but why not do them all I thought. So I told my dad to bring them to me and now I have 25 cartridges with 40 slides each ( = 1000 slides) to process in my bookshelf. Scanning takes about a minute each so that could be done within 16.7 hours (if I really streamlined the operation) but that does not take into account the time it takes to remove dust, change frames on some of them etc etc etc. Then there is the post-production, cropping, making changes to the exposure, digitally remove some dust etc etc. But that is all fine, it is just manual labour and yes, it takes time and is kind of repetitive but I sort of like that.

What I do have a problem with however is sorting. I am kind of meticulous when it comes to my photos. I have them nicely sorted in the order in which they were shot. I like the time-line, that they form a record of events. It probably has to do with my poor memory. To have your photos sorted like that is of course not ideal. For one thing, it makes it impossible to put them into an album (if you don't put all of them in there), and you can't sort all your photos of your dog in one place (cause then you disturb the time-line), and you can't really show your photos to someone (because then you must show all of them)... (all of this applies to the analog photos of course, the digital ones is far easier to handle (I highly recommend using a photo managing/editing software like Lightroom, Aperture, blueMarine or picasa to keep your photos organized)). But as you might have guessed, the gene that makes you inclined to keep anal order among your photos must have skipped a generation. Photos of the X-mas 1981 pops up in numerous cartridges. Winter is mixed with summer, spring and autumn. A young version of my mother pops up in the middle of a moose hunt in 1985. Dogs that did not exist at the same time seems to be playing together. These cartridges must be my fathers version of Monica's closet. I feel that I must bring order to this chaos but I do not know how. 

In April

Some time in April or thereabout I borrowed two books at the local library on the art of using flashes whilst photographing. It was an active choice, I went to the library just for that cause. I have a good flash and I do not know really how to use it to get good results, instead I fool around and use the trial and error method (which works to some degree but - really, come on...). So I have actually meant to read, no, to really study these books.

Since then I have re-borrowed them three times, two of the times after the loan already had gone over the limit (so now I own the library some money), even if the library has sent me a mail a couple of days before saying that 'hey, its time to return/re-borrow the books'.

One of the books I have used as a lap-top stand when I have the computer in the bed. The other I actually opened and read several pages in, up to the section of the omni-bounce. It stated that - 'you really got to have an omni-box'. I do not have an omni-box. And yes I could buy one (and I will, once I am in a town that has a decent camera store), but since I do not have one I felt a little like a looser, I mean come on, I did not even realize when I bought the flash that I of course should have bought an omni-box too. Anyhow, after I had read the section of the 'must have' omni-box I kind of lost interest in the books  (no, not really lost interest, I have felt stupid, lazy and like a looser every time I have seen them) and they have just been laying around here since. Until yesterday when I returned them to the library after I had received an email from them saying 'please return the books now you dickwad, we both know it, you will never read them so why not let someone else get a chance? come on now, what do you say?'. This was several days ago, so now I own them even more money. Some times I mess these little things up for no bloody reason what so ever and let me tell you, It really sucks to do that.

Abandoned

While on a random walk today we stumbled upon an abandoned flower shop. (Actually I stumbled upon one and deliberately walked past another, but the only nice photos were of the stumbled upon one). The photos could have ended up better I am sure, but Man does Tage hate it when I stop and take out my camera. It is really hard to be creative with groaning kid in the stroller, but I am working on the problem. Any day now either he will realize that groaning is stupid Or I will come to a state were I just do not care. (No, I do not believe any of those things will happen).