Come Home Swiftly
Houston, Texas.
Shot on iPhone.
photography
Step Outside
“Go touch grass” is such a meme these days. And for good reason – after almost three years of pandemic isolation, we could all use some fresh air. We probably spend too much time online, especially on social media, and it can affect our wellbeing.
This year, I’m trying my best to get outside more. During the pandemic, I made taking a walk at lunchtime a new habit to help my mental and physical health. But “outside” can also mean away from the internet, or away from your everyday. Now is always the best time to see or do something new.
And while you’re at it, grab your camera and capture what you experience.
Waking Up in Spring
April is our time to wake up and get outside. The birds are chirping, the leaves are sprouting, and the sun comes out to visit again.
Rethinking My Project Strategy
For my last two big portrait projects, Artists In Jackson and Musicians In Jackson, my goal was to interview and photograph local creatives and assemble those stories into a book. Prep, execute, deliver – all in one big thing.
I had the thought: what if, instead of treating them as projects, I treat them as platforms.
Instead of disappearing for a few months and coming out with a deliverable – like Moses carrying down a photo book carved in stone and delivered by divine inspiration – those projects become a channel that has regularly updated photos and stories. Instead of releasing a set of stories as a book, I keep releasing stories and never really finish.
Now, I could collect those stories and photos – say, every 20 – into something like a book. But the book isn’t the point. The doing is the point. It keeps building, more like a seasonal Netflix show than a daily newspaper.
This would relieve some of the pressure of feeling like I had to make a collection of something. As an alternative, I keep writing and making pictures and posting something when I have time. These projects become more like living, breathing websites than printed, finished books. The stories then become material for social media, newsletters, and website updates, rather than the reverse.
I’ve been collecting lists of creatives that I missed out on the first time around. By building and adding to that list, I can keep the stories coming – as long as I’m alive to tell them, potentially.
Not projects. Platforms.
Life In a Northern Town
We had a record ice storm hit Michigan last week. It swept across the U.S., but on Wednesday night, it struck the Great Lakes with particular fury.
That night, we listened anxiously while tree branches cracked and fell, breaking power lines all around us. We had an oak tree snap in half and block our street because of the weight of the ice. I braved falling branches the next morning to go around the yard and document everything sheathed in a clear coat. By the afternoon, all the ice had melted. The storm swept in and swept out quickly.
For two nights, we huddled in the basement as a family, wrapped in blankets while the temperature inside the house dipped to 47° F. We only got the power back on Saturday, and what a relief. But driving around town and seeing all the wreckage, we were lucky.
That’s life in a northern town.
Breaking Habits
I’m not Catholic, but I do love the idea of giving stuff up for a limited time from now through Easter. I’m in the Ben Franklin school of self-experimentation, and I’ve been giving up things I love for years. Potatoes, coffee (ugh! that was a rough one), alcohol – limitations are good, and knowing you can survive without these things builds character.
This video by HealthyGamerGG kick-started my flirtations with Lent deprivation this year. I was initially attracted to the title (“Why Finding Purpose Is SO HARD Today”), but after watching, Dr. Alok Kanojia’s points made a lot of sense about life in general.
I do tend to stuff my brain with external stimuli. I don’t let myself get bored anymore. And while I’ve taken up meditation again this year, it is a bummer to read social media all the time and not have time to just sit and think.
So for Lent, I gave up Twitter.
Twitter is a trashbin on fire these days, with all the behind-the-scenes ownership and business fumbles it’s made. I choose not to follow that stuff closely, but I have noticed that Twitter mostly brings me negative news. It’s a bummer to scroll through tweets every day. Giving it up means not allowing that negativity into my brain. It also means more quiet time to do something else.
Like edit photos! Or take photos! Or anything else that actually brings me joy.
While this blog post will appear on Twitter, thanks to a WordPress plugin, I won’t see it or the reaction. Instead, I can devote more time to being bored, thinking about my purpose, and reducing my overall anxiety.
Old Stuff Revisited
Here’s a harsh truth: I’ve taken fewer photos each passing year since 2015.
It’s not for lack of trying or interest. No, it’s mostly because the rest of life got busier – three kids, a demanding job, a new house, chores, spending time with family, etc.
(Another consequence of moving home and work is that I don’t have an interesting commute anymore. It’s mostly city and highway driving instead of the beautiful back country roads that used to fuel my hobby.)
That means, besides family vacations and a rare sunbeam coming into the home office, I have fewer and fewer photos to take, edit, and post for public consumption. And I miss doing that! I miss the process of capturing pictures and making them my own.
Lately, my solution has been to go back and rediscover some of my past work. I can look at it with fresh eyes, and tinker a bit. I have a good selection of photos that I’ve taken but never touched or shared in the years since.
Take my film portraits from the Musicians In Jackson project. I was initially so dissatisfied with how they turned out that I shelved them in favor of the digital versions. Now, looking back at them, they were actually pretty fun, and using a bit of Lightroom magic, I can make them look how I prefer.
There’s a ton of abandoned pictures and others that are stuck in a Lightroom folder somewhere. All I have to do is look for them, play with the sliders, and boom – something to share.
Now, that also means I’ll eventually run out. And I can’t fix the not-enough-time-for-picture-making problem – not easily. But this scratches the creative itch well enough to keep me busy for a while.
New Lens Tryout: Canon EOS M 32mm f/1.4
It’s been a while since I purchased a new lens. The truth is, I really have all I need, even though the Canon R system keeps tempting me.
For my mirrorless system, I’m sticking with my trusty Canon M. Forever, I’ve had the EOS M 22mm attached to that camera. I see in cropped 35mm on that camera.
So when Canon had a fire sale on refurbished 32mm f/1.4 prime lenses for Black Friday, I thought, “Now’s the time to get something new.”
(My other plan is to upgrade the camera itself, since my faithful M is almost 10 years old now. But we’ll see what next year brings.)
The 32mm is a 51mm equivalent on the M system. My comfort zone is in that 35-50mm range, but the extra F stop adds the opportunity for some shallow depth of field on a near-portrait fixed lens. All these years, I’ve been limited to a 35mm view on the M. This new lens was my chance to put another option in a camera I use 75% of the time.
And what a lens. It took some time to get used to this new field of view, but after fiddling with the unique focus system, I got the hang of it. When we went Christmas tree shopping this weekend, I saw it as a perfect chance to take the lens for a spin on a chilly, sunny midwestern December day.
As with the other M lenses, the 32mm is tack sharp. It’s stunning what these little, lightweight lenses can do. It does stick out from the front of the camera more than the pancake-style 22mm does, so getting the grip and balance just right took some time. It was also weird not to look through a viewfinder and see that 50mm field of view – the M has a touchscreen and touch-focus system.
These are minor getting-adjusted points. It’s a great lens, and I can see building a truly lightweight, mirrorless system out of this, the 22mm, and maybe a wide-angle M lens paired with a new M camera.