Big thanks to Jamie MacDonald and Mike Boening for having me on episode five of the Mirrorless Minutes podcast last night.
Just to prove that they’re not micro 4/3 biased, they had me on to talk about Fuji and Canon mirrorless options, and to chat about the Lansing-area Kelby Photo Walk.
Lansing, Michigan
Participated in the Kelby Worldwide Photo walk this past weekend, and what fun we had – it was us an a zombie walk, so. You know. Photos!
I’ve been really digging the new stuff from Flying Colors, the supergroup pop band made of prog virtuosos – and it doesn’t get much better than the group doing Spock’s Beard’s “June.”
The second Flying Colors album is great, but the first album hits some emotional high points for me, like “Blue Ocean.” Just stellar work from a group of fantastic musicians.
If you want you can will it. You can have it. I can put it right there in your hands.
Indeed.
I have a theory that Mastodon, today, is like Metallica in the Black Album era: approachable metal for non-metalheads and casual fans. The new video for “The Motherload” also shows what a fun band they are. They’re able to laugh at themselves, and the music industry itself, as they take the heavy metal doom and fantasy tropes and pair them with the unexpected.
I mean, just look at those butts. It’s hypnotic.
Once More Round the Sun has been a fantastic album. I mean, just listen to the last minute or so of “Aunt Lisa.” That’s a band having fun.
“The Motherload” is Mastodon at its most radio-friendly approachability. Now with twerking!
It’s one of those rare places on Earth: the point of something, as far in as you can go, surrounded by water and stories and wreckage.
Whitefish Point, in the upper peninsula of Michigan, is just such a place. The home of shipwrecks (and a museum) on ol’ Lake Superior, it’s only bested by Copper Harbor to the west.
Imagine a beautiful white sandy beach bordering a lake far too cold for swimming, with driftwood everywhere – like the bleached bones of some mammoth sea creature. From the beach, you can look north and see Canada, just gentle bumps on the horizon, with Superior everywhere else.
Whitefish Point is one of those places that make Michigan Michigan.
A few months back, I landed on a monograph by Edward Weston, one of the greats. I appreciated his landscape work (even more so than Ansel Adams), and especially his detail work of the seascape in California. The textures, the tones, the detail. He had a knack for capturing objects like they were organic, or even human.
So I gave that mindset a try with the driftwood at Whitefish Point, along with a few photos of the scenery.
I didn’t try to match Weston’s color so much as his attention to detail: the little grooves and bends of the driftwood, the feel of the sand, the man-made desolation.
Using the Fuji X-E1’s black and white film emulation mode, specifically with the red filter, I was looking to grab the sky in a dramatic way, too. It was a warm day that day, but there was a breeze, and it felt like some storm could ruin everyone’s beach day at any moment, sweeping south from Superior.
But no storm came. Just gulls and the wind from the lake.
Consider this a good desktop wallpaper for download during these autumn months.
(And big thanks to Neoprime for featuring it!)
