This week, the story continues through a simple shot taken at an airplane. On the way to London - and not that London has not had enough photo opportunities - on the contrary, but this guy was the modern day writer - with a pen and paper, with laptop in the bag, with a smile on the face.
Photography
{Project "52"} Week 3
Third week - and it is already discouraging. A week goes buy, waking up in the morning, in a daze, either after a dream that my psychiatrist will disapprove of or worse after a restless night, relentlessly devoid of any imagination. Third week, and I already feel the pressure of this project - a pressure of taking the camera daily and not finding a picture that is worth showing, that is worth a sequence, that is worth the words that will tell its story. Third week, and I am almost ready to stop counting and let it be - or start counting upwards in trimesters or quarters or human pregnancies. Because each day is like a smug opponent pushing the envelop, punching you in the insecurities and setting the bar higher, almost out of sight, where even persistence cannot reach. And in photography, the components can balance each other but not stand for each other - chasing technical perfection is like chasing a circle around is circumference, chasing aesthetic appeal is like dreaming of waking up, and chasing the perfect timing is like living in the future while being spaced in the present. And the last option of chasing the story - well, that's just a battle lost before it has even began - because the story is not to be chased but to be and to be lived!
{Project "52"} Week 2
Has it been only a week? It feels like ages since we touched through that glass window, since our smiles melted your fellow passengers' hearts, and since the liquids we carried in our eyes went unnoticed by the security personnel at the airport. I can close my eyes and still see you disappear in the surge of people rushing to get comfortable on an overcrowded claustrophobic jet. I go home and I have another bag of memories to unload in Lightroom. And on my desk I put the big flower that you left behind - like all the others before it - on my desk, so that when I do that pose of thoughtful scrutiny of the crossing down the street, I can see the oxymoronic wave of red and green. This flower oscillates between the moods: if it were white, it would've been necrophilic; if it were yellow, it would've been jovial; if it were red, it would've been infernal; and if it were purple, it would've been regal. But it is none of those - it defies all the rules of light and optics mixing red and green, between a tumbling foamy wave and a rustling velvet cape. And although it has been more than a week since it has been plugged from its nurturing surrounding, it stays shiny in its vase like a rocket set for launch - with a clear destination - as if it knows that you and I are once again a thousand kilometers apart.
{Project "52"} Week 1
And so the new year begins. And so I start a project. And as much as I thought of this project as starting with a New Year's picture, I didn't get to start it as designed by cliche. If anything, it gets to start in melancholy. My darling and I spent the lovely week of the new year together travelling in the neighbouring countryside, enjoying the winter sun, and watching each other in the eyes. But she had to get back to her side of the border until the next time we meet somewhere else in Europe. And this is how this picture came about - we were at the airport in Graz - she was already through security, and we were separated by a glass wall. Transparent enough that we could see each other and see the warmth in our eyes. And so with this memory, I begin the project!
Greathead or the reinvention of 52 stories, 52 dreams and 52 moments, 52 surprises and 52 predictions
in Photography
Year after year, new cameras get released to the market. Wait - what am I saying - week after week, new cameras are released on the market (whether the market needs them or not). And photographers sometimes shrug non-commitally and sometimes obsessed unjustifiably. And I am not the first to write about the pitfalls of gear addiction.
The first stage in any purification process is admitting that there is something wrong with you - well, I probably am not a typical example of a gear-acquisition-syndrom-patient compared to what others I've read about own (that Leica collection of William Eggleston?), I recently felt overwhelmed by the choice I had and needed to make each morning when going out of the door - a choice between digital and analogue, between focal length and size, between speed and contemplation.
In between the multitude of pocket cameras (I was browsing through the photo section of a local electronics store), there rarely appear to be any surprising models. Perhaps it is the simple consumer approach (commoditization) or the simple lack of R&D resources or simply the lack of focus (pun intended), but it strikes me as quite odd that putting most pocket cameras next to each other, one will hardly notice a difference in anything but their brand-name, and perhaps their external design. Granted design (i.e. ergonomics) is important but we are talking about operations which are in any case going through menus and drill-downs. Some people focus a lot on the operations aspect of a camera when they make the choice. I believe I don't put as much attention as that per se although it figures into my perception of how the camera feels. The Pro-grade cameras all feel powerful in the hand - heavy, solid, and most of them quite refined. They still may have tons of buttons and dials, of which I am not the biggest fan, but the M8 and M9 have really spoiled me in terms of expectations. The ease with which I can maneuver with the M system has become a breeze.
Out of curiocity, I have been taking a look sideways to the M. I am familiar with the operations of the Canon Pro-level cameras, having used a 5D II, 1Ds, and 1Ds II and one easily transitions from one to the other. I imagine it is similar with the Nikon gear although I've never shot with a Nikon (now that the DF is out, I am contemplating having a run with it or perhaps with an older D700). But when one comes to the pocket cameras or the micro-four-thirds, one finds great variety of systems. Over the past 1 year, I've tried a bunch of them (Olympus E-P2, and OM-D5) and will probably be continuing with that experimentation.
One of the cameras that grabbed my attention is the Ricoh GR Digital IV mostly because of the praise it received in the context of street photography (ironically, I didn't get to use it in the context of street photography). One of the major advantages it brings is speed in focusing (thanks to a dual-AF-focus system), small sensor (i.e. large depth of field), ruggid construction (metal housing), wide-angle without bells and whistles (28mm equivalent - oh, and fast at f1.9), and (probably not for street) macro mode (going down to a couple of cm from the front element). All of this added together, and this has been a good camera (no experience yet with the new Ricoh GR with the APS-C sensor which may have its advantages).
I spent few weeks with it trying to wrap my head around looking at a screen to compose and taking a picture with a shutter which felt decidedly different from my M9. And I couldn't. Menu functionality, again, felt much more complicated than the M9 but still not too complicated or unknowable. The image quality is what made me keep the camera for quite some time. Pocket cameras have rarely blown me away (with the exception of the iPhone camera which is miraculous being much much tinier). But it was not destined to be a long-lasting relationship and this little baby went to ebay.
Then there was (still is) the film phase - going through old Leica Ms, exploring for the first time the nostalgia of the vintage film Nikon classics and even small point-and-shoots (like the Leica Minilux and Rollei 35). Venturing into medium-format too (Rolleiflex, Mamiya 645 and Pentax 67).
It is not that I kept all of these options available at all times - it was not a hoarding, it was an exchange - a camera fund that gets rotated again and again (that's the beauty of buying second-hand - value doesn't depreciate that quickly). I doubt that this will stop. But I know that I want to be able to use this exercise as an opportunity to learn plasticity - to be able to shift between media and formats with the goal of retaining a signature that has nothing to do with the equipment or the tool but with the way it is being used. To this end, it doesn't matter if the camera is a fancy Leica M (typ 240) or if it is a cheap plastic point-and-shoot film camera. I am far from having accomplished this language fluency but I am glad that I ventured on this path - because every day is a more interesting day!
In 2014, I will be continuing my experimentations for sure. But I am also now a happy owner of the next M series camera - the Leica rangefinder has turned out to be the system that comes closest to home. And for 2014, I have decided to do one of those "regular interval" projects - a-photo-a-"period" and I've decided to do it on a weekly basis with a fixed kit: the Leica M (typ 240) equipped with Leica Summilux 50 ASPH. And weekly, a picture will be posted here with a short story. 52 pictures - 52 stories, 52 dreams and 52 moments, 52 surprises and 52 predictions.
