Friend Scott, whom I’d describe as a very serious amateur photographer (and noting that amateur, in French, means ‘lover’) spent the weekend at a photo workshop in San Francisco. Scott sent me a link to his weekend portfolio, many of which pictures I much enjoyed.
I particularly liked the composition above, with its sinuous curves and fern leaves echoing the tile patterns, a symmetry that was made more obvious by rendering the photo in black and white. The crop is good, too.
I wanted to send Scott a link to a photo of a curved stairway I’d made in Chicago, only to discover that the most recent iPhoto upgrade seems to have deleted 50 of the photos I’d taken on that particular trip. This is not the first time an iPhoto ‘upgrade’ has randomly deleted photos, apparently irretrievably, including the staircase (sadly, only one web-res picture remains from that outing, and it’s not the staircase).
So, off I went in search of Ferenc Berko’s fabulous study of a curved Chicago stairway, shot in the 1940s, only to discover that it is nowhere to be found online. My goal was to show Scott, by way of encouragement, that at least two other photographers had been enchanted by the same vision…
At least this week, we’re featuring tomatoes from Lucero Farms, and not the peppers that we find so fascinating. These tomatoes are to-die-for tasty…
We rose this morning to unusual heat. It was in the 70s, later to rise to a forecast 108 degrees – an unheard-of temperature in our neck of Northern California.
Nevertheless, I’d volunteered to bake the communion bread for tomorrow’s 10:30 service, so, after making breakfast, I got to work before the day’s heat worsened. Priest Beth Foote had been over earlier in the week with a new recipe.
I set to work, only to discover that the recent decline on my left side had left me rather less able to perform the crucial kneading step, especially given that the new recipe’s added shot of honey had rendered the dough more gooey than in my previous outing. Rehab coach Heidi would have been pleased that I stuck with it, finally wrestling the batter into some version of uniformity.
We had the risen dough rolled out in time for temperatures to hit the 90s, at which point, of course, the oven went on, mercifully for only about 20 minutes. While the bread cooled, the temperature went over a hundred and Linda and I lunched on Lulu’s salad and burritos and cold beer, after which I went for siesta in the worst of the day’s heat. Heh, pretty good Saturday, considering… I even did a little photo work for InMenlo…
Last March, high-school friend and college roommate Jim Graham and wife Susie were driving from San Francisco south on a West Coast tour, and dropped in for breakfast. Chef moi whipped up my signature oeufs scrambled with spinach and feta.
Jim, noting my recent difficulties, posted the following:
“Tell me this latest change wasn’t the spec that you first saw when Susie and I came for your famous Feta/Spinach scrambled eggs last March? We have recreated that dish about 20 times since we saw you. Just love it.”
Probably, Jim, after 20 plates of my famous eggs, you’ve noticed that your mind can once again grab those oh-so-apropos words and phrases that had previously been hard to come by, and when you see old acquaintances, their names (and their childrens’ names) click sharply into mind like a cartridge slamming home in a carbine. Doubtless you’re getting up earlier, jogging farther and working longer hours, all without breaking a sweat.
Have the offers of speaking engagements become something of a nuisance, along with the local Party’s constant admonitions to run for mayor?
You’re not alone – many who’ve tasted Gulker’s Famous Eggs find themselves in your shoes. Were it not for the brain cancer, I’d be taking over at Apple (but Steve thought 2 CEOs in a row with cancer was just too much).
But, to answer your question, yes that was about the time the current malaise descended. Complete coincidence, of course. Jim has yet to respond…
For most of my former life in photojournalism, I lugged a large, heavy, brass and stainless steel lens to every assignment.The lens, the 180mm f2.8 Nikkor was a quintessential reporter’s lens. It was long enough to capture events at a distance, and fast enough to both make focusing easy (manual in those days) and allow photos indoors in low light.
The 180, like the legendary Nikkor 105mm, was razor sharp. You could use its very narrow depth of field to isolate objects in a busy field making it great for portraits – I once made a portrait of my idol, photog Richard Avedon with the 180, while he sat on a bus bench in West Hollywood, outside the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery. A couple years ago, I donated the 180 along with all the rest of my old Nikon gear to the art department at my old school.
So, now that I’m back in the saddle, I have been hankering for my old friend. I have a modern Nikkor zoom that covers the same focal length, but at f5.6. It’s hard to use indoors and in other low light situations, and its depth of field is not as usefully shallow at full aperture.
So, we went fishing on eBay, and found a gently used 180 f2.8, a model that’s been updated with auto focus. On my ‘new’ digital Nikons it has the equivalent focal length of 250mm (another of my very favorite film-era lenses was the Leica 240mm f2.8 – so I’m pleased with this state of affairs).
The new lens arrived last night, it’s lighter by two-thirds than its manual predecessor but retains the cherished sharpness and razor-thin depth of field. One of the first pictures, a portrait of Tiger Lily (friend Scott’s King Charles Cavalier Spaniel) illustrates the possibilities. Snapped at the kitchen table this A.M. – ISO 800…
America lost one of its greatest legislators last night, to glioma, the same cancer that I have (though mine is a less aggressive form). Besides our cancers, he and I shared the attention of UCSF’s Dr. Mitch Berger (who operated on me, and consulted on Senator Kennedy’s surgery). My current state, and Senator Kennedy’s death, remind me of the path that lies ahead. I pray that I will walk this road with the courage that Ted Kennedy showed…
As I sat on my shrink’s sofa today, it occurred to me that one of the most reliable therapies for all that ails me, mentally, anyway, has been (and continues to be) photography. I love taking pictures and seeing them published.
I loved it when I worked for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and later for the San Francisco Examiner. I loved it when I worked as a stringer, I loved it when I worked for Picture Group and, later, Saba. I was ecstatic when Time or Newsweek, Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair or the New York Times published my work, no matter how small or deeply buried.
Naturally, current circumstances have changed how I practice the craft. Photojournalism was my old, unparalyzed self: nowadays I necessarily take a different approach. Knowing that gimp moi will be relatively static, I try harder than once I did to previsualize an interesting image, and then calculate how much time it will take to get myself in position, leaving squish room for adjustments. Hemiparesis notwithstanding, I still shoot assignments.
Once upon a time, it was just a matter of showing up, frequently at the last possible moment, and then throwing myself into the fray. I could rely on an agile body to get camera and lens to some approximation of the right place at the right moment, and things worked out as often as not. Even when I thought things through beforehand, surprises happened, and I had to scramble.
Nowadays ’scramble’ means ‘move very, very slowly.’ I miss a hundred shots for every one I manage to snap. But, oddly, surprises still happen. Call them slow surprises – things I would have missed once upon a time because I’d already left the venue. Nowadays, they just fall into my lap. Voila the photo above… taken when friend David and I got a late start on a walk in Ameugny…
A primer by Peter Scwartz, writing in Wired. Try it…
Apple’s new tablet: Steve Job’s new focus. Sayeth the WSJ
Just when things were seeming a little tough on the gimp front, John, Julie and Grace came over for char-grilled chicken and vegetables. Grace is just a little bright spot any time she comes over, and watching John and Julie takes me back to wonderful times when John was little, and Linda and I were making our way through young adulthood. Grace is so welcome in our lives….
Our 2-gimp household has seen better weeks. It’s not that Linda’s Achilles tendon isn’t healing nicely, or that my recent decline has gotten any worse, it’s just the friction that disability applies to every action, great and small, is so wearing. Patience erodes, tempers shorten, and things get harder still. Sigh…