Life is odd in that it tosses detours at you that require time, attention and mind space. Sometimes other goals get side-tracked....

 

When I came back from a trip to Iceland in early November, 2018, I really wanted to dive into the photographs I had taken over the course of ten days. To play around with post production techniques and to really take time to sort through the wide range of images. Real life kept intruding. I was taking care of one parent with dementia while performing duties as the executor of my other parent's estate. I was also trying to keep the photography business running in order to send the boy off to college, pay bills and, well, just proceed with life. 

I did a cursory edit and then the images spent the last five plus years languishing in folders. Folders carefully backed up across three different hard drives. I came across one of the folders this past weekend and took a look. In fact, I was able to find the images already imported from one hard drive into a gallery in Lightroom. With that bit of operational friction out of the way I sat down and started to methodically go through the images at a much more leisurely pace than I had before. 

From the outset I should admit that I am not a "fastidious" shooter. I don't carefully line up a shot and fine tune the composition with numerous micro-adjustments and oceans of self-doubt. And I know that perfection doesn't exist. Instead, I see something I like, shoot it quickly and only then start playing around with smaller adjustments that might be good. Some scenes are in flux and can't be counted on to stay still enough to experiment with iterative attempts at (near) perfection. These I handle by shooting a lot of frames; still very quickly but with some movement of the camera position from frame to frame. The idea of putting a camera on a tripod for fun, spur-of-the-moment image-making and then endlessly fine-tuning the proposed image before actuating the shutter would, for me, suck all the fun out of the experience and make me give up and try something more fun. Like self-acupuncture or complex tax preparation for someone I don't even know. 

My fall back plan for those shots that can't be re-done in the moment is just to compose wide (and quick) and shoot vigorously with a plan to come back in post and crop the images images into coherence--- all after the fact. Cropping can be quick and decisive if you are willing to give up any preconceptions you formed while shooting the crop-able images. A cropping decision should be fast and unfettered by too much thought; like the flick of a paint brush when action painting. A fast stroke backed up by an assured idea of what feels right. Making process into "science" kills the art.

So, as I work my way through what's next in life, I've decided to torture my blog followers by publishing, in , drips, drabs and splotches, about 168 images that I've pulled from about 7450 images overall. Some might have small stories attached, or thoughts about contemporary photograph, while some are meant to be small galleries just here for your visual enjoyment and mine. 

The photos on this post are from a morning spent walking around the town of Reykjavik with a Panasonic G9 and a couple small lenses in an old Domke shoulder bag. I went past the restaurants, the docks and the hotels until I found the industrial part of the southern edge of the town and discovered these giant murals painted on aging warehouses, positioned in shop yards strewn with garbage. Almost like Roy Lichtenstein had come to Iceland, gotten bored and started applying his craft to discarded architecture. I liked the art very much and, by following an unnamed and unmarked path I found a lot more great graffiti and mural wall art nestled into quiet spaces on the sides of buildings. It was a fun morning of solitude and modern art appreciation in a far off city better known as a gateway to the glaciers. ..

OT We are in the middle of the most exciting times in American sports. The Olympic Trials are underway for swimming and world records are falling by the wayside. If you are watching one of the lesser sports because you didn't know the world's best sport by the world's finest athletes is being made available to you, well... now you have been informed. If you are instead watching silly crap like tennis, shuffleboard and baseball then you have only yourself to blame when your children ask: "Why the hell didn't we get to watch the Olympic swimming trials?! Why have you tried to ruin our lives by instead substituting mindless dreck and pretending it's even vaguely relevant?" 

Televised golf, for instance, is used as punishment in many countries for shoplifting and jaywalking.

 Just thought you should know. You could be watching swimming....for the children's sake....

Better yet, you could turn off the bad, other "sport" programming and go out to participate in some fine sport yourself. Think of the benefits! And your children will finally have that good role model you know they've been craving.