Monthly Archives: May 2010
The Industrial Age
One of the last images my little Nikon D40x took before the shutter refused to budge anymore.
This last weekend was jam-packed with activities and photo ops. It started on Saturday with a whole day and evening sailing in San Francisco Bay. Well, not quite sailing. We were a crew with only one current sailor, and a bay with strong winds and lots of white caps. So, the sails remained furled and the engine hummed. Nonetheless, it was beautiful day with none of the forecast rain, and all the anticipated excitement of seeing a beautiful urban landscape from a unique perspective. And that night, we watched the KFOG kaboom fireworks show from out on the water.
The next day we checked out Maker Faire for the second time. It sneaked up on us again, so we didn’t have the time or freedom from a certain Lego maniac to see as much as we wanted. Worse yet, there were no pictures taken. The reason goes back to the previous day.
While otherwise glorious, there was sadness, too, during our sailing excursion. Above is one of the last pictures my little D40x took before the shutter mechanism quit working. There was suspicion that the environment led to the failure. But I was careful to keep it pretty dry and I don’t think it was out there long enough for salty air to penetrate the body and gum up the gears. I’ve searched for information online and it looks like quite a few people have experienced the same error. One person posted a fix. I just need to get some tiny screwdrivers to take the camera a little bit apart and apply WD-40 to a gear or two. I’m hoping for the best, though clearly, the camera was not built to last as long as this bridge.
Cold Tone Spring
880 South
I was going to say that lately, photography has felt like a struggle. Then I remembered that it isn’t just lately that it has felt that way. Last year I was talking to photographer and lab owner Seth Dickerman about a little creative crisis I was going through. At the time, I was shooting a lot, pretty indiscriminately, in fact. He said to me, “Sometimes, the hardest part is figuring out what you’ve got. Take your time and look at what you have.” He was talking about editing. My struggle at the moment is with inspiration to shoot at all. In a way, the same advice applies. Even with a trickle coming in, there are still so many images to come back to, review, retouch, organize, and so on. Looking again at what you have can lead you to some ideas to develop further, and then off you go, shooting with a new focus.
As it turns out, I have several series I have started working on over the last couple years that remain unfinished. I could do with some more time spent organizing and editing, and post-processing. This led me to another little series: experimenting with a cold tone look on urban landscapes. It has a kind of nostalgic look, and almost a little corporate or government brochure feel in some cases, as in the image above, 880 South. This is just the start, so we’ll see how far I get and where it goes.
Three Along the 880
The W. T. Rawleigh Co.