13-1-30

Yesterday I lamented the lack of a 35mm lens for my Leica. Reality is, I have a pretty stellar 35mm lens that fits on both my digital and film Nikon cameras. I have another that fits on my Pentax Spotmatic. It's not the equipment that gets in the way, it's the time, or lack of it.

I've lusted after a Leica M9 for years now but at around $10000 for the body and a good lens it's oppressively expensive and not without limitations. And then I thought I might want a Sony RX1 but when you figure that it costs as much as a Nikon D600 and a Sigma 35mm f1.4 DG HSM lens and as a system it would definitely take better photographs. The Sony is much smaller though. Size is appealing.

This lens, the Nikkor 35mm f/2, is an affordable $427. It lives on my camera most of the time. If there's a shortcoming to it it's that there's only one of them in my possession and I have two cameras it could fit on. There's an updated version that sells for $1793. It goes to f/1.4, the full extra stop shouldn't be undervalued but $1300 or so is a large chunk of change. 1.4 means 1/60th. 2.0 means 1/30th. That's the difference between getting the shot and not getting the shot.

This series of photographs is taken with a really crappy point and shoot camera. They are grainy, distorted, full of artifacts, digital noise. Everything about them makes me cringe because they are very poor photographs, and yet they are beautiful and I like them very much. The flaws in image quality works for them. So who am I to complain about 1 stop?

The new cameras are interesting. I'm not in the market yet, my camera is still just fine, thank you very much. But the new cameras are getting closer to what the Leica M9 is/was but cost a lot less than $10000. Some of them cost less than $3000. A Fuji X-Pro1 with a 35mm equivalent lens is under $2000 but it's still a crop sensor, it's still a compromise, But it didn't exist two years ago. The Leica M9 didn't exist 4 years ago, its predecessor, the M8, also being a crop sensor camera. Things are moving in the right direction. I don't wish or hope for my camera to die. There's nothing out there that I want to replace it with today but I can imagine within a couple of years compact, high resolution, full frame cameras with be plentiful. At least I hope so.

13-1-29

I would take this camera everywhere with me and use nothing but it if it would accept a 35mm lens without viewfinder adapters. It's enough to make me want to buy a more modern Leica but for some reason these relics justify prohibitive selling prices.

Photography nirvana isn't that difficult to attain. A decent rangefinder with a full frame sensor or film camera, smallish, built rugged. All of these things have been possible since 1953. 60 years later they tease us with allusions to this ideal and yet they never deliver, not without a cost anyways.

It makes no sense that I can buy Nikon's high end 35mm lens and a D600 for less than Sony's RX1 with all its limitations. And if Fuji can make an X-Pro1 with a 35mm equivalent for $1000 less you'd think they could do the same with a full frame sensor for not much more.

I'm happy Fuji is embracing the rangefinder aesthetic. I hope within a year or two (about the soonest I might entertain the idea of buying a new camera) Fuji will take this ideology and invest it in a full frame sensor camera body mimicking a Leica M9 (or whatever they call it now) with a true 35mm lens and I will find photographic bliss. Reality is the photo I took today was with a 60mm Micro Nikkor lens. This betrays in the moment my suggestions of what the perfect body/lens combination is.

But for today I'm looking for a Leica/35mm film combo for less and if I find it I might just start shooting more film again. I'm not holding my breath. And I'm pretty happy with what I'm capable of with my D700. Ecstatic really. But I'm not the complacent type. Though I'm not sure what type I specifically am.

Edit: That Leica M3 in the photograph is a pretty amazing camera.

13-1-28

Some day all this will be condos. Some day all of it will be condos.

13-1-27

Hemlock Valley is a pretty stellar place to strap a polished plank (or planks) of wood to your feet and point yourself downhill, or so I found out today.

13-1-26

13-1-25

13-1-24

13-1-23

13-1-22

In protest of the funding cuts to the Rainier Hotel someone put up posters depicting faceless women. It's symbolic of the lack of attention being paid to the marginalized women of Vancouver's Downtown East Side, that they may as well be nameless and faceless because nobody knows or cares who they are.

There's more.

13-1-21

...faster than a speeding locomotive... Seeing this wheat paste Superman made me smile firstly because it was such a brilliant and colourful addition to a gray landscape and then when the train came along I laughed out loud. It's things this obvious and yet unexpected and smart that make me happy.

13-1-20

Just missed that bark curl. Oh well, the sun made up for it.

13-1-19

I went snowboarding today.

I told people that it's been five years since I've snowboarded. The tag on my jacket from the last ride betrays the truth, it's been almost seven years. Almost exactly seven years.

But like snowboarding was a bit of an experiment, so is today's photograph(s). The first photo, artistic. Dreamlike landscapes fading into and out of reality, narratives of journey, monumental scale objects for mundane journeys, monumental journeys made out of mundane narratives. It's magical.

The second image barely more than a snapshot, but more because it has a human element in it, literally and figuratively. It's a documentation of a past that has little relevance in the present. It's a different time infiltrating this time. It's a very boring photograph with a lot of personal meaning attached to it.

The third, it's a photograph. In every sense of the word. It has a dynamic range of pure black to bordering on blown highlight (and I'll accept accents of pure white snow in sunlight will be blown out, because it is the essence of pure white). It's (subjectively) well composed. It's a good photograph.

I like the first photograph the most. The last is the best photograph. The one in the middle, well, that's what today was all about.

13-1-18

13-1-17

Danger, keep off. Vancouver unusually cold, cold enough to freeze Trout Lake, and unusually sunny for January, the cold bringing several consecutive days of sunlight. The vitamin D has been greatly appreciated.

13-1-16

I've walked by these houses hundreds of times without really noticing them. Such odd little windows.

13-1-15

Old school drawing. Again. 5 hours tonight.

13-1-14

13-1-13

13-1-12

13-1-11

Monuments will often distort scale such that the viewer has to raise their eyes to view such things. It’s a power structure modifier, being forced to look up to something regardless of your respect for said thing. The telephone poles in the laneways of Vancouver are monuments unique to this city.

Icons. The words “telephone pole” roll off the tongue without consideration. It’s automatic. But telephones are obsolete, in the wired sense. These wires carry electricity, or The Internet ™, or the odd antiquated phone line. These telephone poles exist in contrast to their namesake. Electricity too is held up by these structures so they aren’t completely obsolete.

Sub-plot. There are tennis shoes hanging from the power line, but obviously not the focal point, and perhaps accidental but they are there. To acknowledge the role of “icon” the tennis shoes represent the urban mythology, an acceptance of weightier narratives associated with simple constructs. Is it a sign of drug dealers? Is it a memorial to a gang member killed in that alley? All are possible and flaunted by the condo dwellers looking for street cred.

Compositionally the rule of thirds is broken but alluded to. The lack of convention is completely undermined by the submissiveness of the mass at the focal point of the bottom right third in contrast to an obvious half-ing of the composition. It’s a tension resulting from submission, in a state of peace it is revolting.

Even the medium is to be considered. Digital photography fighting with an analogue construct that has been subverted to transporting digital media. Tensions abound. And it’s all hung off a structure that is 50 years old in design and, considering how long it takes to grow a tree, even older at conception. The seedling that now holds up technology transporting truck loads of data flying down wires made of sand probably (literally) took root at a time that couldn’t fathom the present in which it eventually landed. No tree ever expects to be planted in asphalt.

Then there’s an idea about civic identity. Vancouver has few unique features but one of them is the iconic laneway infrastructure. KenFoster makes a living painting alleys, if living homeless on the streets can be considered “making a living”, which is analogous to the value that Vancouver puts on the arts in general at a time when a rare live music and arts venue is being turned into more overpriced condominiums.  And so an artistic attempt at a time when art communitiesare being gentrified, taken of a telephone pole in a gentrifying neighborhood, is subversive in its submissiveness.

And then there’s unification. Despite the individuality of residents of this neighborhood, regardless of the dispute you have with your neighbor, or how much you abhor Starbucks, you share this connection, you are literally wired to them through this structure. There are controls, and these poles are controls, so there will be minimal overlapping despite the tethering. But still.

Since December 31, it’s the first colour photograph and the first photograph I’ve taken without a recently reacquired 24mm lens I had lent to a good friend. It’s a revisiting of my love for a 35mm focal length so nostalgia and understanding of a view point taint this image. It’s about understanding at the level of photographer which affects philosophical trajectory. It doesn’t translate directly to the photograph but for the first time in over a week I walked to a point, stopped, raised the camera, and took a photograph. So from the photographer’s perspective there is a peace to this image afforded by an adjustment to the process. And at 35mm instead of 24mm there is a peace to it that is difficult to describe beyond it fitting a refined and preferred perspective. 

Or something like that.

13-1-10

13-1-9

I once toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo that said, "nothing is permanent."

13-1-8

I think I've talked about this before but you see these motorhomes all over Vancouver. People live in them all year round. This one is a regular under the bridge on Terminal Avenue. He parks there more often when it's raining out, when it's not raining he's parked half a block down where he gets more light, at least I think that's why he parks farther down. I might have though the rain dancing on the roof of your home would be soothing. I have skylights and I like the sound of the rain, though it's possible the tired and old aluminum shell of a home is less than waterproof after all these years.

13-1-7

Secrets kept and secrets revealed.

13-1-6

I'm thinking about a new series of photographs to be called "The Things We Leave Behind."

13-1-5

13-1-4

13-1-3

The images I've been finding so far this year have all been so dark and brooding. It doesn't help that I've been fighting one of the worst coughs I've had in years but despite taking a sick day at work and doing little more than lying on a couch in front of a TV (I've probably spent more hours on my couch in 2013 already than I did in all of 2012) I've still managed to find a photo each day. I'm finding it comfortable being in a black and white world as well, a trend I might continue to follow, for a while anyway.

13-1-2

13-1-1

A new day, new year, foggy and grey. And crows.

12-12-31

Pictures of dreams.

12-12-30

I found a dream in a hole in the laneway, all blue sky-ed and lovely, poking out like a shiny coin freshly dropped in the mud. The hole looked torn as if it was dug up by someone wiser who knew where to find the sun and the blue sky and couldn't fathom why others would pave it over. The machines will come and patch the hole one day, of this I'm certain, but even then I'll know where it is, know it's still there somewhere buried beneath the asphalt, and it will warm my heart having this bit of knowledge.