Museums make me snappy/happy

After a couple of depressing posts (one depressing and way too long, no less), I thought I'd post some photos I've taken in museums. Always liked taking pictures in museums.

That is all.

What's missing from digital (besides the film)

The ability to view a photo as soon as you take it and make adjustments until you get the image you want is one of the major advantages of digital photography. But sometimes I miss the slow pace of film photography. I even miss the disappointment, failure and lost opportunities inherent in film.

The long wait
Before digital cameras, you could shoot one roll of film and you’d be thrilled if two or three* photos out of 36 were gems.

(*Good catch, anonymous editor!)

And it took time to get at those gems. You didn't always shoot a full roll of film in a go—it might spend weeks wound around the spools in your camera. Then maybe you’d wait till you had two or three rolls saved up before you took them into the darkroom or down to the local drugstore. 

You had to wait a week for the prints to come back or spend time in the darkroom mixing chemicals, pouring them in the proper order, timing everything just right, listening to the tick of the timer, agitating and rinsing, all the while never knowing if you’d get a worthless strip of opaque celluloid in exchange for your efforts. 

Then you’d unwind the spool and hang the negatives up to dry. After some more waiting you’d snip them up, put them under glass, make a contact sheet and—finally!—turn on the lights to see the results.

The bad pictures
Inevitably, there’d be one or two great ones and a handful of good ones. But there would be many more bad ones—misfires beyond repair. Out of focus, hopelessly overexposed, boring subjects, horrible compositions.

And those bad photos were right there in front of you, right next to the good ones, serving as permanent context—black and white proof that you are not perfect. You took it in stride, because the good photos, even if they weren't all perfect, were so much better than the bad ones. Instead of despairing over the bad photos, you learned from them. It was a normal and expected part of the process.

Take a look at the contact sheet at the top of this post--some of the photos are snapshots, some are tilted, most have blown skies, some way over- or way under-exposed. But there are three, maybe even four, that I liked. (Wish I still had the prints--these thumbnails are cropped from the scan of the contact sheet, which is why they look like fuzzy bits of shite). 

Three or four good photos out of 30. Success!

See? Context.

The reality check
Digital is good for the ego; not so much for objectivity. With digital, you can review a photo as soon as you take it and delete it in an instant if it’s crap. You can fiddle with the settings and re-shoot the same scene over and over until you get it just right. It’s as if those crappy photos never existed—as if every picture you take is effing brilliant.

So what happens when you bring your memory card back home, plug it into the computer, look at a page of thumbnails, open some up in full screen and realize that what looked great on the small LCD screen on your camera isn't as good as you thought? Do you chalk it up to the learning process? Do you feel proud of the ones that did come out well? Or do you focus in on and beat yourself up about the ones that suck?

For me, unfortunately, it’s the latter. 

And that's exactly what happened when I got back from Paris.

And this is a very long way of getting to my point about ...

The shitty Paris pics

In May it will be two years since I went to Paris. Although I uploaded some pictures from the trip to Flickr when I got back, I didn't spend a lot of time editing and I didn't upload more than a handful. I never put them on this blog. I didn't make prints. I recently noticed that at some point I marked the few I did edit and upload to Fickr private--not even visible to friends and family. Not even the people who were in the photos.  

I don’t remember doing it, but I know why I did it.

I did it because digital photography has tricked me into thinking that all of my photos should be effing brilliant. And when they’re not effing brilliant, the blow is more painful in digital format than it would be on film.

When I got back from Paris, I plugged in my memory cards, opened up the page of thumbnails, and focused on the ones I hated. And I hated a LOT of them.

There was no way I could have lived up to my expectations for that trip and the brilliant photos I planned to take there. But I also didn't expect to come back with as many truly crappy pictures as I did. (A fall down the hotel stairs and a badly sprained ankle that cut my trip short by a couple of days didn't help matters.)

Time and emotional distance

So… two years later, can I look at my Paris pictures with some emotional distance? Can I look at them as a group without focusing in on all the bad ones?

It’s complicated. That trip was awesome. But I think I’ll always feel bad about the photos I took on it.

Anyway, recently I went through some of the pics again, tried to look at them as they are rather than how I hoped they would be. And yes, it turns out there are a few that I like. I’d put the number at about 2 out of every 36.

    

This post is not perfect

Me: I did a test online and it says I am a perfectionist.
My mom: (Looks skeptical.)
Me: The problem is I'm really not even close to perfect.
Mom: I know!

Funny, right? Well, except for the fact that it truly sucks to be an imperfect perfectionist.

In the little script above, I went back and forth about whether the "L" in "Looks" should be capitalized. Period before the closing parenthesis mark? Or after? Maybe I should italicize "Looks skeptical" instead of putting it in parenthesis. And did I need to say "My mom" or would "Mom" suffice? Should I repeat the word "My" on the second reference or leave it off?

All this for a post on a blog that no one even reads.

If I stopped over-thinking every word and punctuation mark on casual emails, texts, and IMs alone, I'd have enough time to research and write a self-help book about overcoming perfectionism.

Perfectionism sucks the fun out of any creative endeavor. Sit down with my morning coffee to write a simple blog post about something I've been thinking about and end up beating myself up over punctuation and ... Holy crap:  Even as I'm writing this sentence I am wondering if I should change "(Looks skeptical)" to "Looks skeptical."

I haven't picked up my camera or edited a photo in ages because I went through a spell where I wasn't happy with any of the pictures I had taken. I'd stare at an image on the screen, focus in on every minor flaw, spend hours trying to get them just right in PhotoShop--and all the time I'm thinking what a waste of time it is to work on these pictures because they'll never be exactly how I want them to be.

It's exhausting.

And so I just stopped.

You know what else? "Looks skeptical" really should be italicized. But if I do that now, then I have to rewrite the second paragraph of this post. It is taking every ounce of effort I have not to do that. And, just like that, I'm not having fun any more.

So the first step in my recovery from perfectionism begins with the "publish" button.

Three ... two ...

Sunday Morning in Chinatown

I have about one million photos to edit and upload ... I still haven't gone through all my pics from Paris. Maybe my recent trip to San Francisco will give me the nudge I need. Here are three from an early Sunday morning walk in Chinatown ...

Untitled

Mother's Day in September

Ghosts

Beautiful Boy--Beautiful Portraits

Just a quick link today to some portraits of my cousin's son by photographer Joslyn Paris. She has a great eye for light and color--and that bokkeh is yummy!

Check out her photography blog, too.

Photographs of Lightning Over Boston

On June 1 a storm brought tornados to areas of Western Massachusetts--very rare for this area. I took the dog out around 10:30 that night and could see crazy-rapid flashes of lightning from my house. I shouldn't have waffled about jumping in the car--by the time I got down there with my camera it had mostly settled down. But I got off a couple of pics, anyway. And one of them even has lightning in it.







I've never been very good at taking pictures of lightning or fireworks. My technique is just to point and shoot until I get something that's not either pitch black or a complete blur. According to this article, taking photos of lightning is not nearly as hard as it seems. This also looks like an easy-to-follow tutorial. Something new to learn ...

I didn't find too many on Flickr from this POV, but here are a couple that are much better than mine.

This one from 40 Steps in Nahant looking toward Boston skyline is freaking awesome.

And here's another good one of a double-bolt strike looking from Somerville toward the Boston skline.