My, my. It has been a while. And for all the wrong reasons. Forgive me, but I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of observing American politics. It certainly is both emotional and entertaining, both a tragedy and a comedy. Political podcasts are poison to productivity, and creativity for that matter. Yet another assault on our collective ability to focus. Although a lot of it is merely highschool gossip, without the highschool. Much of it comes with consequences and can’t be entirely ignored. In the United States we have all been schooled as to our responsibilities in the category of paying attention.
But I fell pretty far in this time and have only recently been saved by, of all people, Bad Bunny. To be clear I haven’t been a true Bad Bunny fan. I associate him, rightly or wrongly, with reggaeton which I’m not crazy about. However, I have been a big fan of Spanish-language music for years. Not to mention Hispanic cultures in particular and globalism in general. I felt right at home in the Anthony Bourdain era of my culture. What a pleasant place in time that was. Before the pandemic and the complicated politics. It feels like it was just yesterday. It felt like it would go on that way forever.
The thing with Bad Bunny is the optimism. The sense that things will change and the importance of putting the work in. Also I am just ready to get after it again.
Since Oregon, last Summer, I’ve only been back and forth between Park City, Utah and Southern Nevada. Sometimes solo and sometimes with a traveling companion or six, or any number in between, when you include people, cats and dogs.
My production has been scant, in terms of stuff put together for my site. I did accomplish a rebuild of my little pond in Southern Nevada. Something that needs to happen every four years or so. It is now fancier with a big rock with a hole in it, from which the stream of recirculation water emerges. It is a pretty setup and always looks good after a thorough cleaning. I also took care of a dozen or so house projects down here and completed a balcony garden up in Park City. So I guess I haven’t been entirely unproductive. My new flower of choice is the white pansy. The indisputable bad-ass of the north-American garden. Pansies planted in pots on an exposed balcony in Park City, in August, didn’t quit until after Christmas.
The critters down here have been less common than normal. Just a few verdin, house finches, and ravens. This morning a small Coopers hawk did arrive and sat at the pond for a while.
In Utah there isn’t much snow. It is becoming a bit dire and will almost certainly have an impact on the water situation both here and there in the Summer.
I have moved back into using Canon gear in order to take advantage of various lenses that have been sitting idle. My new kit includes a R6 Mark ii and lens adapter. I’ll still be using my good-ole GoPro’s and funky old Samsung camera, as well as my Sigma fp.
I think the change should result in my return to producing from all sorts of focal lengths. For a really long time I’ve kept to medium length or wide-angle lenses and more or less street photography. That was a departure from shooting with a wide array of lenses before. What goes around, comes around. In video, as well, I should be adding more telephoto and macro stuff. Returning to Canon should be good.
New additions to the site include a few hundred new photos in my southern nevada usa gallery and quite a few in my las vegas nevada usa gallery in my photo galleries. Also there is a new video of Park City and thereabouts in my video gallery. This was done to play around with the new Canon as a video tool and most importantly to put together a work flow for color grading projects which combine c-log footage from the new Canon with GoPro standard footage. I managed to pull it off successfully I think. It involved use of a LUT which I could only find on the Hong Kong Canon site. The next step will involve working in Sigma fp-Atomos ninja Apple prores footage. But I decided to save that for another video.
I am off on a rather substantial photo trip soon. To Paris for a short while and northern India for a long while. Stops in India should include: Delhi, Chandigarh, Shimla, Dharamshala, and Agra. I’m bringing the new Canon and hopefully will get back to my old habits, and creative productivity. I expect to just shoot photography in Paris, in keeping with what I have been doing there for the last fifteen years or so. But I should work in some video in India.
