Just in case the tattoo on your hand you had done to remind you about it wore off, my show in Osaka will open tomorrow. But don’t come just to see “Nebraska Street Photography”, you need to check out the work by some other photographers as well, folks with whom it will be lovely to share gallery space with. I will be down there for the day of Saturday, which will be great because that is the day that Hiromi Tsuchida will be doing portfolio reviews with those who bring prints. I will bring prints. Photographs you just have not yet seen. Oh yeah and I will make another hamfisted attempt to explain myself in japanese. But maybe this time there will not be that one guy trying to take over my talk.
In all seriousness, the work I have been making in the past few months has been more agressive but delicate than the pictures I had been making a year ago. The drive is there, the “keeping the faith” as it has been put by other people. I just keep shooting (and shooting) and developing the film, and once I get back from Nebraska in early January I will get to printing through the alarmingly growing stack of negative files that are on my desk at home.
Fixed: My bessa R2 sn 000330. Wow, it is green, and that is a fact I don’t think I have ever gotten over. They even threw on a new rear door for me as a “sa-bisu” (service) because the nice folks at the Cosina repair room must have been in a good mood. Imagine your mechanic leading you out to the back lot behind all that tall chain-link and saying “Yeah that back door on your civic was kind of scuffed up, so what the heck we threw a new on one there for you. Nahhhhh I don’t want your money, it’s on the house.”
No that would not happen. But it is not like I offered to pay for it anyways.
Fixed: This 35mm 1.7 Ultron lens. Fixed is a word that could be used, but I should be more specific and say that the only parts of my original lens that remain from when I sent it in to be repaired are the glass parts. Everything else is new.
All in all this was an expensive lesson in learning about the physics and the result of several things coming together at a point in time. The first half of it would be the combination of a smooth leather camera strap vs. the satin-like smooth and cunningly rounded shoulder on a military grade parka. The next part deals with the effects of a concrete sidewalk vs. a camera match-up. The thing that tied those two wacky battles together was the cruel and invisible guiding hand of gravity. A force which won by starting the process in motion, first with the” sliding down my shoulder” part, and then the cement kiss of the lens shade (Followed quickly by the lens, and maybe even quicker by the camera) to the ground.
Then gravity worked the opposite way and made my wallet lighter with the cost of the repair.
Hey kids!
Keep a hold of your stuff!
Expensive things are expensive to fix.
It is never advertised or even well known, but sources* say that the Cosina Voigtlander square-ish** lens hood for one of their 35mm pancake lenses ALSO fits the 28mm 3.5 lens, and it does not blacken out the corners of it. Plus, it looks mighty fine.
*the source is Mr. Nemoto of the Cosina Voigtlander service center located in Asakusa. My Bessa R2 is ready to be picked up there this week, all fixed and good as new.
** The dryer above my washer states in sticker form that it is in fact a Roundish Clothes Dryer.
In about an hour I will be off in a bus with an 8th grade class on a 2 hour bus ride to Mt. Tsukuba. We will take the bus half way up, and then walk the rest of the way. Oh but get this there will be 7 other buses full of kids. It ought to be a fun!
Camera Geekness follows:
I don’t really want to bring my Leica.. and the pentax 67 is not what I want to be weighted down with so it will stay at home. I think I will go with my Nikon F3P sans motordrive. As always, I got a 28mm lenss fto go with it. The camera will be brought up the mountain (loaded with presto 400) around my neck or in my domke bag- The Domke F-3 bag is just about the most perfect camera bag that you could design. The side pockets can easily hold 20 rolls of film. The front pocket has the unexposed rolls, and once they are used, they go in (looking down on the bag) the left side pocket.
did you really care about what camera I was going to take on a field trip? You read it, you can’t un-read it.
