Looking to the sky

I’m trying something a little different tonight, namely I’m having a nice gin fizz while writing this. Expect some Truth to be dropped. If you’re wondering, my recipe for a mid gin fizz is a can of Sanpellegrino Limonata and 2oz of your favorite gin. In this case, I am finishing off a bottle of Hendrick’s Lunar. The addition of gin makes the Limonata barely drinkable.

Enough of that, you came here for the pictures. And what pictures they are, some taken with a Yashica Electro35 and a couple taken with the Hasselblad X1D. Sometimes I swear I will stick to film, but the reality of the expenses associated with film make me want to scream. I couple of months ago I came across a stupendous deal on a Hasselblad X1D 50 with a lens for less than $2,000. When everything got to me it was as if I a been sent a new camera. My plan buying it was to just flip it immediately, but then I held the camera in my hand and that was that.

During the pandemic I went on a bit of photo book buying spree and one of my favorites was a book by a Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi. The book is called Utatane (“Hanabi” by the same photographer is also recommended) and several of the images made me want to look at the sky.

Americans don’t concern themselves with the sky too much. In our eyes, people who focus on the sky have “their heads in the clouds” and they need to “put their noses to the grindstone” and accomplish something.

Once I gave myself that challenge of making the sky the subject of the photo I found myself being pulled in to sky as a subject and thinking of all the ways I could incorporate it into my pictures. Also, this style lets me feel better about going out in the middle of the day instead of during the golden hour. So there’s that.

Later days, everybody.