Tour
20 June 2024
20 June 2024
Art tour in
Boijmans’ old museum building, which has been ‘under renovation’ since 2019,
and will be for another decade or so. I can’t say I’ve missed it much since it
closed its doors, or perhaps I have, but wasn’t aware of it. Now I am. No
specific, strong memories, just a sense of familiarity and homecoming, and
thinking what a mighty fine building this is for looking at art.
Wired
27 April 2024
27 April 2024
I've been thinking about introversion
lately, prompted by some reading I've done online. Nothing eye-opening, as I'm obviously familiar with the subject. And yet I felt that everything in my life seemed to come closer together from this perspective. From my relationships with people to leaving journalism school, from the development of my non-existent career to the way I go about my daily life, and what I need from it. There is a kind of beauty in the consistency with which every aspect can be traced back to the way the introverted brain works and how it’s wired.
Unrelated: The first interior shots with the 24mm. Olympus OM-1 + Kodak Ultramax 400. The Sonneveld interior is a sort of testing ground for me to try and compare new film rolls, lenses and whatnot.
Entity
29 February 2024
29 February 2024
Only now do I feel that the person I’ve been talking to and confiding in for
over a decade, and the person who occasionally sits next to me on a rock, have
fully merged into one solid entity/identity.
Until, I suppose, we eventually relapse into our ones and zeros personas.
Until, I suppose, we eventually relapse into our ones and zeros personas.
Around Bergen, Norway, 26 February 2024.
Counterbalance
21 October, 2023
21 October, 2023
It's not unreasonable to assume that 2023 won't go down as my most productive or inspired year ever. On the other hand, fiddling with rolls of film and a 50-year-old camera is easily the best thing I've done in a long time. Not because it makes me take better
pictures, because it doesn’t. What I appreciate most is the unpredictability of the results (which says enough about my poor mastery of the equipment). The counterbalance to disappointment is the surprise I rarely feel anymore with digital. What the light does to the colours, a kind of softness in the greens, the hues of a reflection or a shadow, a distance to reality as I perceived it.
In Scotland I have been a little sloppy at times, being used, perhaps, to the indulgence of digital raw files. Taking a photo with the film camera requires more concentration and time than I seem to have allowed myself. The number of shots is limited, it has a prime lens, depth of field is more of an issue (the Z6 files are pretty much in focus everywhere, even if you don’t want them to be), and of course focusing is manual. So yes, some of them are genuinely awkward. It's not that I cherish these flaws out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia or because operating this camera sometimes feels like playing with a toy camera. No, they make me want to do better – and still be surprised.
In Scotland I have been a little sloppy at times, being used, perhaps, to the indulgence of digital raw files. Taking a photo with the film camera requires more concentration and time than I seem to have allowed myself. The number of shots is limited, it has a prime lens, depth of field is more of an issue (the Z6 files are pretty much in focus everywhere, even if you don’t want them to be), and of course focusing is manual. So yes, some of them are genuinely awkward. It's not that I cherish these flaws out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia or because operating this camera sometimes feels like playing with a toy camera. No, they make me want to do better – and still be surprised.
Expiration
14 August, 2023
14 August, 2023
I haven’t taken a single picture since I photographed the garden, and I haven’t shot more than four rolls of film with the new camera so far. There’s nothing left on the hard drive that is
worth editing. I wish I felt an eagerness to go out and take photos, but I don’t. I’m out of ideas and inspiration, out of energy, despite a vague, undefined desire to create something.
I don’t follow anything closely on social media. I’ve lost most of my interest in what other people put online, and I hardly post anything myself. And when I do, I don’t really care what happens to it.
I haven’t spoken to T. for a while now. It’s not unusual that I don’t hear from him for a longer period of time, what is unusual, is that he doesn’t hear from me either.
None of these things are directly related to each other, but it’s also no coincidence that they happen more or less at the same time. It’s like each one is dragging the others down with it. I started all this a good ten years ago. Perhaps they all came with roughly the same expiration date. It’s not as sad as it sounds though, or at least I’m not feeling sad about it. Not too much anyway. I trust that at some point I will pick up the camera again. I tell myself that I’m using this hiatus to think about what I want to do, about new things to try or places to go, but actually I’m not. Regardless, I know it’s going to be okay. Perhaps in a somewhat different context, without all the sharing and the conversations. I’d miss that I’m sure, but it’s a sort of natural, inevitable course of events that I’ve seen coming for a long time.
From Mallaig to Rùm, Scotland, 2013. Coming back here hopefully means taking a break from my hiatus.
I don’t follow anything closely on social media. I’ve lost most of my interest in what other people put online, and I hardly post anything myself. And when I do, I don’t really care what happens to it.
I haven’t spoken to T. for a while now. It’s not unusual that I don’t hear from him for a longer period of time, what is unusual, is that he doesn’t hear from me either.
None of these things are directly related to each other, but it’s also no coincidence that they happen more or less at the same time. It’s like each one is dragging the others down with it. I started all this a good ten years ago. Perhaps they all came with roughly the same expiration date. It’s not as sad as it sounds though, or at least I’m not feeling sad about it. Not too much anyway. I trust that at some point I will pick up the camera again. I tell myself that I’m using this hiatus to think about what I want to do, about new things to try or places to go, but actually I’m not. Regardless, I know it’s going to be okay. Perhaps in a somewhat different context, without all the sharing and the conversations. I’d miss that I’m sure, but it’s a sort of natural, inevitable course of events that I’ve seen coming for a long time.
From Mallaig to Rùm, Scotland, 2013. Coming back here hopefully means taking a break from my hiatus.