36 Views Roll / On The Frustration Of Contemporary America (Patreon)

Well, hello - I have a new roll for you. Eight shots, Fuji Velvia 50, taken on the Fujica GW690i. I'm not super thrilled with this roll so I'm not making it available for download, but I think it's worth sharing to help dispel the notion that photography goes smoothly, even if you're experienced.

First, above: taken from the top of Columbia Center. Although I managed to take a perfect shot with a different, non-project-intended roll of Kodak Gold 200, in my attempt to block out the glass glare reflection (on my rangefinder, where I can't actually see what the lens is seeing), I got my hand in the shot. The glass was dirty and thick enough that it reduced the contrast of the image and made it uninteresting, so this location is entirely scrapped.

#2 is fine, I guess, although I don't know if I should have tried shooting at a different time of day to actually show the 'burbs melting into the city, rather than silhouetting the trees entirely. I felt good about it at first and then I second-guess it every time I look at it again.

#3, alternate of above, which fixes the shadows clipping issue, but...

the tripod got bumped, and the shot is unusable.

#4 is a genuinely great shot compositionally, but to remove the cars from the image, I had to use a 6-stop ND and count off seconds for a long exposure. I believe I ended the shot a second or two too soon and it's underexposed, the shadow detail almost entirely lost. It needed an extra half stop at least.

#5 I probably could have thrown an extra half-stop of light at but it's usable.

#6 is, again, compositionally perfect but because I stopped in a bike lane where people were whipping by, I couldn't set up a tripod and...

At 1/60th of a second I got the tiniest bit of background shake. I am furious because I timed the cars perfectly and the shot is compositionally/lighting ideal, but I feel weird greenlighting a photo that wasn't held still. I can usually pull off a shot at this speed handheld without issue, but it was early and I guess I wasn't on my game.

#7 I probably could have stood to stop down a little less, because I shot at like f/32 and this lens isn't quite sharp enough for two-foot prints at that size, but I'll probably use it anyway. It's fine.

#8 is fine.

...

Why did I title this post "the frustration of contemporary America"? Well, because they're gonna sell off and log half the locations I had planned for this project when the budget bill passes, and I can't access half the National Park anyway since the Carbon River bridge is out, and wildfire season is almost here so the days of seeing the Mountain are limited anyway, and...

Working on a large-scale long-term passion project is just rough during weeks like this. I have nothing more important to be doing (it's not like jobs are thick on the ground right now), but art feels more draining than refreshing lately. It's hard to bounce back from the disappointment of a bad roll, because I don't know how much longer I have to actually work on this project, and I genuinely have begun to wonder if it's worth it. The spiritual miasma caused by rising fascism and an increasing reflexive indifference to human suffering is bad for my drive to live, much less make art.

I have had a big long piece about this cooking for ages, and I ultimately keep abandoning it because we all know it already. This is not healthy. This is killing us. It's obvious. What point is there to writing about it?

Tomorrow is my five-year anniversary on HRT. I have tried so hard to make the past five years of my life count as much as they could. I hope I get five more to do better, but I'm scared.

<3 Vicki