From the same roll as the photos I took at the Huntington Library in May, this is the So Cal Railway Museum. It was reddish, but at least, I didn't have the frame numbers exposed in the background. I correctly very quickly, but not to my satisfaction.
I need inspiration.
Another block. I tried to correct them, but was minimally successful. They are red. Not red-scale red, for anyone (maybe even me) who might read this in the future, "red-scale" is when you reverse color film so it is exposed from the back, not the front, and this involves a hassle because you have to reroll the film. It is a "look", but not one I have ever wanted to try. No, the problems were more prosaic here, and involve mishandling on my part, namely, probably having unwound the film loosely as I retrieved it after exposing it. Here there be not dragons, but accidents.
More of the same old, same old.
I don't know what happened, I don't know. I went to the famed Huntington Garden, a nirvana for garden-lovers worldwide and I place I started visiting regularly during the Covid years, during finals week of Spring 2023. It must have been on a Wednesday, because I remember that I had a final exam to give that afternoon at about 3 p.m. online, so I had to hurry and make a quick, 2-hour trip and then hit the freeways in the hope of getting home to my computer terminal by start time so that I could monitor my students. So, maybe it was May 17th, 2023?
Now, I love this garden, but I am getting tired even of this location. I've gone maybe 8-10 times during the Covid epidemic years, and I feel exhausted. I am finding that I can't see anything new, even when I take different cameras, and yes, I have tried taking different cameras and even using different films. I have shot it in color film, in black and white, with my TLRs in 6x6, in Holgas and 6x12, with slide film, with my Kraken 6x17, even with Rollei Infrared film. I am just tired, and I need inspiration. I don't particularly want to return.
What happened to this roll, you will ask? Why does it seem to give me a reddish hue that is almost like a sign of long-ago expired film? Well, it wasn't expired, it was fresh film. I think I shot the roll then, maybe, as I retrieved it from the camera, I might have accidentally unrolled it. The fact is, it got an additional blast of sunlight on a very bright day, and that exposure even blasted the frame numbers into the images. Either that or I didn't roll the film tightly and I carried it in a pocket of my backpack (not an interior pocket, maybe an outside pocket where I usually put my plastic bottle of water) and it was radiated that way.
So, what I did is to scan then make a duplicate of the frame and try to to a quick correction. Very minimal, I have a very primitive editing program, but I did a little correction. I am putting up both those images. Nothing I am happy with, and I am not speaking only of the discolorations/overexposures. The compositions are mediocre too. I need inspiration. Well, here goes nothing.
From the long-ago song by Paul McCartney, "Listen to what the man said":
Oh yes, indeed we know
That people will find a way to go
No matter what the man said
And love is fine for all we know
For all we know, our love will grow
That's what the man said
So won't you listen to what the man said
He said
Ah, take it away
I don't know what it has to do in particular with this post, only that I am looking for something, but don't believe the man who says that I will find it. No, love isn't just waiting there to be plucked from the vine. By love, I mean, a passion, a creative outlet, a subject or metier or outlook that will revive my creative side and enable me to produce. So, I have these unsatisfying photos to offer instead.
Today, the day I am posting these scans, is Friday, July 7th, 2023. It was a pleasant day. It wasn't too hot, although it did get very warm by 3 p.m. when I had to go out to do errands. But it is still bearable. It seems much more so than the experience of those living in much of the rest of the United States, especially in Texas, where it is said that they have been having to endure a miserable "heat dome".
These are photos I took with my Minolta Autocord back in May, before my operation. It involved a trip out to one of my mainstays, the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris, CA. It was a "blooming" day, and it was just around the time of May 5th, that bloated fiesta that has taken hold here in the United States. It is definitely bloated, and it really overwhelms you, but with the Mexican identification with this holiday, it seems as if almost every city, town, village and hamlet holds a celebration. It is as prof. David Hayes Bautista says, it is now an "American" holiday, celebrated much more widely and fervently by the Mexican (and Latino) populations in the United States than by Mexicans in Mexico.
It was a saturated day. What do I mean? The colors were just way too saturated, I remember thinking this as I walked around. It was as if the universal controller or setting had been raised too high. If you believe that our universe is just a simulation being run by a higher intelligence or agency, not god, something that arose and evolved in the universe, a scenario recalled in the novel "Darwinia" by Robert Charles Wilson, then that is what I felt. The programmer who was using their other-worldly version of Lightroom or Photoshop had set the saturation levels way to high. It seemed unreal to me.
I walked around and was astounded by the intense colors I saw in the vegetation, in the buildings and in the overall location. It just didn't look real, and the film I used, Kodak 200, caught that over-saturated look. Now, I know, I know, oversaturation is a feature of, say, Velvia 50 slide film, but I WAS NOT USING SLIDE FILM, I was using Kodak 200 color film! Still, I walked around in wonderment, framing my shots with the camera that has really been my mainstay these last few years, my Minolta Autocord TLR.
These photos were taken not that long ago, but it feels as if it has been forever. I had my hernia operation on May 19th, and after that, I was incapacitated for many weeks. I could move around, slowly and gingerly, but I had to be careful. The main nature of my incapacitation was mental. I just wasn't inspired to go anywhere. I didn't want to go to any public gardens, not to any urban locations, etc. I was just fed up with it all, and was desperate for a new beginning. So I didn't send out the film to get it developed, I just held it in the cabinet until last week, when I finally sent it in on June 26th.
I received the package and I was not particularly impressed. Well, to be truthful, I did not really like anything that I saw. This roll was probably the best of the lot of three rolls I sent in, and yes, it cost me a pretty penny to send them in to the Darkroom and get them developed. It was about $8 per roll for developing ($24 total), plus $3 more per roll of slide (two slide rolls = $6), plus tax (about $6) plus postage (about $6). So, it ran me about $45 to get them developed, more than it cost to buy the *damn* film itself. This is a very expensive habit, and I need to put an end to it.
As I was saying before, I have no idea of what I want to photograph now. I don't know where to go, it seems as if it all seems futile, I can't see anything new. It is all for naught, and I want novelty, I want to reach the wellstone of creation. (Is there a "wellstone"? What does that mean?) No more public gardens, though. I was just reflecting on this as I was walking at the Hidden Valley Nature Reserve today. I do not want to go to all the public gardens in my local area that I was frequenting during the Covid years. No more California Botanic Garden, no more Los Angeles Arboretum, no more Descanso Gardens, no more South Coast Botanic Garden, no more UCR Botanic Garden, no more Sherman Library Garden, no more San Diego Public Garden (they had yet another "corpse" flower blooming currently!), just no more of these gardens. I am exhausted and can't see anything new.
I don't know what to explore, though. I have thousands of dollars worth of film, just boxes and boxes and boxes of film, and I see it and despair, because I still feel the urge to buy more film, but I have nothing to use it on. I even have boxes and boxes of steadily aging Fuji FP100C pack film that I need to use fast, but I can't figure out what to photograph! I am reverting as well to old habits, that is, going to my digital SLRs and photographing cultural dance performances, but of course, I can't photograph them with my film, using medium format involves such finicky detail and setting of exposure parameters that I can't imagine getting anything worthwhile. Plus, I don't even want to look at all the negative I exposed over the past 20+ years. I am certainly in a rut.
Well, I'll upload a few more scans. I am on a search.
A few more from Mt. Rubidoux. The last frame was scanned twice because I noticed the negative had popped out of the frame when I lifted the cover.
Where could it be, now? (To the tune of "Who could it be, now", the Men at Work hit from the 80s). Well, of course, it could only be Mt. Rubidoux. I don't know why the negatives came out so mottled. Was it the developer? My processing? Some quirk with the filter which was dirty and which might have added the unwanted texture? (I really will need to wash that red filter I attach to the lens very carefully.) But at least I obtained something. From the winter of 2023.
A few more frames from the San Bernardino bridge visit.
What manner of disaster is this? I don't know. This was from a roll I developed today, Saturday, July 1st, 2023. I had fresh chemical, but I suspect this a roll that partially unraveled as I removed it from what must be the HolgaPan 120 camera. That would explain why there were only two frames that barely seem to have survived, and even then, were severely underexposed. Chalk it up to photographer incompetence.
