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.
