Today I re-discovered something new about my neighbourhood. But first things first.
After lunch, I slipped a roll of Kodak Professional Ektachrome E100 35mm Color Transparency Film (36 Exposures) into my Asahi Optical Co. Spotmatic II and attached my SMC Takumar 55mm f/2 lens. The Spotmatic II was recently cleaned, lubricated and adjusted by the Pentax master Eric Hendrickson. It was a sunny day itching to try out the newly restored Spotmatic II. I had read some recent blog post by James Tocchio about his experiences with film photography and his quest for imperfection. Jame's blog post reminded me of a phrase from Craig Mod's Ridgeline Transmission 064 in which he writes:
One of the reasons I started Ridgeline was to post “uncool” photos. And I feel like I haven’t been doing enough of that. So here we go, snatches of a route, textures, light that caught my eye.
Those two essays inspired me to get out of the house. I meandered down the sidewalk toward the tennis court and basketball courts and walked around behind the courts toward the woods that separated Montgomery Hills from Rocky Hill. This area of my neighbourhood is about a 10-minute walk from my front door. With few people outside at this time of day, physical distancing was comfortable. As I approached the woods, I could hear the water from the stream that ran between the trees.
I had no particular goal. I just wanted to be out in nature. I could hear bird song. I found Spring Beauty at my feet and got down low for photographs. I disturbed a garter snake with slithered off into the stream. Sorry!
I documented the camera settings, shutter speed and aperture, for each frame. My photography was slow.
I think I was outside for quite some time. I was totally lost in the moment. I lost track of time enjoying the quiet of just watching and listening.
I noticed the flowering vine, probably and invasive species, among the dried and twisted branches of a dead tree. I liked how it looked.
It's an uncool photo, but I love it.
Linked to Jeff Sinon's Isolation Photo Project.
Submitted as part of the 100DaysToOffload project.
Gotta love this time of year. We've been trying to reintroduce native species here where invasive stuff had run rampant. Funny that your garden includes some of our natives. Before Covid-19 there was even a rash of Asian folks plucking sedums from our coastline and shipping them to Asia where they have become quite the Thing! They were threatening the ones that grow here naturally.