Tag: Montgomery Hills

I am publishing this late at night just before going to bed, so forgive me if it's short.

I'm having trouble focusing on work. I don’t know if it’s because of the monotony of each day or maybe I am just burnt out. I get up; I make coffee in the Chemex, I grab a yoghurt from the fridge, I check my blog feeds, and soon I am logging into the remote desktop and preparing for a meeting. This routine isn’t much different than “before” except sometimes when I worked from home I would get a cappuccino and a muffin from Rojo’s or I would have breakfast at Aunt Chubby's. On the days I worked in Manhattan, I waited until I got to Wall Street to get a cheese danish and a latte at Stone Street Coffee. Being out was an opportunity to interact with other people. It made working from home enjoyable. Now my mornings are just me eating along. No one else in my house is awake.

After work today, I walked over to woods near my home for some fresh air. Walking along the main road, I danced with the dog walkers trying to avoid them and maintain physical distancing. I gave up and just walked along the middle of the road. I was a safe distance from people, lowering my risk from disease, but I now had increased risk from cars and bicycles.

In the woods, it seems someone has started practice survival skills, building a “home” from branches and scrap. Perhaps it’s someone trying, like me, to deal with the monotony of their day.

I know I am not getting enough sleep, but I find I have no desire to go to bed and no desire to wake up the next morning. There is nothing to look forward to.

Linked to Jeff Sinon's Isolation Photo Project.

Submitted as part of the 100DaysToOffload project.

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.