I sit here this morning looking at my Hasselblad 500 C/M camera with its Planar 2.8 Carl Zeiss lens, but what I want is the new Fujifilm GFX 50S medium format digital camera. The same setup, camera and lens, would cost about $8,000. I also have a Sonnar 150mm lens sitting on the table. To get that lens for the GFX would be another $2,200. So, for somewhere just over $10,000, I could have the same setup, only digital. I want it bad.
I want a Leica Monochrom, too, so much so that I bid on one the other day. It was the newest one. They are selling for $7,000 new, over $5,000 used. I bid $3,150. I was the top bidder for two days and I started to get nervous. I don't have the money. The camera eventually sold for $4,400. That is a big steal. I wish I had bought it. Again, however, I couldn't pay for it.
So I sit here with all kinds of camera envy.
The easiest and most lovely camera to use that I have is the Fuji 100F. People stop me in the streets wanting to look at it. But the Leica M262 that I own (and got for a song) makes a better image. I have been trying to shoot more with it. However, I want the Leica M10. And while I have a perfectly wonderful Summicron 50mm lens on it, I don't like the way it looks. I can get one that I do like for just over $1,000. The quality would be just slightly better, I think, but the lens is just prettier. I am like that. I am exactly like that.
Confession is good for the soul. But I'll be careful. I don't want to confess everything. Too much confession will land you someplace you didn't mean to go.
I had all sorts of plans for yesterday. I was going to cull my recent photo collection, organize the files, make some small prints, etc.
Instead, I went to the gym, came home and had lunch with a glass of wine, then took a long, long nap from which I never completely woke. I took a friend a Cohiba cigar from Cuba and ran into another friend on the way back. Then I went to a fish restaurant and drank two margaritas with dinner. And then I came home and crashed.
We, I should say.
Maybe today.
Summer came rushing hard yesterday with high temperatures and humidity. There is only one way to beat this kind of heat--water. Not to drink, but to be in. I may buy a kiddie pool to sit in. I have done that before. It works like anything. Adiabatic cooling, it is called. Evaporation takes the heat inside your body and disperses it. You can seriously get hypothermic on a very hot day.
Of what would I take pictures, though? I mean, I know what I want to do. I also know of the incredible constraints.
If I could make just one picture like the ones I want to make today. . . . If I could only be allowed to make one, you would all be in love with me again, or hate me, but your reaction would be strong. How I burn to make one.
As Clint Eastwood playing John Huston says in "White Hunter, Black Heart,"
"Sometimes you just have to do the wrong thing."
And I wonder why I'm not always understood.
You would have a world of opportunity at the Poets place. There is a bit of a bordello go on at his neighbors house. Oh. I mean to make photos. Of course.
ReplyDeleteThe neighbor is quiet proud of "his girls." He has a favorite I have nicknamed "Baby." He will do anything for her. The liquor store was closed and he promised her some nips - I told him to go into T's house and pick something from the bar - I have made the poet a lovely bar - chock full. He's so spoiled.
The neighbor told us yesterday - while sitting out on the patio we made - smoking a book and drinking beer - that when he came home the other day "the girls were doing each other."
It's ten worlds away from my neighborhood. I've come to love it there. For all its absolute out in the open weirdness.
Yes, I'd be good at that. When?
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