Can I Do It Again?

I took this photo in Hong Kong earlier this century.  I took it with a small Leica D-Lux 4 digital camera with a tiny 10 megapixel sensor.  I mean tiny.  It has a native 16:9 aspect ratio. When I cooked this up, I did some things to it that I can no longer remember how to do.  I know what I did in theory, but I have forgotten the key strokes I need in Photoshop.  I do believe, however, that I can figure it out again. I did some pixel shifting in layers, but I don't remember the opacity. Whatever I did, though. . . I'm loving now. 

Here's the Paolo Roversi image I was searching for yesterday.  

This is what I am thinking of going for.  Something like this, anyway.  

So I was going to have fun yesterday, if you remember.  Didn't happen.  I skipped breakfast thinking to have lunch, then went to the gym for a crazy cardio workout trying to burn off this belly fat.  At home, I got a little sad when I stripped off my clothes and looked in the mirror.  It hadn't worked.  I got out the electric shears and trimmed my beard close, got into the shower, shampooed and conditioned, gave my body a good scrubbing, toweled off, dried my hair, creamed my face. . . blow dried my hair, etc.  I put on a clean t-shirt and a pair of blousy shorts, then did some camera things.  The afternoon was getting away from me, and so I thought to go for lunch.  Somewhere.  Where?  I was stymied.  

And then came the monsoon.  

And so I piddled around trying to find some camera gear.  I have too much camera gear and no organization skills.  I'm always looking for lost stuff.  

I put together my Chamonix 4x5 field camera and looked for something the approximate size of a head.  The lens I had on the camera, though, was not the right one, so I changed to a longer focal length.  I struggled with framing and focusing.  I keep forgetting how much work it takes to make a picture with this camera.  I extended the bellows as far as they would go and framed up the coffee maker.  The image, of course, is upside down and backwards, and looking at the ground glass under the black cape is awful.  It took me an hour to remember how to set all the movements again.  By the time I had done that, just for practice, I decided to go look at the price of a reflex viewer that can be attached to the back of the camera so the image is right side up.  $300.  I looked up a review of that gear.  Pros and cons.  It's a 50/50 proposition.  

The rain had stopped, so I took the camera to the deck and framed up the white ceramic milk jug you have seen oh-so many times before.  I went to the car and got the 3X strength eyeglasses I had bought to use for focussing with the big-assed Liberator camera.  O.K.  This might work.  But set up, framing, focusing, metering, calculating exposure, then focusing again asking the sitter to be very, very still. . . then taking the picture. . . it would take ten minutes.  

I went looking for my Hasselblad.  Maybe. . . . 

The afternoon had waned.  Another squall was coming.  I had eaten nothing all day.  My mother's company would be gone by now.  She would not want dinner.  I would heat up leftovers.  

And that is what happened instead of adventure and daring.  And I began to descend again into the depression I thought I had beaten.  I had a cocktail, asked my mother about her day, heated up last night's leftovers, and became quite irritated by my mother's constant motion.  I poured a whiskey, went to the couch, and turned on the television.  And there I stayed until bedtime.  

Oh, but today will be different,

"Ha!"

No, it will. I am going to make pictures today.  I may develop film.  I will be more productive, I swear.  

You see the photo I made?  You see the Roversi photo?  I'm certain I can do what I am setting out to do.  I don't know that I will need the 4x5 camera to do it.  What if I did it all with a digital camera and reclaimed the old process I have forgotten for so long?  Would that be cheating?  But what if I did it on film with the Hasselblad and then. . . .? 

What if I just used A.I.?  

I wouldn't.  

I'll make experiments today and see where I land. 

Watching television last night was not all bad.  I watched some Hitchens, then montage of interviews with Orson Welles, and I realized there were many similarities between the two men.  Welles was a strange and interesting fellow. Then I watched Ann Margret dance again.  Good God, she was fantastic.  Then I listened to an old concert from Austin City Limits with Flaco Jimenez and Ry Cooder.  It sounded like many of my nights carousing with my dead ex-friend Brando and many of the trips we took together, and I was whisked away to a time of. . . 

"Adventure and daring?"

Yes, yes.  Before technology ruined our lives, when you traveled, as Brando advertised, with only "a ticket, a pack, and a chart."  Life was more random.  Less curated.  You kept a weather eye for the unexpected.  

Here's what I remember it sounding like.