I don't do selfies. Technically, I'm terrible at it, all thumbs as to which buttons to push. And there's the fact that I've never learned the art of the fake smile. Even before the advent of the phone camera, I had very few snapshots of myself.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Selfie Abuse
Sunday, October 4, 2020
Reluctant Nomad
Patrick is a relative of mine who's created a nomad lifestyle for himself. Since the arrival of the pandemic, I've lost track of how he's doing with that and where he is at the moment. I do hope things are working out for him. He's smart and energetic, and he has skills.
I've been a nomad many times myself. I'm a nomad now. Before there was the World Wide Web, before there was the ability to work online from almost anywhere, photography and writing and the post office made the nomad life possible for me.
Travel is attractive and romantic. Everybody likes to travel. It's an adventure—one more hill to climb, one more land to see, one more stranger to befriend. But as a nomad, you're always passing through, never really an pivotal part of anywhere. As the title of this blog suggests, you're a stranger in a strange land.
As an assignment photographer, my main work was in the travel marketing genre. Travel marketing is the stepsister of advertizing. My clients were airlines and tour companies. I would fly First Class to exotic places and stay in lush 5-star hotels. But I was not on holiday, not there to relax and enjoy leisure time. The pleasure I had came from the work I did. And I did enjoy the work, but too often I was on the road alone for two or three months at a time. Back then, I had a home to return to. I was a part-time nomad. Too often, the time I spent at home seemed to be the part-time part.
Yes, travel is an adventure, but as with most adventures, there's a dark side.
Liverpool? Am I finally settled in my new home, this port city on the Irish Sea? No, I'm not. I'm still a nomad, still living out of a suitcase. As with Rome, Mallorca, Seville, San Miguel de Allende, Oxfordshire, Montreal, and Washington, DC, I'm not sure that I'll be staying here.
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Strange Indeed!
I need to get into the nitty-gritty of this Strange Land business.
I bought a DAB/FM radio last week. This is the second Liverpool radio I've bought. The first one just stopped working. I brought it back to the store to see if they could do something. They exchanged it for a newer model, still a DAB/FM. (I don't know what DAB means, but FM means frequency modulation. I'm not so sure what that means.)
Like most people of a certain age, I've owned a number of radios over the years. I like to follow the news or have some soft music playing to absorb the silence. I brought this new radio home and unboxed it. ("Unboxing" is a hip term I learned on YouTube). When I finally got the radio loose of all its various wrappings—they really pack stuff securely these days—I found a 12-page booklet, an instruction manual. I thought . . . why do I need an instructions manual for a radio? You turn it on, tune it to the station you want, and listen.
I thumbed my way through the 12 pages. The type was tiny and a faded pale grey in color. Even with a magnifying glass, I could hardly read it. And I couldn't understand it. This booklet needs its own instruction manual.
So far, I've only managed to get one station to play, techno-dance music that keeps repeating the same phrase over and over. It does get my old toes tapping though.
Digital, could you step back a bit please? Stop chewing on my leg! Give me a rest from some of this stuff!
Twenty-five years ago, the Internet showed incredible promise. And today, I love that I can pay for things with a tap of my debit card. I love the fact that I can Google most anything I want to know. I value the universal speed and convenience of email. I can do everything online now except hug a friend, pet a dog, or consume food and drink.
But the way they keep asking me for yet another piece of information to identify myself is maddening. Didn't I do that yesterday . . . and the day before? I don't remember my mother's dog's maiden name! And I don't want to download and learn yet another version of some app I've been using that had no visible problems. Instead, why don't they do something about battery life?
I was so upset by all this, I had to walk down to share my thoughts with Eleanor Rigby. Tommie Steele left her sitting on a stone bench about a block from me. Nell listened quietly but offer no advice. Well, she has troubles of her own.
Let's hope I'm in a better mood next Sunday. I'll close with a positive image of Liverpool, one that I captured a year ago before the virus arrived. It was a simpler time.
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Happy Feet
And, as I said, my slippers.
Is the loss of the things that represented my past a great tragedy, a reason for self-pity? Not so much. Before the fire, I was thinking of selling the lease on my rent-stabilized Lower Manhattan apartment and moving out of the city. The fire made that happen.
I was planning to do digital conversions of a few hundred slides, my favorites. That would have been a lot of work that I now won’t have to do. The clothes would not fit the new thinner me. The furniture? Charity shops would not take that stuff. My efforts as a novelist and composer and performance musician? Those things were important to me for a time in my younger days. Looking back, I picture those areas of endeavor as large, bright rooms that beckoned, that I entered with enthusiasm, crossed, and then exited. I may still write the memoir. After all, I know the story. I still write and I still do photography.
That will have to be enough.
In Seville, I made a new friend—Velina from Florida. She is a super person, full of energy, very helpful, and for some unknown reason, she became involved in helping me find a suitable pair of slippers. Velina was helpful with many more important things (she speaks Spanish) and we had lots of enjoyable lunches together. The hunt for slippers didn't work out.
She would text me or call and tell me she had seen some slippers I might like in a little shop just north of the Parasol or down by the Tower of Gold. I would go and look but there was always something keeping me from buying. Was the Spanish size right? Is that my color? Often they were just too fancy or too costly. So I never did buy slippers in Seville.
And I've also done without slippers in Liverpool this past year. Today I solved the problem. Here are my new slippers. Okay, they're not exactly new. But that's not a bad thing. They're old and worn out, but they're comfy. They're familiar. They did their job as shoes and now they will have a second life as slippers.
Can wearing slippers help us avoid the coronavirus? I hope so.
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Those Mod Fashions
I fear I've been lagging a bit behind, fashionwise. I've always been a step or two out of step with things. In the '60s, I had long hair but I was never a hippie. "Don't trust anyone over 30," they used to say. Since I'm now over 80, I'm guessing I still don't qualify for trust.
I woke up this morning with a germ of understanding as to where current fashions in Europe and the USA originated. TV and films, of course, those superheroes and sci-fi flicks . . . and 14 years of the Kardashians. Those are the main culprits. The K family's show is coming to an end. All that the world will be able to see in the future is about another 14 years of reruns. Out of step? Me? I guess so; I've never seen the Kardashians show.
I worry about the heavily tattooed. Making a style adjustment from that won't be easy. But not all tattoos are bad. This nice Liverpool lady below allowed me to capture the stylish, tasteful bird she has on her back. Notice how the color on the bird's breast matches her hair color.
Even traditional Muslim women have added the most common new fashion accessory to their wardrobe these days—the face mask. Nice. I like that touch of blue amid the somber black.
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Fast Food
Too fast or not fast enough? And what's the hurry, anyway? Taste and nutrition are what we're after. Where have those important things gone in the equation?
Tomatoes are grown and picked to ship now, not to eat. Most chickens are unhappy prisoners in an overcrowded space. Their taste makes me unhappy. I paid real money for a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's tasteless and dry and hard as a rock. Pecorino Romano? Forget it. I've been forced to put an English cheddar on my pasta! The ghosts of the Caesars will haunt me.
They now call fast food "street food." It sounds hip and jazzy. It doesn't improve the taste though. Real street food is sold on the street, not in a restaurant. Is street food healthy? Maybe some of it, maybe none.
Liverpool is not a great restaurant town. It's better with traditional pubs but that's less important to me. San Miguel de Allende, a much smaller place than Liverpool, had far better bistros. It's not Lyon or Bologna, but I was impressed. In San Miguel, when you order guacamole, they make it from scratch. I also found better restaurants in Montreal, Lisbon, Seville, Galway, and even in Sligo.
But Liverpool is a distinctive city of almost a million people and I've been here for a year now. I've found more than a half dozen places I like. Of course, the pandemic lockdown has not helped things.
Sunday, August 30, 2020
My Kitbag
Ah, yes—the cameras, and lenses, and other bits and parts we use to capture images. Our kit. I have a simple point of view towards photography equipment: if I can work without it, I don't buy it, carry it, or use it. But our kits are the tools we use as photographers, so I've always bought the best stuff I could afford. It's hard to do a first-rate job with second-rate tools.
In the past, I've owned Nikons, Leicas, Hassieblads, Rollies, Bronica's, Mamiyas, a Linhof 4 by 5, and a Deardorff 8 by10. The Deardorff I owned for about a week and used it only once. Then I sold it. Someone made me an offer I could not refuse. These days, I use only smaller, lighter mirrorless Sonys. It would be nice to have larger files to work with, but my Sonys produce images that are fine for what I shoot now: editorial stock.