photomattmills

[photomattmills]

muir woods and beach

This was… sometime towards the end of September? I was freshly out of the boot, but still not walking a ton. My parents came to town and wanted to see Muir woods, or maybe I suggested going? Doesn’t matter. Nature hike, relatively flat and nice. Short, too. Less than a mile. We got done there and had a little steam left, so we went over to Muir Beach, too. It was overcast by the time we got there, but still really pretty/nice. The ocean, with no memory.

Too many computers, and too many things happening to keep track of the photos, really. I need to spend some energy towards getting my photos from the last several months together. It’s like, the moment I got my cast off and was allowed to walk again, things started taking off, and I didn’t have any kind of routine in place to keep things organized, so they’re spread out over my desktop, laptop, and iPad, and also some still on each camera (all three have seen some use). So yeah, trying to catch up and make sense of everything. Pushing out photos as I do.

via Not Untitled /2019/11/23/muir-woods-and-beach.html

[photomattmills]

weekend in paso

This might’ve been the weekend after the trip to Yosemite? We’ve been running all over the last couple months, but I think it’s going to settle down til Christmas, at least.

I still need to get out and shoot some. Driving down the street yesterday I say, it’s all right here, I think it’ll just fall into place now that I have a clearer idea of what the hell I’m after. Probably 6 months of chasing the light, if I’m lucky. Now that I’ve said that I’ve cursed myself to another decade of working on it. Ah well. More as it gets done.

(oh, and a PS: Image #4 was straight out of camera, the colors really were that bonkers.)

via Not Untitled /2019/10/31/weekend-in-paso.html

[photomattmills]

odd salon EPIPHANY

I think I was still in the boot for this? I don’t actually remember, but I was not on crutches, I’m sure. Anyway, not a ton of pictures, since I was still struggling. But a few. Have to start somewhere.

via Not Untitled /2019/10/29/odd-salon-epiphany.html

[photomattmills]

the road to recovery

So yeah, had a bit of an interval there where I wasn’t taking a lot of photos. Not the whole four months of injury/surgery/recovery, but for sure the two after surgery, and not a lot of the larger project (which I talked about a little in my last newsletter) at all, since it requires quite a bit of walking around. There are people that would have pushed through the injury to get to a place where they were still making work, but I’m not one of them. I’m really fortunate that I had the support of my dear wife through all of this, or I doubt I’d be anything but a shambles, still.

As it is, I’m recovered enough that the work is now, again, ongoing. I need to figure out the routine from here; what I’m shooting, and what I need to do. I had a really productive conversation with Sara Terry, the photographer leading the workshop I was at in NYC, about it, and at least now I have something like a thesis; something more than “it’s interesting” to go on. I mean, the people that fed me the story, more or less, said that to me, and I felt it was the sort of subject that’s good for sniffing around, photographically. Eventually you have to figure out what exactly makes it interesting, sharpen your tools, and work until you have the story. I think I’m there, or I’m at least one step further down the funnel.

Oh, and: The last three photos are with my new favorite lens, the Voightlander 35mm 1.4. It’s really pretty great. Zone focusing is good, wide open with the RF is good. It just feels less constrained than the 50. I’ve been a 50 ride-or-die person for two decades. This is pretty big, but I feel like it’s a focal length I can really do some work with. Expect to see it more in the posts to come.

via Not Untitled /2019/10/28/the-road-to-recovery.html

[photomattmills]

three randos

Another three photos. I just spent the better part of half an hour trying to salvage a pano of a beautiful Jaguar I saw in Berkeley, an XK 140 of unknown but probably 1950s vintage. After spending all that time on it (playing with software is wonderfully soothing if not productive), I took a mental step back, looked at it, realized it wasn’t really saying anything worthwhile, just a shiny thing parked on the curb, and so I axed it. You’re welcome.

via Not Untitled /2019/10/05/three-randos.html

[photomattmills]

toured the mormon temple

This was shortly after my initial ankle injury but before I was really taking it seriously; it was sprained at this point, but not really painful to walk on, so walk I did. It was later that week that everything came undone and I went to the doc for the initial consult.

The temple gorgeous and somehow ominous at the same time. Could just be me, but I was not feeling a great deal of loving vibes coming off of the place. The interior, which I wasn’t allowed to take photographs of, was fairly maze-like; it reminded me of a casino interior. Expensive and bad for the head. Also, at any given time, I couldn’t have told you which way was out without locating the ‘Exit’ signs. All in all, I was glad to get out of there.

Maybe the bad vibes was coming from the part of my brain that kept insisting that all of the things the tour guide told us were filtered through what they were allowed to say by the church, and the constant energy required to remind myself that it’s quite possible none of what was being said is true. Not the surface level stuff. I’m quite sure we were shown the room where they ‘baptize’ the dead so they can also ‘go to heaven’ (Someone should have a word with them about the golden statues in that room, holding up the altar. The god of Abraham was never partial to those). No, the mental energy was spent recognizing that the Mormons do the actions, but their reasons and expected result are so much smoke.

There was a lot of stuff like that, too much to really catalogue. And it’s late. Three posts in one day, that probably means I’ll take a month off.

via Not Untitled /2019/10/05/toured-the-mormon-temple.html

[photomattmills]

may dinner club finally

Some photos from last May that I didn’t want to disappear down the memory hole.

via Not Untitled /2019/10/04/may-dinner-club-finally.html

[photomattmills]

yosemite photo dump

Like I said on Twitter, I’ve declared backlog bankruptcy. These are from last weekend, in and around and on the way to Yosemite National Park.

I’ll probably just post photosets that I like from what I’ve got? like, the edits from what was in the camera got me about 90 photos, but that’s not a ton of actual posts. I also saved the older edits, so I can dip into those if I want.

Looking at the photos i’ve taken recently: I’ve got my work cut out for me, getting ready for New York. Out of practice. Too much time spent convalescing. It’ll come back.

via Not Untitled /2019/09/13/yosemite-photo-dump.html

[photomattmills]

tokyo subway journey

File this entry in the same place as the last one; utterly mundane wonders, or maybe astounding normalcy. I’m sure in the right circles, the Tokyo subway/train system is justly famous and known. The experience of it, even when a bit exhausted and yeah, a little tipsy, is quite impressive. I think for some reason we changed trains twice on this trip? seems like it should have been a straight shot, but it’s possible we wandered a bit underground and gotten on the wrong place. Or perhaps I’m looking at the sequence wrong.

The ankle is healing. It’s in a cast now. Hopefully my inability to sleep last night is just needing to be used to the cast, and not, like, an indicator of the discomfort I’ll be in the next two weeks. We’ll see.

via Not Untitled /2019/08/20/tokyo-subway-journey.html

[photomattmills]

shibuya crossing on a monday evening

Just moving between places in Tokyo. There’s so much happening there at any given instant. This was just another Monday evening, you know? but I guess someone else’s quotidian bullshit can be amazing and wild if you go halfway around the world. This crowd was a nice change from the Halloween night crowd, which was called a riot by the local police. (I for one don’t think it can be a riot without any broken windows, at least; this was just TOO MANY PEOPLE in one place)

Schedule is already filling up for the fall. Booking things two months out already. Two more weeks until I start physical therapy. I keep having dreams where I’m walking, and after a moment I look down and realize I’m still in the splint, or I shouldn’t really be putting weight on the busted ankle, but it seems fine in the dream. I hope reality is half as easy.

via Not Untitled /2019/08/17/shibuya-crossing-on-a-monday-evening.html

[photomattmills]

drinks up high

So, I found the rest of the Tokyo pictures. Turns out a bunch of stuff that I’d already blogged was still in LR mobile, and for some reason I thought it was sorted wrong. So, yesterday’s post was actually from the end of the backlog, not that it matters here and now, 6 months after the fact.

These are, as far as I can remember, from getting drinks one night in the accidentally fancy hotel. Booking online sometimes works out in your favor, is all I’m saying. I think we were paying something like $125 a night? Nice room, came with a local cell phone even.

via Not Untitled /2019/08/15/drinks-up-high.html

[photomattmills]

back in Oakland after the trip

So these were from sometime after the trip. No idea why I was walking in this particular spot, or what I was doing that day. it’s a little weird.

I’m missing some photos, actually; the last post was on the last day, but there were some more from that evening that I meant to post. We walked, we saw the Samurai museum, we walked some more. They’re probably in a folder on my desktop machine. This is another experiment in mobile blogging, now from the iPad pro; the images were put together in LR mobile, and uploaded (somewhat painfully) over sftp. Hopefully this works.

Oh, also! I’ve started an email newsletter, at tinyletter.com/photomattmills. I’m going to be putting more longform writing there, telling stories, recent photo one-offs, that sort of thing.

via Not Untitled /2019/08/14/back-in-oakland-after-the-trip.html

[photomattmills]

walking in tokyo again

Home stretch now… the blogging for the trip, which I’d wanted to do while in situ, has ended up taking the better part of 10 months. Life does not stop happening when you’re not on the road, unfortunately; there’s been a real lull the last 7 weeks or so around here. I injured my ankle may 31st, sort of several things compounding until I ended up at the orthopedist, diagnosed with an entirely torn tendon, and some kind of cartilage issue. Surgery is next week. My creative output hasn’t been nothing in that time; I’ve taken a lot of pictures, still, finished one bag three weeks late, did a pop-up photo booth in the style of Richard Avedon, designed another bag, and thought a lot about what I’m going to do when I have full use of my right leg again.

All things going well, I should be back at it 100% eight weeks from Friday. I should probably plan to hit a lot of the backlog while I have downtime; I have a new iPad to help me during my convalescence, and a selection of keyboards I could use to write with even. Maybe I will, but it’s almost 4 am on saturday morning. No promises.

via Not Untitled /2019/07/27/walking-in-tokyo-again.html

[photomattmills]

meiji shrine

I’ve been staring at this edit for hours, and really it’s time to just push it out and move on.

This is the Meiji Shrine, which is sort of a complex of imperial gardens and buildings. Much rich history. I was just sort of wandering through on my way to Shinjuku. Somewhat rainy, although the sun peeked out for a minute by the time I was reaching the southern end; I stopped at a little shop and had a coffee. Then I went on my way.

via Not Untitled /2019/06/12/meiji-shrine.html

[photomattmills]

wandering last day in Tokyo

I do a lot of wandering when left to my own devices; I like the random chance of choosing a path at semi-random, as I did this day. Walked from one district in Tokyo to another, through the old Imperial gardens (I think; The big park between Shinjuku and Shibuya). This was the first part of that walk; the gardens get their own post.

I have to admire people like Craig Mod (second link is to his walking newsletter) who not only walk much farther than I do, but who can distill a day into a single image. I’m not sure I could, even if you held a gun to my head. Or maybe I could, and I’m being lazy? This is the internet tho, world of infinite bandwidth, and people like more pictures. There’s something very haute and designer-y about only putting out what you want to, and not what people ask for. It’s saying, ‘I know better than the people that want a lot of photos,’ and the damming thing is it might be right.

Speaking of walking: I’ve had a string of bad luck with my right ankle, stemming from an injury all the way back in 2003, when I was a college freshman. I got what I thought was a bad sprain, was off it for 6 weeks or so, and then thought nothing of it again. Then, a couple weeks ago, while walking around at the bouldering gym, I rolled it a little and it hurt a bit and swelled up a little, so I iced it and babied it for maybe a week, and it seemed to be better.

Then the Mormons went and had their open house; probably more walking than I’ve done at a stretch in quite a while. The next day, I had to drive back from the south bay for [unrelated]. Driving is a load-bearing exercise, and it kinda made it worse, such that when I got back I went immediately to the first clinic I found with an X-ray, to see what kind of damage I’d done. They were largely useless, didn’t even send me home with a splint.

So I went to Webster Ortho Urgent Care. They were great; really from beginning to end great care. Shot some more X-rays, assessed the joint by hand, and then went over the films with me about what they were seeing. Apparently, the old injury probably wasn’t just a sprain; from 16 years later, it’s difficult to tell, of course, but the way my bones had grown indicated something might be wrong. So later this week I’m getting an MRI and a consult with a surgeon, and maybe my ankle will be stabilized after all this.

Right now, I’m confined to a walking boot, as tolerated, which isn’t a ton. Mostly sat around all weekend. It’s possible the 10000mph summer has gone down a couple orders of magnitude, which kinda sucks. When your body says slow down this clearly though, it’s really imperative to listen.

via Not Untitled /2019/06/02/wandering-last-day-in-tokyo.html

[photomattmills]

cuponoodles museum -- ferris wheel -- some nice buildings

Something like day 9 of 10 here; our last full day in Tokyo was the day after this. We went to the cup-o-noodles museum, which was kind of equal parts fascinating and weirdly hero-worshiping of the founder/inventor of instant ramen, Momofuku Ando. One thing I didn’t get a picture of because I was starving, was the sort of food court area that had different noodle dishes from all over the world you could sample; I had like 3 different kinds of noodles, all delicious.

The ferris wheel: so right next to the museum in Yokohama was this little amusement park with a great big ferris wheel. Somehow we realized that tickets were cheap (300 yen sticks out in my mind but I could be misremembering) and hopped on. Went up and over the place, got some nice views, and some OK portraits of my traveling companions. I’m holding back the portrait of Sophia, because I know she’d hate it.

Which really just leaves the last photo, of the Atari-logo-shaped building. For some reason, I just really liked the shape of this building. Nice proportions. It’s a stitched panorama, about 95 megapixels. I have a couple from the same spot with the 15mm, but it was a bit too wide, and so I’d have had to crop. This works really nicely.

via Not Untitled /2019/05/28/cuponoodles-museum-ferris-wheel-some-nice-buildings.html

[photomattmills]

in search of food and other things

So, after we exited the TeamLab building, we were pretty hungry and the building next to it was kind of a mall, so we wandered in in search of food. The mall was a little weird, oddly empty, but I have no idea what qualifies as normal there. The whole thing was like they’d seen the inside of an Olive Garden once, described it to their designer, and said “Go nuts on it.” Faux aging paint jobs, fake marble, tile floors, the whole deal, but executed with this precision and workmanship that made it kind of alien?

One thing I like about visiting foreign lands is looking for the standards. Not just the shape of their outlets but the distance between them, are they grounded or GFCI by default. What materials do they use as standard? What are the bathroom fixtures made of? Doors? Locks? Lighting is interesting because it’s always different, affected by the local fire codes. Local brands of everything made to different specifications, not only the difference between inch and metric, but what do they consider a sufficient width, of say, scotch tape? Endlessly fascinating minutiae. Japan was great for that because even now a great deal of what they use is made there.

Anyway, after the weird mall, we walked down to this area with a lovely view, and took pictures. The Gundam was on the way to the pier near the statue of liberty; that photo is a composite of 6 or 8 images. I didn’t have the wide angle on when the people were there, so I got it in sections and stitched it together in Lightroom. Not sure what the golden cigar is about. Then we found a bunch of street food that would have at least been tastier than the mall food, but alas we had already eaten. I think I got a Pocari because I couldn’t get enough of that stuff.

Then we went to Akihabara in search of electronics components, but it seemed like all the shops were just selling used cameras and computers. Interesting, and not bad prices, but not at all what I was hoping for. Apparently you can hire a guide to get you in the good shops, but unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, it’s hard. We were all exhausted at this point, and just went back to our respective hotels to pass out.

via Not Untitled /2019/05/23/in-search-of-food-and-other-things.html