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Weak XLVII

20 November 2017

No. 4,343 (cartoon)

Smile; things will get better.

That’s impossible.

You’ll be dead soon.

21 November 2017

Across the Great Divide

I’ve been selling all of my old film cameras except for my Sinar view camera. I thought that one day I might go back into a darkroom to make contact prints after a twenty-five-year break.

I just turned down an opportunity to make such analog photographs, and that led to an epiphany. I don’t want more physical objects, even if they are small contact prints. I don’t even know what to do with boxes of prints I haven’t opened in decades.

I’ll never use film or go into a darkroom again.

In the most unlikely event that I want to make a small print with incredible resolution and a beautiful tonal range, I can use one of my Nikons or Leicas and no one will be able to tell that it’s not from a large format negative.

Nothing’s changed, but now nothing looks the same either. It’s time to sell all of my film cameras and my darkroom and acknowledge I’ve made the one-way trip across the great divide.

I enjoyed the journey and still do.

22 November 2017

Ed Kostinger Has Almost Disappeared

I was preparing to sell my darkroom equipment, and wondered what my Kostiner print washer was worth. I was taken aback when I couldn’t find a single one of Ed Kostiner’s products mentioned anywhere.

I visited Ed a long time ago; he was a prolific inventor of darkroom tools. Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, et al used his equipment. They’re all dead, and I discovered Ed is too. His son wrote a brief remembrance of him in 2013, and that was the only obituary I could find.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. He sold his small company to a large conglomerate whose managers promptly shut it down. That was just before the Internet became popular.

The Internet gives the illusion that we’ll be remembered, but it’s only a fantasy. I knew Ed and Ansel in passing. Both men are almost forgotten, but Ansel’s name lives on as a marketing brand and as a shallow caricature. I prefer Ed’s graceful disappearance, and wonder why anyone would care about posterity.

23 November 2017

An Antonym for Leftovers?

Florian reported that Rosalind prepared a horrific meal this afternoon. He disagreed when I suggested that Thanksgiving dinners taste better the day after as leftovers.

“I’m afraid that today’s dinner would have tasted better yesterday,” he claimed.

There’s a reason that I’ve avoided anything Rosalind cooks, so I had to admit he probably wasn’t exaggerating. I wonder if there’s an antonym for leftovers?

24 November 2017

X Stump

There’s a tree stump on the corner of Balboa Street and Third Avenue that probably won’t be there for long. That’s what I concluded when I noticed someone painted an X on it as well as USA (Underground Service Alert) warnings on the surrounding sidewalk. I knew I’d have to move quickly to photograph it.

That was months ago. Since then, I’ve cycled by that nearby intersection several times a week, but there was always some reason I didn’t photograph it: a truck parked in front of it, bad light, the wrong camera, et cetera. I was pleasantly surprised that the stump was still there when I pedaled by this afternoon in the right light with the right camera in my pack.

I finally made the photograph I’d been meaning to take before a construction (destruction?) crew removed what was left of the old tree. Now that I’ve finally made the image I thought I might never have the opportunity to create, I don’t like it very much.

That’s art, and/or lack thereof.

25 November 2017

Eight Thousand Days in a Row

As of today, I’ve made exactly eight thousand of these notebook entries, more or less. As has always been the practice on such big, round number occasions, this is enough of a reason to take the day off, as if I’d actually done or said something.

I wrote all but one word of the previous paragraph on 4 June 2012. All I had to do was change “six” to “eight,” and now it’s time for a celebratory drink or several.

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©2017 David Glenn Rinehart