I recently realized we're nearing the end of summer. Fall is on the horizon. When fall starts to hit, Harvest is usually in tow. I've recently started to organize the amount of photos i have taken over the last 4 and half months. I've only been able to go through about a quarter of it because there is ALOT of content. I didn't really think about doing this on a daily basis which would have made this a little less tedious, but what are you gonna do right? Since we are currently finishing up our last minute pruning and spraying of the trees, I decided to write up a small reflective blog post about the last 4 months and go through a little photographic recap.
It's very surreal going through what i saw when i started the project to what i can see now. I think the project is coming together very well despite a lot of challenges i faced so far. One of them was facing sort of new camera system. Just four days before i left for the project i ran across a really good deal for a digital Leica and i went for it. I say sort of new because i owned a Leica M6 but only had it for about a year. I then ended up trading it for a Contax T3 because i thought i wanted a really good point and shoot camera. I did love the camera and it was a joy to use. The simplicity that surrounded a film point and shoot was mind blowing but i still missed how i felt using a leica. I know there are a lot of people out there that say you don't need that, Leica's are over priced luxury cameras, and a camera is just a tool you don't need a hammer attached to a high price tag. While i agree with that notion i don't hear a lot of people talking about the caveats to that. A camera is a tool but a tool should fit its user. A good tool should be a tool you like using, other wise you'll never use it and it'll sit on a shelf for all its life.
So there i was with a new system in hand trying to remember and relearn the nuances of using a fully manual camera. I've never actually used a Leica system on anything work related. The biggest fear i had was focusing. I don't have the luxury of auto focus and had to really practice and master how to focus quickly, It was tough at first but i slowly got used to it. On a side note, manual focus on a Leica M camera stops on each end(close focus to infinity). Some focusing systems allows the focus ring to keep moving once you get to the point of inifinity. This made this a lot easier for me to quickly pick up on. I can automatically know where my camera is focused at by feel and adjust to focus closer or further. Once i got that i was all set. Now i could concentrate properly on creating the work i wanted to create. Technical is important but not as important as content and emotion in your work.
There were a few other challenges that i've mentioned in past blogs you can find here, so i won't bore you with repeat content. I intended this to be a shorter blog to be honest with you, but with so many thousands of images i decided to do a secondary recap at a later time. Please enjoy some of the photo slide shows and if you still haven't followed me on Instagram, you can do so by looking up @chriiiissss. I post images there usually on a daily basis.