As I post this on my site it is November 29, 2018. It also happens to be my brother’s birthday with mine happening yesterday (so yay us I guess). I figured that it being our birthdays was a good time to restart posting stuff to both here and to various social media presences…because let’s face it…it’s been quite a while, hasn't it?
I've not updated this blog, my photo galleries or most of my social media accounts since the month of May, so this post is way, way, way overdue! I didn’t mean to worry a few people who reached out to me to wonder where I was, and for that I apologize.
There were a few things that happened during the spring of 2018 that made me lose the urge and motivation to post things online and therefore I took what I thought would be a short break from posting things. I didn’t think that break would last well into November…but there ya go. Again, I didn’t mean for people to get worried, I’m okay.
But...now I am going to try to get back to it, because I think the actual urge to post stuff is returning. I feel that posting stuff online, be it to gallery pages or to this blog or social media shouldn't feel like an obligation, but rather something to do when you feel like you have something to share. To me it’s never been about getting as many followers as possible. Hunting for “likes” isn’t really my thing…in fact, if it was I would probably post a lot more colorful sunset photos! ;-)
I did not envy this guy for walking around in the Nazgul outfit in the heat!
What's in the works?
Given that it’s been quite a while since I did anything to my site I’ve taken the opportunity to purge the galleries from old content and while the categories are the same as before the pictures are all taken during 2018, and with a few rare exceptions they’re all analog photos, because that is the majority of what I’ve shot this year.
The plan is that In the next few weeks I'll post some blog entries on stuff I've shot during my hiatus. Hopefully at some point I can get closer to being "in sync" with my original "brief" I had when I set up this site for my photography several years ago - a weekly photo blog post. I’ll pace myself though; I don’t want to spam people’s feeds (the two or three people out there that might still be interested in my photos).
I've also updated my 365 project with photos from the summer and fall. While I stopped uploading that stuff to my Instagram account in May along with most of everything else online, I kept on shooting for myself. I’ve removed the Instagram part of the project name, since there’s a huge gap in my postings there and it wouldn’t be right to call it that anymore. I’ll post there too eventually, but all my daily images will appear here on my site instead until the end of the year.
I will do wrap-up posts for those months too, like I’ve done in the past for my 365 projects, even though the images haven't really been seen outside family before, if for no other reason that it helps me to think back on why I took the images…plus some of them might actually be halfway okay pictures!
So…with that said…
...the pictures in this post were all done back in the warm month of May at the Nerd Parade in Malmö, Sweden to honor all kinds of nerdery, but especially within the sci-fi/fantasy field (it’s put on by the Sci-Fi bookstore in town). They’re all done with a late 1950s Zeiss Ikon Nettar folding medium format film camera that I've been learning to use since the beginning of the year (still nowhere near the feeling that I exactly know what pictures it'll take in any situation).
I shot this event once before so I had a small hunch what to expect. This time I wanted to shoot more of the assembly stage than the actual parade, because I wanted to see what I could do with the old camera, and that required a more stationary scene than what the parade would provide.
This dog had a bright red superhero cape (and it made me wish I shot this image in color!)
Out of the 12 pictures on the 120 format roll I was pretty pleased with 8, a much higher success rate than I usually achieve. It might have been because I slowed down (you pretty much have to when every setting is manual!) and took my time finding the images.
What I so enjoyed about the event is that it includes all kinds of costumes and fandoms, as well as all ages and levels of ambition when it comes to costumes. There were the nigh-on screen accurate Stormtroopers as well as a pretty portrait-like Jack Sparrow (seen above), but there was also the little girl in the image below who had made her own robot costume from cardboard and some old gauges. It even had battery-powered strands of christmas lights across the chest! The enthusiasm she showed, like many of the kids involved was so much fun to see.
While I didn't record any video (I very rarely do since I am a stills shooter) there were others who did, so you can see the people in their costumes actually moving...and in color too! ;-) In fact I can spot myself in the video as well for a fraction of a moment at the far right hand side at around the 30 second mark, with my big DSLR attached to my face.