Simplifying your life is incredibly complex. It's been something that I've been wanting to do for a while now so the past few months have been busy. Not schedule busy,... head busy. Head busy trying to determine balance life/photography wise.
I have come to realize several things, several things that somehow have become non-negotiable. It's a bitch trying to bargain with your pigheaded self.
Several things that all boiled down to just one choice to make.
Be tooled up and prepared for any situation,... or learn your one thing enough to cover any situation.
I have been tooled up before, prepared for anything,... it wasnt fun, but my chiropractor managed to put his children through university.
And limitations I've always worked well with,... worked better perhaps. The times I've been tooled up, the work has been meh at best. Decent, but meh. Limitations have always resulted in me sticking the camera somewhere weird just to see if it would come out,... I've been lucky so far.
So it's been two months of modding myself and the Widelux,...
so that I can do this, use it as it's meant to be used and have DoF for days:
And yet do this and bokeh out the background for on the fly impromptu portraits:
Needless to say, the Widelux is a scale focus machine,... so I modded a +0.5 diopter for the lens, and to fine tune my distance judging skills I've been looking like a weird camera toting neo-nazi for the past couple of months:
at 2.8 I think, it flares quite a bit but is still sharp enough.
a bit smaller, at 4 I think.
and finally at f11.
it's been a headache of a couple of months, an obsessive compulsive nightmare,... but I think I'm there.
I think I'm quite happy with my gear now,... but then, I've said that too many times before.
This photography malarkey is a pain in the ass,... but I don't know what I would do without it :D
Very nice series, Shuji!
Thank you Walter!