(Whew, I'm all "written out" from yesterday. These posts don't write themselves, as I sometimes say. Writing can be surprisingly hard work, especially when your thoughts aren't completely formulated. I only have but so much "writing energy...." )
"Doldrums" is an interesting old word. The doldrums are areas of the Pacific and Atlantic near the equator that can sometimes be calm for days on end—trapping sailing ships, which of course depended on wind to move. The sailors would just have to sit there and wait. Colloquially the expression translates to a feeling of listlessness, and of being stalled.
The doldrums. Photo by Philip Rosenberg. Coincidentally, Phil took this shot from a sailboat with a Waukesha engine when he was passing near the Johnston Islands.
We're heading now into my least favorite time of year. Winter's welcome has worn out, and the light is dull and the skies are white. I'm distracted by the end of the football season for now, but soon enough that will be over and there will be that big post-football letdown, and the Winter doldrums will set in. I will lack...well, wind to fill my sails. (Ya love it when the metaphors all line up like that.)
Not to harp, but that's another thing I miss about the old days of the wet print. As the temperatures got inhospitable and the days dreary, my darkroom time would rise. I printed a lot in the winter. Then with the light of Spring I'd head out with the camera looking for light, and the warmer months were mostly spent taking pictures. The summers and winters had a rhythm, with the shooting work rising and falling naturally with the temperatures and the darkroom work falling and rising in the opposite proportions. I miss that natural ebb and flow.
What does a digital photographer do in the Northern hemisphere in late winter, when the snow gets gray and the light gets tepid and the ground gets soggy and winter limps along toward Spring? What are you doing, photographically speaking? It's not like I lack for work. I have tons of things to do. But man, I'm already ready for Spring. Just got to wait for it.
Mike
(Thanks to Phil Rosenberg)
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
bill: "Bask in GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) evaluating how much better the equipment will be come Spring by ditching this or upgrading that. And if after an OCD extravaganza I do make a change, I test-shoot useless junk to fool myself into thinking how ready I'll be come Spring, and how much better (he says laughingly) I'll be. Well at least that's what I do."
John Sparks: "I'm doing what I used to do in the darkroom. Making prints of things I shot last Spring, Summer and Fall."
Tom Simonsen: "What do I do? I go out and photograph of course. (I try to photograph all year). In Norway we have a saying—there is no poor weather, just poor clothes. So dress for the occasion. The light is challenging, of course. But that is the part of the fun."
Moose: "I have always lived in a moderate climate (sunny and pushing 70°F all this week). Although I'm pretty sure I will never live in a climate like yours, I do fantasize occasionally about snow days, where I would have an excuse to spend even more hours in my digital darkroom. There are those of us for whom the image as initially captured by the camera is quite different than that envisioned when the shutter was released. The 'dry, dim room' is the way from one to the other."
David Dyer-Bennet: "Mostly I sit here clicking 'refresh,' I think. But that's not that different from Spring or Summer."
Craig S: "Since I'm even further North than you, for most of December I'd go to work in darkness and leave work just as the sun sets. Cue winter doldrums. Weeks of grey skies don't help. But when I go to the Rockies on ski trips, I'm greeted with a whole new environment to photograph in—backflips on a bluebird day, rugged traverses across a ridge line as the snow blows, hot chocolate and impromptu portraits while warming up in the mid-slope yurt. For me the best shots arise from when my routine is broken—usually by travel. I find it hard to be productive without a change of scenery once in a while, regardless of the weather."
William: "I am spending almost all my time on production. I am re-scanning a lot of Tri-X negatives from 1971. I'm using Vuescan, Lightroom 5 and PS6 CC. These images need a lot of repair work because these were among the first negatives I ever developed. I am grateful for my Bamboo graphics tablet. Eventually I will have the local lab I use make prints. I had a couple of photos from a series I completed in 2007–2008 curated for a local museum show this spring. They are Fujifilm color negatives. So I am re-scanning these and making different test versions for the print lab. I am also preparing documents for 2013's taxes for my commercial-photography LLC. I actually don't want spring to arrive too soon because the commercial gigs will pick up and then my time for production will be limited."
