Field of Nightmares

Dreams, Shea Stadium




Slide

This was IR film (what else) . It was a memorable day. I had some glitches (so did the Mets) - between the shutter on the M3 which needs to be adjusted; and loading one roll of IR film in what I thought was shade (without changing bag) and the first half of the roll was completely fogged. Won't do that again. I was shooting with two cameras, the M3 and the Bessa R2A and I forgot that with the Bessa you need to manually set the rangefinder frame for the lens you're using until after I took a couple of shots which could have been good... Oh well. I managed to salvage two or three interesting shots.

P.S. The problem with the M3 is that if I use speeds of 1/100th of a sec. or less with IR film the right side of the frame is apt to show motion blur. I shot loads of Tri-x at low speeds without a problem. So I'm thinking it might have something to do with the fact that it's a cloth shutter.

Reading

The great thing about literature is that there is always some new discovery. I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse (not only the Jeeves series) and loving it. And at the same time I found Carson McCullers books buried away somewhere that I hadn't read.

There is a portrait of McCullers on the cover of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter in b&w, and I was just staring at it before opening the book. It looks like McCullers is sitting on top a coal heap and looking so mournful. You can't tell if she is looking at the camera or just staring blankly. What a sad picture. On closer inspection, I see that it's not a coal heap, but just the way the plants or weeds around her look.

Open the cover, curious to see who took such a piercing photo: none other than HCB. Man - that guy never fails to amaze me.