So said Chris Walstad on the first fully fledged photography expedition I've been on in quite awhile. Way out past thunder valley casino in Lincoln. Where everything is flat canal and hiccuping grasshopper. He was positive that the sun would peek just between the hills and the clouds to create fire in the sky. He was right.
While he ran around with his crazy nice equipment (it all makes me drool. all of it.) I dicked around with some old ideas. Maybe it was back in early October or late September, I began jamming my fingers in front of my long 300mm lens when it was fully extended. At that focal length my fingers are reduced to small dark smudges in the image, the final result is something like dodging/burning in camera. I've been using that idea in conjunction with mild desaturation and the fact that my 300mm is a Quantaray with really cheap glass and it simply cannot focus tack sharp when fully zoomed in to create oddly aged and amateurish photos. Something about them instills an automatic sense of nostalgia in me, then whole goal is to feel like I took the photo fourty years ago although I am only twenty two.
Sometimes I just kicked reeds out of the way for Chris. It was an odd sensation to be hanging out with someone that knows as much photographic technical crud as I do, not that I mean to brag at all. He casually used the term "reciprocity failure," and I nearly had a heart attack. A good time was had by all, clearly.
