JSP Visual Week In Review ~ 12.5.20
If we make it through December
Everything’s gonna be all right, I know
It’s the coldest time of winter
And I shiver when I see the falling snow
If we make it through December
If We Make It Through December ~ Phoebe Bridgers (covering Merle Haggard)
If we make it through December…if we make it through 2020…we’ll be alright.
But many haven’t made it through 2020, much less December.
The pandemic continues to wreck havoc. Guess it didn’t magically go away on November 4, as some in the White House suggested.
Yeah, it’s all been a ploy. A worldwide, global conspiracy.
Pfft.
I haven’t shot a proper concert – one where I’m in the pit, trying not to bump someone or have them not bump my lens – in nine months.
I’ve only done a few portraits sessions this year.
I haven’t been on a plane in almost year. Thankfully, I still saw Acadia this year.
Worst of all, I haven’t seen my parents – both in their 80s and in a “hot” part of Pennsylvania – in eight months.
And I have pandemic fatigue.
Can you imagine how the frontline healthcare workers feel? Or the backline restaurant workers who have to drag themselves into work to get the paycheck, yet put themselves out on frontlines of people who just HAVE to have a sit-down mean someplace other than their own dining room.
It’s not going to end, folks. We can’t ask “Where’s the finish line?” because we don’t know. And there may not be one.
We have to ask “Can I keep going?”
We have to. We have to keep going. Yes, my creativity is waning. I haven’t felt like pulling out the seamless background and experimenting with new portrait lighting.
I haven’t had the supreme opportunity to walk around NYC with a camera in my hand. That’s why I had to GOYA the other day.
Photography podcasts bore the hell out of me (which is why, if I link to one below, you better know I enjoyed it enough to share it).
But we have to keep going. Because this is it now. Even when the vaccine(s) come, it won’t magically go away. Not for a long time.
Our lives are altered.
This is the new reality.
Start making those New Year’s resolutions now. They don’t have to be grand. Small steps count.
And back up your work.
___________________
This Week’s Links:
What I Read This Week: I started Mary Higgins Clark’s Silent Night (picked it up someplace last year, free probably, been waiting till December to start it.
What I Watched This Week: Crossing Delancey
Digital Camera World: Nikon’s last film camera is dead.
PetaPixel: Things to read
Two-Minute Watch from Dan Milnor: The Photographic Big Three
FStoppers: Restoring an 85 Year Old Leica
PetaPixel: Eric Stabile has brewers develop their photos in beer
Watch from the NY Times: How Prince wrote a classic song
“Images can describe, abstract, interpret, but they are not absolute.” ~ Carolyn Drake (December 2, 1971)
© Mark V. Krajnak | JerseyStyle Photography | All Rights Reserved 2020
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Great post Mark.
I’m fortunate that my line of work has allowed me to work remotely but the lack of social interaction with my tribe of photo geeks and beer “bruhs” is taking a toll. I’ve attended one zoom funeral and two zoom weddings. I hope to never do that again.
We’ve kept ourselves indoors except for needed fresh air on woodland hikes (masked) and once a week outdoor dinner date. Have you ever sat outside for dinner with a down coat, thick socks, a hat and gloves? I have.
Here’s to 2021 and doing all the things (visit Arcadia, Vermont, warbler migration photography, South Florida) I couldn’t do in 2020.
That’s a great list you’re working on, Khurt. Impressed you still get out for the outdoor dinner date. We have woods near us, too, which I can traipse around unmasked as it’s not a public park or anything like that. Just follow the deer trails.