Parklife

Mornings. Heavy like a stone. Slow starts and click click click. The ever present thread to the new now, which I can hardly tell from the old then. Click click click, chemicals and scanning is all that keeps me going. I fool myself with creative no through roads. I long for cake and dancing but my militant disciplinarian stiff upper lip refuses me the free expression. But in the park, I can watch. I‘m a voyeur at the end of the world. Have they seen the fucking news? I have and really I don’t care. If we can turn it off we‘ll live forever. Or at least another day. Or maybe we only have a month of Sundays. I hate Sundays but I’ll take it. One of the fish died. He had been sucked into the filter backwards, left dead with a look of disbelief frozen on his tiny fishy face, eyes bulging in the evening light. His companions seemed oblivious. The wee one put the remains in a jar of water. Hopeful, but pointless.

Zenit E / Asahi Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 / Fomapan 400 / Fujifilm Pro 400 H
Moscow July 2020.

She wants dinosaurs.

Moscow feels open again. And, it‘s Summer. Winter feels closed here anyway.

Like a long wait for something desperately trying to happen. You have faith that one will pass and the other will take its place. But your faith has no point. Change will always come.

The dead cars in the neighbourhood become interesting in Summer. The snow and frost is gone and I can spy their strange abandoned contents. It has become a small obsession.

The wee one‘s eye played up. It wouldn‘t open for the doctor. There were screams. Screams calmed by bribery. So, a trip to the kiosk. All the dolls went unnoticed. More cars are needed for the collection.

At least it‘s not a dinosaur. I am so bored of the dinosaurs. They are dead. Forgotten things from the past. When the doctor’s salve needs to go on there are more screams and bribery.

And meanwhile people do what people do. As it should be.

Live for we are a long time dead. Like those dinosaurs.

Maybe some future kid plays obsessively with plastic versions of us in the ever changing dystopia.

Zenit E / Asahi Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 / Fomapan 400 / Fujifilm Superia 400
Moscow July 2020.

I wanna holiday in the Russian sun.

Putin has a vote. Apparently it’s important.

He can be king until 2036 if the peasants say yes. So, all the proles are let out of lockdown. But travels to foreign shores are still not possible. Where can we go? 

We drive out of Moscow to the concrete Oblast and beyond to the fly ridden flatlands. Through towns of Babushkas and Dog lovers.

The Dacha. Hot. Sticky.

I have a cold. I sneeze and splutter and leak snot. It’s not THE virus. Of course just now noone is sure. The flies don’t care. Blood is blood is blood. They leave bites on my body. Two nights of feasting. We drive on.

Through town and country past and more Babushkas and good capatalists and once we were communist.

…and come to a resort hotel.

With animateurs. Russian style. The food in the Stolovar is passable but entirely unexciting. I try the wine and a long history of viniculture turns slowly in it’s grave. But mostly we are room ridden with our virus for company. We all have it now.

Humans and other animals. Some wear masks and some do not. And these Russians sometimes sport Ukranian bling.

The holiday is over. We drive home.

Past dead petrol stations through creeping traffic all headed for the centre of their universe, but never really finding it. Our Moscow flat feels like the height of civilisation. Sleep. Recover. Sleep Recover. 

 

Shot on Olympus XA / Fujifilm Superia 400

Fujifilm X100

I’m going off on a bit of an adventure next year. Probably the biggest holiday I’ve ever had if I don’t include my stay in Mexico some years ago. I decided I wanted something a bit smaller than my DSLR so started shopping around to see what was out there. I was looking for something that let me do some things manually and was a bridge between a point and shoot and SLR. I checked a few of the four thirds options, but somehow felt too much stuff is buried in menus.  I’d known about the Fujifilm camera for a while and saw it in a shop and gave it a wee look. Thing is I found I didn’t actually want to hand it back to the shop assistant. I can’t quite describe it. It has this sticky quality when you get it in your hands, you just want to go out and photograph with the damn thing. So, I bought one. And here it is complete with a cheap case I got for it on ebay.

There are actually quite a few things about this camera that I wish Fujifilm had done differently or better. Top of my list is the manual focus. I wish somehow that they could have made this fully mechanical rather than the electrically drive focus system. If they’d done that the camera would be absolutely perfect for me. I also find the autofocus can be a bit wierd at times if you want to selectively focus. But I found a good way round that. Point the camera at the thing you want focussed then depress the shutter button so as the autofocus locks on it, then frame your shot and press all the way to take the picture. This also is a way round my other criticism that the camera can be a little sluggish compared to an slr in getting exactly the shot you want. Depress the shutter button so as it locks the focus and then when you see the shot you want in your frame press it all the way. Much quicker. i don’t know if I maybe read the manual too fleetingly to catch this tip, but I share it with you here anyway. Also, the battery runs down faster than I’m used to on my Canon 500D. You’ll need a spare, trust me on that.

Now one thing that might bother a lot of people is the 23mm fixed unchangeable lense. For me it’s not a problem at all. Coming from mainly only using primes on my SLR I actually like this limitation. It’s a pretty wide one so you’ll be able to get most of the shots you want.

It’s great being able to switch the aperture, film speed and exposure compensation directly on the camera without going through menus. For me an absolute must!

I must mention that I love retro look and feel and if you do too, then this camera is not going to disappoint you. Fujifilm really made something that has a hybrid feel of an old camera with all the benefits of digital.  And it feels nice and solid with its metal casing. No complaints there! I get asked a lot if it’s an old film camera

The photos have a certain quality that I like too. I suggest looking at pictures on flickr.com taken with this camera if you want to be sure, or check out the more recent photos in my facebook photos – facebook.com/thegordonbell – the lastest stuff in the album ‘pointless’ has some. The film simulations might not be for everyone, but I like them a lot. A special favourite of mine is with any of the black and white settings and  the flash for taking shots at night.

You’re certainly going to read about the viewfinder in a lot of reviews. I concur that it works great. I use it on electric pretty much all the time. It is great not having to use the back screen unless you want to.

The best thing I can probably say about this camera is that the shots you see of it here were taken with my Canon 500D, and I really do like that camera, but those are pretty much the first shots I’ve taken with it since this camera arrived a month ago. Go figure. You’ll want to take lots of photos with it if you get one and surely that’s a good thing.