Tomorrow I'll go to the east side of the mountain and check out the Incline and make a return visit to Rock City. I mostly want to take pictures of the psychedelic fairytale scenes i shot on film last summer:
I want to see how the D3 looks under those lights. For the film stuff I was bracing for shutter speeds around a half second. At iso 6400, or maybe only 3200 I can probably hand hold in there. That's the hope, at least.
I've been able to do a little cooking while I'm here, too. There's a great little grocery store here called Greenlife that had a great fish selection (Greenlife is like Whole Foods or Fresh Market, but I think I like it better). Night before last I did a lime and pepper crusted seared yellow fin tuna with white asparagus. And last night I went a little simpler and had blackened tilapia sandwiches with a homemade remoulade (I'd forgotten how difficult it can be to make mayonnaise from scratch. I can't decide if a blender or food processor is better). Tonight I went down to the bottom of the mountain to a place called Sawasdee, a great little Thai restaurant. Great pud thai, and it had been a while since I'd had Singha beer (there's a great thai place in the CBD in New Orleans called Singha. I'm going to have to go visit there this summer for sure.). Tomorrow night I've been told we're going to a tapas bar. Sounds great to me!
I've been planning to take this summer to travel quite a bit. I want to do lots of little trips, 2-4 days at a time, mostly weekends. The purpose is to see friends I haven't seen in a while, make new friends along the way, and take photos of the whole thing. I want to revive an old portrait project idea that never got off the ground, too. I wanted all my friends to come up with a single scene, which we would stage and shoot. Back when I started talking about it, I had several friends who immediately knew what they wanted. One wanted himself lying in a pool of his own blood from a gunshot wound to the head in a white tile bathroom. A little morbid, but whatever, it's just a photograph. Another wanted nine little portraits of himself in a 3x3 grid, with the middle one being a straight on headshot and the rest being eight distinct faces he made. That was the other thing, I was going to shoot them in 6x6 format and in b&w. At the time I had a Rolleiflex on indefinite loan (I really miss that camera!). Turned out that loan was short lived. Then I planned on buying a Mamiya C330. Then I made the mistake of watching a documentary on William Eggleston, after which I bought a Mamiya Super 23 instead. I loved to hate that camera, so I finally sold it. I came back to wanting a C330, but after lots and lots of reading and research I settled on an RB67 instead. And I don't regret that decision one bit. So, squares or no, I'm finally going to go ahead with this thing using the RB. I love my D3, and I'll probably never pick up my old Nikon FA ever again, but medium format will always be my first love.
All that to say, hey, if you live within, oh, let's say 10 hours of Memphis, I'm probably coming somewhere near you this summer. New Orleans, Jackson, Atlanta, St. Louis, Birmingham, Nashville, Chicago, etc. Let's hang out, have a few drinks, some laughs and a few photos. Why the hell not, right? Right. Who knows? Maybe I'll even want to cook!