My motifs back then

maipenquynh on 22. December 2023

I recently took a little trip back in time to my early days with analogue photography. Part of my „winter photo season“ this year (spending time with the photos I’ve taken) is going through my prints (physical photos) of films I’ve shot. To check which photos are worth showing. Since my prints and negative film strips were only semi-sorted and my films were even still in the developing bags from the drugstores, it was also my goal to get a proper overview: to sort the strips and prints, number them, put strips in appropriate sleeves. I love it (no lie!)!

And as I try to recognise the motifs on the negatives and leaf through the prints, I realise that I have mainly photographed people. Friends, family members, myself. I wasn’t shy about pointing the camera at people at all. This fact made quite an impression on me.

Nowadays I have a barrier to photograph people, and I am currently learning to overcome this because of my interest in self/portrait photography. I admire myself for the normality with which I photographed the people in my life back then. Since I’ve been taking amateur photography more seriously again, i.e. since this blog has been around, I observe that I’ve been more attracted to motifs in nature or in objects. I’m thinking of my popcorn photos 😀

But I’ve actually been attracted to these motifs for quite a long time because ever since I’ve started using Instagram (just a few years after I started doing film photography), I’ve also been posting mainly these kind of motifs there. Almost never people. At some point, I didn’t want to show myself anymore; there have hardly been any photos of me on the internet in recent years. The awareness and need for privacy certainly played a role in how it developed. And this is a good thing.

One of my motivations for taking photos is to capture a motif so well that it is worth seeing and worth to be shown subsequently. And not just to one person in my surrounding but to a few more – such as the internet, with Instagram (or other social media) being an optimal platform. But if you take yourself back from it and the platform disappears, somehow the drive to take such pictures also disappears. And then it became strange and very unfamiliar to photograph people. Most probably this way is better than the other way around.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that there are some photos that I would take again today in the same or similar way. As if I had taken them within the last few years. I can see my common photographic thread in these pictures. This makes me happy and proud. Knowing that part of my aesthetic hasn’t got lost. Now these pictures just have to make their way into the digital world.

Little life things. October + November 2023

maipenquynh on 2. December 2023

October

Friends and I made our own dumplings for the very first time on a Friday evening. It was all about cooking and eating together, enjoying the afterwork time and Friday evening and talking about important and not-so-important things. We bought the dough and made the filling ourselves. We tried out different folding moulds and „perfected“ a folding mould. They all tasted good in the end.

On another day, I indulged in one way of life in this region: onion tart and Federweißer (new wine) at the weekly market.

I picked out the clothes for my vacation and got a few items of clothing back in shape. A curtain was shortened by hand and at some point it was eventually finished and hung up. The curtain pole had been hanging for a month already. So almost no delay 😀

I visited the botanical garden in Mainz. Not just once, but twice – within a week I want to add! Visiting it twice didn’t happen entirely voluntarily and one time in the garden would have been enough. Nevertheless, both days in the botanical garden were very nice.

My notes also tell me that I spent a lot of time with photography in October. I listened to podcasts and watched videos which in turn led me to further questions and observations. Thinking about photography while traveling (ongoing though) and the purchase of a digital camera were topics on my mind as well.

And last but not least, another crochet dino and language learning (What’s the best way to learn a new language?; ongoing) have been keeping me busy. The dino was finished in November and was handed over to the owner.

November

November, on the other hand, can be summarised quite briefly at this point: It was time to go on vacation (which I’ve been talking about the whole time)!

Two thirds of November consisted of my vacation, of Japan. And the last third was getting back to everyday life and looking forward to seeing familiar faces (at work :D). And processing what was experienced during my vacation and indulging in memories and anecdotes and pictures and videos.

I’m still doing that, processing whatever I experienced.

Winter’s invitation

maipenquynh on 30. November 2023

So winter has arrived.

I really like snow, especially the first one. Actually, we already had our first snow. But this is not about snow. It is about the mud that’s left over from the snow. And about the gray November weather so many people talk and complain about. December is a bright month, with lots of lights and anticipation of the holidays. But then, gray and less pleasurable months follow: January and February.

An observation about myself: I don’t like taking photos on cloudy days. And we will have plenty of cloudy days, or put in other words: only few days with warm light, light that invites one to go outside and to take photos. At least that’s how I feel.

I could say to myself: Let’s go out of the comfort zone and still find and see the motifs. There are for sure plenty!

But I tend to say: It’s fine. Stay indoors. You still have a lot of photos that you haven’t shown yet because life happened and you wanted to be outside.

There are photos from the whole year – from many years!- from everyday life. Shot digitally, which I would like to edit and show here subsequently. I also have a lot of analogue photos that I want to show as well.

For me, most of the time photography means being behind the lens and capturing the motif. I barely take any time to curate the photos. Or get to the editing phase. Eventually, photography is also that and everything else that happens before and after the shutter is released. Including looking through photos, sort them and bring together what might belong together eventually.

Thus, this winter I plan to take time for the photos I’ve already taken. If winter is so kind to invite me to stay inside, then I’ll gratefully accept this invitation.