Little life things. October + November 2023

Mai Quynh 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

Mai Quynh 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.

Harz on rainy and sunny days

Mai Quynh on 5. October 2023

Aurelie. Meant Harz in summer. And yet, it rained for a whole day. We walked with umbrellas to the viewpoint of Wernigerode Castle, only to not be allowed to see the castle because of the fog. But Harz in summer meant also a day of hiking full of sun with little shade. Field after field littered with purple foxgloves, surrounded by fine silver hairgrass. I haven’t had enough of them.

~

The purple colour got lost through the black white film, named Aurelie, and I was also unable to capture the foxgloves and silver hairgrass (determined by an app). The more I like the images from the rainy day. In fact, they are my favourite images in the whole film.

Flashback to my mini-teaser in the last logbook post. The note from the photo lab scared me; it read „Unfortunately, your film was not complete and predominantly strongly underexposed. The underexposure makes a dust-free scanning of the film quite difficult“.

It wasn’t until I was writing about the film and this post that I realised I hadn’t continued reading from „strongly underexposed“ onwards and was instead dramatic and disappointed. Indeed, a few motifs/pictures are missing and haven’t made it to anything after development, that’s the „not complete“ part then. A lot of pictures were strongly underexposed (not shown), round about the half of the film, nevertheless they weren’t just black spots. That’s what I assumed when I read the note and had quite much black-and-white-thinking – literally speaking. Instead, the pictures were rather a mix of dark grey hues with few contrast.

The fact that I worked with ISO 50 film for the first time most probably plays a role as well. First conclusion: tendency to underexposure. Thus, for the next time I will use an ISO 50 film, I should provide my film a little more light.

Camera + lens: Minolta Dynax 7000i + Minolta AF 50 mm
Film: ILFORD PAN F+ 50
Development + scan: Urbanfilmlab