What's next for you?

[Guth]

As a guy who has little reason to be here other than a casual interest in rangefinder photography I must admit to feeling fairly intimidated by the responses found in this thread, lol. What an incredibly accomplished group of individuals that have chosen to congregate at this particular forum. It makes me appreciate even more the fact that I've never been made to feel out of place here. Cheers all.

 

[Archiver]

When I almost passed out during a wedding, I got the message that I could no longer fulfill commitments to future weddings.

Are birthdays okay? 😀

But really, that sucks. Look after yourself, and make whatever changes are necessary to keep yourself safe and healthy.

 

[SimonSawSunlight]

i have been working on the edit for a book for a year and a half now. decided to scrap and change about half of it a couple of months ago and it's been slow progress since then. it should turn out quite nicely though.

there were a few nice gigs for me to shoot this summer (after all), music and backstage stuff, but also a wedding which i usually try to avoid. i hope there will be more of that before the winter.

but first! two weeks honeymoon in greece and hopefully going through loads of film in the cyclades.


i also took in a bunch of negatives from my grandmother and have been starting to scan those. it's especially rewarding because most of the older ones (~40-75 years old) have never been printed.

 

[Gid]

I have to ask... for you lucky (and seemingly happily) retired guys that spend a lot of time photographing ... is it the process of getting out there and doing more important than doing something with the end result?

Note: this is not criticism. It's a curiosity only as I only photography because I love the process of making the photos most, but still I have to feel like I am doing something with the results (at this point in my life).

I answered a similar questionon on RFF many years ago while I was still working. The answer still applies now five years into retirement. For me it's the process and I could go out a shoot a film camera without film in it and enjoy the process of framing, focusing, metering and tripping the shutter - doesn't really work with digital. However, I do use digital and occasionally capture images that make me happy and that's all that matters to me. I have several of my images on the walls of my home and I sometimes produce photobooks as memories rather than art. I do keep thinking about producing a book of my favourite images and may do that one day but I don't seem to have the time now I'm retired 🙂. There is always tomorrow.

 

[Calzone]

You would be an interesting guy to have a beer with.

Vince,

In NYC it seems I tend to be very approachable.

Some of my RFF friends who know me in real life say I tend to draw out the crazies. LOL.

Christian says I should publish a book and riff off the title "Humans of New York" and title my book "The Crazies of New York."

Joe was with me in a Long Island City massive grave yard when this car pulls up, a guy gets out, and he approaches me ignoring Joe. He tells me the grave of some Mafia boss is nearby, he tells me a few mob stories, and when I ask how he knows so much mob history he mentions that his dad was in the mob.

Another time I arranged a Meet-Up to go shoot at a closed down historical prision in Philly. Seven people from NYC attended, and we hooked up with three of our RFF friends who lived in Philly, so there was a group of ten of us.

After lunch most of our group went to shoot north and west of Center City because we were told to avoid the area.

So out of our group of perhaps 6 or 7 this one man approaches me and asks what I am doing here because we kinda stand out as not belonging there. I point to the camera, and I mention how our group is from NYC and how earlier we photographed Eastern State Penitentuary.

So I ask this guy his name and he says "Pop-Corn" but his real name is John, then Pop-Corn reveals that his father was imprisoned at Eastern State for beating a man with a 2x4.

All I can say is stuff like this happens to me all the time, I don't know why, and it is kinda funny because although I'm kinda widely known, deep inside I'm kinda shy and a loner.

"I'm just minding my own business," I say. LOL.

Anyways I kinda stand out of a crowd; I'm likely someone you would remember because I'm kinda different; but I have been compared to Louis Mendez because I am seen all around NYC; I have been compared to Garry Winnogran because I shot a lot of film figuring I could always print later and that shooting mucho film when it was cheap was a smart thing to do, and concentrating on just image capture with a total disregard for printing or sharing my work pretty much annoyed everyone I knew; and someone who was friends with Joel Meyerwitz said that I reminded him of Joel because I have the same personatity.

Anyways about a decade ago Damaso Reyes started the NYC Meet-Up thread, and somehow he passed it off to me. I am a self promoted lazy slacker so any type of responsibility I didn't want, but I guess I basically have that personality.

As far as the crazies go, now I say, "It takes one to know one." LOL.

Anyways "Calzone" is my persona, in real life I'm a loner and pretty anti-social.

BTW my gal is a celeb with 742K followers. This is a crazy life and around the world in any city she gets recognized and approached. I would hate to be famous. It ends up being a hassle, a big loss of privacy, and being a public figure is demanding and not easy. Also her life gets complicated.

Then again I get swept into her lifestyle where things get weird. Imagine a free luxury vacation to Madrid. We fly first class, we have a Mercedes limo pick us up at the airport, and the hotel where we are going to stay formally was some palace for some duke for when he visted the King and Queen of Spain.

We have handlers, an ontourage, and VIP treatment making us feel like Beonce and Jay-Z attending a gala. We are directed to go to the National Library, it is closed, but not to us.

A handler with ontourage takes us to The Prado, there are lines, but not for us. The limo comes by to pick us up.

We get fed food that is so rich that it is almost needed to go to the emergency room for a stent after each meal.

Anyways, "I was just minding my own business..."

Then there was the free European vacation that started in Amsterdam, went into Germany, then France, and ended in Basel Switzerland.

Anyways you can't make this stuff up. Know that I helped win the Cold War. I worked at Los Alamos on one of Ronald Ray-Gun's Star Wars projects: a neutral partical beam accelerator that would be a space based weapon to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missles before the vaporize us.

Cal

 

[Calzone]

Another "pivot" during the Pandemic is that instead of shooting film and developing it that these skills got utilized and transposed to cooking.

Pretty much the same skill set and only a little different.

A different kind of health benefit. Walking 10-15 miles carrying cameras was a form of exercise for me. During the Pandemic I lost about 20 pounds. With salt water gain frome eating Pizza or gigantic burgers and fries I was pushing 160 at 5'10" where I am still a skinny bitch,

But today I'm at 140, and pretty much at my "racing weight" from when I raced bicycles in my thirties. I now have that same build of back when I was in my 30's.

Cal

 

[Hari]

putting together an old Elwood 5x7 enlarger

 

[jszokoli]

Cal,

As I spend more time in the city I'm hoping to get some shooting in. It's been a long break.

I'm not as pessimistic as you as to the future of the city. As you know I work in a discipline related to construction, and clients are moving forward with projects. On the commercial side it's not a dash for the door. There will be changes to how people work but commercial space in NYC is still in demand. When you read that there is only 10% occupancy that's the percentage of workers in a given spaces as of today. Not how much space is available. Even in the last week there has been a big increase of people in Midtown.

I'm afraid that people reading this from afar will be alarmed at your description. You and I lived in the city in the 70's and know what that was like, and it's nowhere near that...

Joe

 

[Calzone]

Cal,

As I spend more time in the city I'm hoping to get some shooting in. It's been a long break.

I'm not as pessimistic as you as to the future of the city though. As you know I work in a discipline related to construction, and clients are moving forward with projects. On the commercial side it's not a dash for the door. There will be changes to how people work but commercial space in NYC is still in demand. When you read that there is only 10% occupancy that's the percentage of workers in a given spaces as of today. Not how much space is available. Even in the last week there has been a big increase of people in Midtown.

I'm afraid that people reading this from afar will be alarmed at your description. You and I lived in the city in the 70's and know what that was like, and it's nowhere near that...

Joe

Joe,

Thanks for pointing out that the occupancy is people/workers occupying already leased office space and not vacant office space which would be a misnomer.

The Wall Street Journal reported lots of financial institutions are in fact closing down some of their office spaces. Commercial real estate trusts are in trouble. The fact remains that many commercial businesses have skipped paying their rent. Some worked out deals with their landlords. Many small businesses are gone and will not reopen.

Remote working isn't going away.

At Bed Bath and Beyond I see many changes: first off that it is reported that they are closing down some retail stores; it seems to me that if you go to a retail store that some items they carry is no longer stocked in the store and you have to order online to buy the product; seems to me that their marketing is doing everything to promote online sales; making an in store purchase now requires giving up you cell phone number and e-mail address; also the raw coffee beans and other food staples I would bulk up on to exploit 20% off coupons are no longer stocked.

I'm afraid since I have "Maggie" locked down that I am taking things pretty far.

I do know that my workplace has a crazy ventilation system where the complete volume of air is replaced every three minutes or twenty times an hour. The reason is because of all these cryogenic magnets for the multiple MRI's that if the Liquid Helium cooling the magnets "quenches" which means suddenly boils off it would displace all the oxigen in the building effectively suffocating everyone in the building.

But I have read about the HVAC systems in modern office buildings and pretty much any energy efficentcy claimed in the past has to be compromised further for more fresh air exchanges in introduction of either unheated or not cooled air that make operating office buildings so inefficent that gouges really far into landlords profit margins. Depending on heating and cooling effectively this will be a huge unintended cost for landlords.

I know that at DIA Center for the Arts in Beacon, the old Nabisco Factory converted into a huge museum on the Hudson, had to spend tens of thousands of dollars just to modify their HVAC system to allow for more exhange with outside air, and that does not include the extra costs of heating and cooling due to state mandated requirements for outside air introductions and exchanges. This is one of the reasons why it was closed.

I do know that residential rents in Madhattan are down around 8-10%. For the same rent I pay now in SpaHa in a luxury building I could live in Greenwich Village, Chelsea, or some other place downtown because the rents have dropped.

There still are 13K vacant apartments in Manhattan. It is clear to me that people who can move out are doing just that. I just see trends and reporting what somewhat is in the news: crime is up; people who can ar leaving the city; the homeless problem getting dramatically worse; the further deterioration of quality of life; the safety issues...

While a vaccine would help and change things I can't see NYC coming back. There are too many structural changes. The trends of working distantly, people (young people) moving out of the city verses moving into the city has been a trend that has been in existence for 4-5 years, the Pandemic just sped this up.

Now add on top of this the wealthy that left, and then add in people like me.

So I guess the debate here is NYC prosperity. My view was that it was about 4-5 years ago when more young people were moving in than moving out. The turning point for me was when more young people were moving out than moving in. The Pandemic just accelerated all this.

Once you hit 50 you kinda learn a decade is not that long a time. Even after the passage of a decade, I don't see NYC coming back to where it was.

They say that the last bull market was the longest stretch of job creation, which is true, but what isn't promoted that after 2007-2008 that it took till 2015 just to get back to all the jobs lost from 2007-2008. I'm not so sure it will only take 7 years for the loss of jobs that just happened. I'm not an economist, but I suspect it will take a lot longer than you imagine.

To me the influx of young people was key. The academic and Social Worker Jane Jacobs would agree. Read the book "Life and Death of Cities."

Cal

 

[robert blu]

...I have to ask... for you lucky (and seemingly happily) retired guys that spend a lot of time photographing ... is it the process of getting out there and doing more important than doing something with the end result?

John, good questoin! I had to think about it! I'm retired since almost 10 years and for me the answer is both points. In the beginning it was much more an excuse to go out, to make my daily walk enjoying the pleasure to make photos, it was the time when I started my blog to show my photography, included this project photography at zero kilometer. Or anyway in a walking distance from home.

Later it became more related to produce something, possibly tangible like a book, a zine or a photo exhibiiton.

At my age I realize it is already late...and even if I have no glory dreams It would be good to have my photography circulating not only through my friend or aquaintance. I do not need to make money with it but it is good to know someone appreciate my work enough to buy it, can be a booklet or a zine. It's a work in progress at the moment I only made a zine mentioned in this RFF thread.

Anyway the joy to look around, bring a camera at my eye, push the button is so good as the pleasure to sit at my desk with contacts in front of me and select, organize, delete, and try to produce a coherent body of work.

And sometimes it works !

 

[Dogman]

... once you have those prints, books, etc... what are you doing with them? For some, it is enough just to photograph and enjoy it personally (and with friends and family). For others, they want to do something with the photos outside of their own personal world. Some, just keep it to themselves.

Ah, I see. Okay. I guess it's the former for me. I do it for personal satisfaction and the simple good feeling of creating something. Friends and family sometimes enjoy my pictures as well. But, really, if no one else ever saw my photos I would still be taking photos. Because the creation brings me pleasure.

 

[Yokosuka Mike]

As a retiree and being 65 years old I don’t always feel like I’m 65; I actually feel younger. But, life always has a way of reminding us of how old we really are.

Yesterday I went to the U.S. Navy base here in Yokosuka to do a little shopping (a couple bottles of California wine to be exact). At the check-out counter in front of the cashier is a sign to remind people how old one needs to be to purchase alcohol. The sign said that a person needs to have been born this month in the year 2000 to legally purchase alcohol beverages. When I saw the “year 2000” I thought that it must be a mistake - a person born in 2000 would still be a child. Then I did the simple math in my head and suddenly I felt like an old man.

All the best,
Mike

 

[fireblade]

Vince,

In NYC it seems I tend to be very approachable.

Some of my RFF friends who know me in real life say I tend to draw out the crazies. LOL.

Christian says I should publish a book and riff off the title "Humans of New York" and title my book "The Crazies of New York."

Joe was with me in a Long Island City massive grave yard when this car pulls up, a guy gets out, and he approaches me ignoring Joe. He tells me the grave of some Mafia boss is nearby, he tells me a few mob stories, and when I ask how he knows so much mob history he mentions that his dad was in the mob.

Another time I arranged a Meet-Up to go shoot at a closed down historical prision in Philly. Seven people from NYC attended, and we hooked up with three of our RFF friends who lived in Philly, so there was a group of ten of us.

After lunch most of our group went to shoot north and west of Center City because we were told to avoid the area.

So out of our group of perhaps 6 or 7 this one man approaches me and asks what I am doing here because we kinda stand out as not belonging there. I point to the camera, and I mention how our group is from NYC and how earlier we photographed Eastern State Penitentuary.

So I ask this guy his name and he says "Pop-Corn" but his real name is John, then Pop-Corn reveals that his father was imprisoned at Eastern State for beating a man with a 2x4.

All I can say is stuff like this happens to me all the time, I don't know why, and it is kinda funny because although I'm kinda widely known, deep inside I'm kinda shy and a loner.

"I'm just minding my own business," I say. LOL.

Anyways I kinda stand out of a crowd; I'm likely someone you would remember because I'm kinda different; but I have been compared to Louis Mendez because I am seen all around NYC; I have been compared to Garry Winnogran because I shot a lot of film figuring I could always print later and that shooting mucho film when it was cheap was a smart thing to do, and concentrating on just image capture with a total disregard for printing or sharing my work pretty much annoyed everyone I knew; and someone who was friends with Joel Meyerwitz said that I reminded him of Joel because I have the same personatity.

Anyways about a decade ago Damaso Reyes started the NYC Meet-Up thread, and somehow he passed it off to me. I am a self promoted lazy slacker so any type of responsibility I didn't want, but I guess I basically have that personality.

As far as the crazies go, now I say, "It takes one to know one." LOL.

Anyways "Calzone" is my persona, in real life I'm a loner and pretty anti-social.

BTW my gal is a celeb with 742K followers. This is a crazy life and around the world in any city she gets recognized and approached. I would hate to be famous. It ends up being a hassle, a big loss of privacy, and being a public figure is demanding and not easy. Also her life gets complicated.

Then again I get swept into her lifestyle where things get weird. Imagine a free luxury vacation to Madrid. We fly first class, we have a Mercedes limo pick us up at the airport, and the hotel where we are going to stay formally was some palace for some duke for when he visted the King and Queen of Spain.

We have handlers, an ontourage, and VIP treatment making us feel like Beonce and Jay-Z attending a gala. We are directed to go to the National Library, it is closed, but not to us.

A handler with ontourage takes us to The Prado, there are lines, but not for us. The limo comes by to pick us up.

We get fed food that is so rich that it is almost needed to go to the emergency room for a stent after each meal.

Anyways, "I was just minding my own business..."

Then there was the free European vacation that started in Amsterdam, went into Germany, then France, and ended in Basel Switzerland.

Anyways you can't make this stuff up. Know that I helped win the Cold War. I worked at Los Alamos on one of Ronald Ray-Gun's Star Wars projects: a neutral partical beam accelerator that would be a space based weapon to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missles before the vaporize us.

Cal

You got me with Crazy 😀
They say birds of the same feather flock together.
I have been to NY a few times, family in Commack and down south in Philly. I totally understand the happenings to you.
Unfortunately my visa into the US has been blocked till mid 2021..which suits me fine because travel is restricted. I will be back, and that beer. 🙂

 

[Archiver]

As a retiree and being 65 years old I don’t always feel like I’m 65; I actually feel younger. But, life always has a way of reminding us of how old we really are.

Yesterday I went to the U.S. Navy base here in Yokosuka to do a little shopping (a couple bottles of California wine to be exact). At the check-out counter in front of the cashier is a sign to remind people how old one needs to be to purchase alcohol. The sign said that a person needs to have been born this month in the year 2000 to legally purchase alcohol beverages. When I saw the “year 2000” I thought that it must be a mistake - a person born in 2000 would still be a child. Then I did the simple math in my head and suddenly I felt like an old man.

All the best,
Mike

The first time it really hit me that I was getting older, was when the women in Playboy magazine had birthdays after mine. It took a while before I got used to that.

 

[robert blu]

As a retiree and being 65 years old I don’t always feel like I’m 65; I actually feel younger. But, life always has a way of reminding us of how old we really are.

Yesterday I went to the U.S. Navy base here in Yokosuka to do a little shopping (a couple bottles of California wine to be exact). At the check-out counter in front of the cashier is a sign to remind people how old one needs to be to purchase alcohol. The sign said that a person needs to have been born this month in the year 2000 to legally purchase alcohol beverages. When I saw the “year 2000” I thought that it must be a mistake - a person born in 2000 would still be a child. Then I did the simple math in my head and suddenly I felt like an old man.

All the best,
Mike

I know the feeling !
I am sometimes surprised when I notice cars I was used to see when a young boy now classified as "historical". Perhaps I'm becoming historical as well 😀 LOL

 

[Out to Lunch]

I am quite a bit younger than you guys but last month, while enjoying my coffee on a terrace in Saigon, a group of kids approached me and asked: "grandfather, can you teach us some English"?

 

[Calzone]

You got me with Crazy 😀
They say birds of the same feather flock together.
I have been to NY a few times, family in Commack and down south in Philly. I totally understand the happenings to you.
Unfortunately my visa into the US has been blocked till mid 2021..which suits me fine because travel is restricted. I will be back, and that beer. 🙂

F,

I like to think that I am a living walking tourist attraction of sorts.

People travel from all over the world to meet people like me. LOL.

Meanwhile, "I'm just trying to mind my own business."

BTW my gal "Maggie" has a gig today. She assembled a wardrobe last night and will be going to some studio downtown on the westside for a shoot.

Cal

 

[Dogman]

I can distinctly remember the night at a bar, when I was the advanced age of 36, a young lady made the comment that I had "nice hair for an old man". I kissed my youth goodbye that night yet I never got to kiss the lady.

 

[Yokosuka Mike]

I can distinctly remember the night at a bar, when I was the advanced age of 36, a young lady made the comment that I had "nice hair for an old man". I kissed my youth goodbye that night yet I never got to kiss the lady.

After I retired from the military and I started my new job in civil service I thought wow now I can grow my hair long, maybe even wear a ponytail! When my hair started to get nice and long one of the pretty young girls in the logistics section innocently asked me why I wanted to look like a homeless person? After work I went to the barber shop and got a haircut.

All the best,
Mike

 

[rbiemer]

"What's next for you?" seems like such an innocent question...

The last couple of years were seriously NOT fun for me. Had a stroke, moved on from my favorite job ever, and buried both my parents. As a result, I haven't been around here very much and my photography has been little to none.

But, even amid my personal crap and the world's crap, life goes on. I guess.
So, I am slowly finding more interest in picking up a camera again.
Later this afternoon, I'll be doing a short hike with the Arax88 I bought last winter so that's good.
I have a couple of boxes of glass plates to shoot in my 4x5 camera and the beginnings of ideas about what I'll use those for.
And, luckily (maybe?) I am still working but the positives of my current job are 1: I can pay the mortgage and 2: I've got about 70 hours of vacation time built up. And will likely have a couple weeks worth by the time I can get vacation scheduled. Late this fall, I think. And will be spending as much time as I can with out a phone and with a camera or two.

So. "What's next?" The next day and the next step and the next photograph.
Will that be any good? Yes.
Rob