maddoc
... likes film again.
Peter, Thank you very much for your helpful tip. Indeed, I had exactly that eye piece magnifier about 12 or 13 yrs ago when I started out with Leica. That is also when I first met the owner of the shop, Japan Exposures, who became a friend. The problem is that due the magnification and increased distance of the eye to the VF the 28mm frame lines are impossible to see and 35 only very hard. However, I just searched eBay and found a seller from China who sells similar principle eye piece with variable magnification starting from 1.0x. I will test one and see if this works for me.
sara
Well-known
I just got laid off so maybe I'll refresh my knowledge on darkroom stuff. Maybe relearn how to print.
I remember you mentioning eye surgery, Gabor, but I didn't really grasp how serious your eye condition was. I'm sorry to hear that! If digital keeps you in the photography game and gets you shooting the Noctilux again, it's all good. Better the dark side than no side at all!
maddoc
... likes film again.
Many thanks, Jon! It became worse and worse, going to get a second opinion this or next month. I have absolutely no talent for drawing otherwise that would be an alternative to digital! 
Michael Markey
Veteran
I was just thinking the same
. Been retired 15 years .... take the dogs a walk .
Call around at the stables . Help out . Take a few pictures .
I need to sell some gear because since buying a CL (digital) everything else , apart from the film bodies , just sits there .
What`s next .... I might just see if I can pick up an SL some time in the future but I`ve no real drive to do so.
Michael Markey
Veteran
Sorry to hear that .
Other considerations aside one of the strengths of EVF cameras is their ability to allow you to focus fast glass with pinpoint accuracy .
fireblade
Vincenzo.
Thinking of leaving Australia again. Lived in the South Pacific for 3 years, then came back. Toying with Scotland. The fishing and golf is good apparently. Who knows, we'll wait out this Covid thing and see what happens. The world has changed. Plans as we once knew them don't have any meaning anymore.
Archiver
Veteran
Archiver
Veteran
A fair number of your posts in recent months have talked about downsizing and minimizing your gear and collections. If you feel you want to spend your time doing things other than scanning and adding metadata, go for it. Because my photos are largely digital, and they are always sorted into appropriate labeled and dated folders, it's easy to stay on top of organizing things. I can't really imagine having six decades worth of film images to be scanned and categorized!
One way to dent the pile is set aside a couple of hours a day to scan and sort. This will leave you with time for other things.
Being in Melbourne, I'm just waiting out the current stage 4 lockdown. Getting work done, playing with my cameras, looking at my images and writing more journal notes. Although this may be similarly time consuming, have you considered writing your memoirs, using your images as memory prompts and illustrations? You write in a way that is obviously smooth and easy, which would make memoirs a doddle. My dad says that I shouldn't be writing my memoirs now, that it's something to do when I'm older, but why not do it while I remember things and memories are as fresh as they will ever be?
When lockdown is over, I'm going to interview my Aunt, who is the defacto custodian of my grandmother's family photos. I'll get her to talk as much as possible about everyone in the old black and white images from the 30s and 40s, which will give us a proper record of everything. Perhaps you could find some time for pleasant reminiscences into a recorder or camera, talking about things as you remember them.
Out to Lunch
Ventor
After a stressful, hectic and extremely mobile career, I decided to retire early a few years ago. Since then, I have been successful in not planning my life and in avoiding any activity that entails obligation or smells of work. Cheers, OtL
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).
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).
John Bragg
Well-known
In between duties as my 3 year old Daughter's main carer, I am shooting portraits of family and friends. Also documenting her development and her activities. Even at 3 she knows that Daddy's cameras use film and are different. She wants a pink camera of her own ! Also taking the odd punt on ebay and just dipped my toe into the world of Tamron Adaptall, starting with a 35-70 f3.5 macro and one mount for OM bought separately. The thought is to be able to use Pentax or Minolta bodies or maybe even a Contax without spending a fortune. Just need the relevant mount. My OM one was just £3.99 and the lens a mere £6.99
Yokosuka Mike
Abstract Clarity
I’m not ambitious but I’m not dead and I am still creative.
When it comes to photography I’m not as laid back as one may think given my first post. I just don’t feel the need to have major projects like books and I’m certainly not inclined to scan all the negatives of my last thirty years.
I do have a photography blog. I update it about once a week with about 36 images (an homage to the standard 36 exp roll of film). I use my photography blog as a sort of self-discipline to give me some structure and meaning to my retirement life. I don’t promote my blog, I shun comments, comments need responses and I don’t really want to deal with that. Once I received a comment on my blog that said something like: “I see you live in Japan, I’d love to visit, please give me a detailed itinerary of where I should visit and why - lots of details please”. Ugh!
I am compelled to be creative. I have a strong desire to be a good photographer. I am intrigued with digital photography. And, I need a reason to get out of bed in the morning and to explore the world I live in and to photograph it… even if it’s only to satisfy my own curiosity of how well I can see that world and capture it in images. By-the-way: I do love to share my photographic images here at RFF. Other than my simplistic blog this is the only place that I do post images. Like minded people and all that, you know.
John, this probably doesn't answer your question but it’s the best I can do.
All the best,
Mike
It completely answers my question. Basically, you’re are on a simple journey to discover what you can make while hopefully getting better while doing it. Not too different from me. You made me laugh with the “detailed itinerary” comment. The balls on some people... haha.
JohnWolf
Well-known
John, I retired in March, so my experience so far has been skewed by the pandemic. But definitely the process engages me more than doing something with the photographs. Any aspiration I had in youth for serious recognition is gone. I suspect that happens with many hobbyists as they get older and let go of younger goals. But I should only speak for myself.
I don't even have a web site anymore, something I've always had. Instagram is sufficient. I particularly like that it's not just other photographers viewing my stuff -- but family, friends, acquaintances, and others with specific interests drawn by tags.
After shooting digital-only for a couple decades, I'm finding film to be a satisfying part of the whole experience. It extends the back-end process in a way that I find enjoyable. Processing, making a contact sheet, scanning, post-processing, printing -- they are all steps I enjoy and now have time for. One or two shots from each roll make it to Instagram, but I can spend a leisurely week or two on a single roll to get there. I'm not sure I'd get the same pleasure from a digital workflow. I'm going to explore that when the pandemic eases and street shooting becomes realistic again.
BTW. it's great to see your web site. I've read your posts here for years but only seen an occasional photograph. Nice to see them presented on your site.
John
rhl-oregon
Cameras Guitars Wonders
John, my experience three years into retirement is that time fundamentally shifts from chronological divisions (dictated largely by employment; by raising children if you have them) to a continuous present, with continual access to timelessness, the eternal moment that contains infinite histories and faces. And although like your earlier life, it shuts down every night, it resets the next morning. The horizon is as intimate or beguilingly distant as you wish. No rush to make coffee, no hasty slurping it down on freeway or subway. No external demands other than the diurnal or seasonal chores of maintaining health and home.
This time shift may partly explain why many retired people become avid travelers, entering distant cultural labyrinths street by street, without a deadline to exit or a test at the end. Because time can now be the museum of imagination, and its travelers can treat it as a theater where they play new and different roles that no guard or docent can squelch. The next day may be a Groundhog Day—for refining what only yesterday was clumsier or more selfish—or it may be a different country and a different century. You may take a vacation from seeing yourself as a man of a certain age, or as merely human. You may spend more time as a terrier (as I do, being co-head of a pack of three), as a horse, as a tree among the trees. You may play the role of a beggar or no one, though you are still the title character in your Odyssey.
As for ambition—feeling the need to do something with creative work—I still feel a certain drive to achieve this, accomplish that, to attach my name to works designed to outlive me. But I am also old enough, retirement aside, to have drunk careerist disillusionment and its psychic ills to the dregs, so however external ambition persists in my discipline, it may not (and does not) interfere with the sweetness of life, love, friendship, spirit, timelessness. They are the ground of being now. I make photographs because the god inside me loves showing me the world that way. (For the same reason, I practice technique and improvisation and compose on my musical instruments each day.)
External ambition may recede or disappear in retirement, as others have suggested here. If I am proposing an ideal, it is one manifest in my life—where the freedom to make art
images) may proceed, at large or at small, where boundaries between work and play may vanish, and doing one’s lifework carries on as long as breath supports it.
Thank you JohnWolf and rhl-oregon ... I appreciate it. If I was only doing photography for recognition, I would have quit long ago. I just can't help but do it and that's the beauty. However, I still can't get away from hoping to do bigger things with my photography while knowing it probably will not happen. That said, I have a feeling those bigger things wouldn't be what I think they are once you get there. For now, I am happy with small accomplishments and I am not searching for a short term solution... just enough to keep the love going.
willie_901
Veteran
As a retiree who has enjoyed a minuscule degree of "end result" success with non-commercial photography, I would say the process is not more important than doing something with the end result. I think these two things are of equal importance.
Another point of view is the end result is only be important and, or valued by you. Some say this is the only path to success. Emulating another artist in order to "doing something with the end result" is more like commercial photography.
In commercial photography the end result is is all that matters. While creativity and positive end results are not always mutually exclusive, creativity is not enough. For example, significant amounts of personal energy must be spent on marketing to increase the odds for good end results.
PS I consider retirement from my profession to be a gift. I am extremely fortunate this retirement did not involve financial stress. I suggest happiness in retirement is similar to happiness before retirement. If you want to be happy, you can be. Life events often present significant challenges to happiness. But this has nothing to do with retirement.
mrtoml
Mancunian
First off, next week I am going to replace my ageing Epson 3880 printer which has started to make strange noises and clanks. I am thinking of the Canon Pro 1000. It will be the first time I have not bought an Epson since before the old Piezography days about 20 years ago (anyone remember the Epson 1160)? In the UK the new Epson P900 and the Canon Pro 1000 are about the same price and I think you get a lot more for the £ now with the Canon (vacuum system, less clogging and larger ink tanks). In the UK there are no rebates like there are in the US otherwise the Canon would really be a no brainer. Plus Canon seem to have caught up with Epson with respect to printing monochrome images which is what I do - and why have Epson reduced the ink tanks capacity to only 50ml compared to the 3880's and Canon's 80ml? This seems like a retrograde step.
I am also going to try and sell some prints (it has been a long time) and have also been tentatively approached to put together an exhibition with a couple of other local artists so I need a reliable printing machine. I will convert my 3880 to a black and white only carbon pigment printer using self mixed inks (a la Paul Roark) and use it until it finally bites the dust.
I have also been asked to restart my visual research methods course for the MA in Sociology at my university starting in February. It already has significant photographic content and I may increase that. But a lot depends on the nature of teaching next year with the COVID situation and what it will be possible to do with any lockdown restrictions. I am also starting to design a new undergraduate course on the Sociology of Photography which I hope to start teaching in 2022.
Finally I am planning to put together some photo essays and self-publish them. I have a lot of interesting material and I have recently been following Daniel Milner on Youtube and his ideas about putting together photo magazines and books seem like a great way to organise photographic projects and stay focussed.
I think my darkroom days are really over now which is sad, but I will keep it set up just in case...
I am also going to try and sell some prints (it has been a long time) and have also been tentatively approached to put together an exhibition with a couple of other local artists so I need a reliable printing machine. I will convert my 3880 to a black and white only carbon pigment printer using self mixed inks (a la Paul Roark) and use it until it finally bites the dust.
I have also been asked to restart my visual research methods course for the MA in Sociology at my university starting in February. It already has significant photographic content and I may increase that. But a lot depends on the nature of teaching next year with the COVID situation and what it will be possible to do with any lockdown restrictions. I am also starting to design a new undergraduate course on the Sociology of Photography which I hope to start teaching in 2022.
Finally I am planning to put together some photo essays and self-publish them. I have a lot of interesting material and I have recently been following Daniel Milner on Youtube and his ideas about putting together photo magazines and books seem like a great way to organise photographic projects and stay focussed.
I think my darkroom days are really over now which is sad, but I will keep it set up just in case...
Calzone
Gear Whore #1
John,
In 4 more years I will be at full retirement age of 66 years 8 months. Covid-19 and FED zero interest rate policies seem to have expedited both leaving NYC, buying a home in Beacon, and the possibility of retiring earlier than planned as a possibility.
Seems like Zero Interest rate policy is making funding pensions almost impossible because of a lack of safe returns. New York State this month I have heard is offering "buyouts" to "de-risk" and get rid of pension liabilities. I can see me getting offered a buyout, but because of my long life expectenctcy the pension is better for me.
The city we know and love is gone, and it is a bit as if we flipped a switch and it is NYC of the middle seventies. Anyone that can leave is leaving. The suburbs are the place everyone that can is relocating.
The new epidemic here in NYC will be homelessness because eventually either the banks or land lords will take a loss. A recent headline is that there are over 14K vacant apartments alone in Madhattan. About one family a week has been moving out of my luxury building of 40 units.
Midtown office space is said to be only 10% occupency. No need for office space when working remotely is the the way forward. There is no-return.
I'm trying to protect "Maggie" who already is 67. She wants out too. Like I said, it is a very different city... Pretty much I have her locked down. Shootings have occured within a block of my apartment.
I choose not to photograph suffering and sadness, instead I print.
So photographically I have been printing books of my work. These are one-offs and expand on my "book of proofs" except the new image size is 13.3x20 inches on 17x24 sheet. I also added a thin acid free cover sheet to protect the pages. This book is very impressive and I designed it so that the book cleverly fits in a stock museum box. Clearly this is a fine art book.
The next stage would be to absorb the costs of printing out limited editions. The editions would be small in number, and of course I learned to keep Artist Proofs just in case something good happens...
I see what "Maggie" has to do. All the compromise to handle an audience. Selfish as it sounds, I'm cool with not sharing my work or never really putting it out there, but maybe I'll try to promote myself online.
I have a distaste for galleries, and all the "gatekeepers."
Anyways my work I did for myself, and it took a while to discover that the reason for all my manical shooting was to have a sense of home when I leave NYC which seems soon, even hough I likely will perform a long commute for as long as I can.
This home I will be going to will homefully help me attain my full lifespan of 106 years. My dad who was poor, illiterate, and was an illegal immigrant lived till 94. I did a test and even though I'm 62 1/2 (cronological) my biological age is only 39.
It is really interesting about how at my present age it has become like back in High School where I wondered about the future and what lays ahead, and the long term outlook and planning required to think out about what I might do over the next 4 or 4 and a half decades.
I realize and am thankful that back in the seventies in art school I made the decision to get a day job and not pursue being a fine artist and the life of struggle that goes along with that. I made the right choice, and now I don't have to please anyone but myself, my work does not have to be commodified, and my creativity does not have to be compromised.
Cal
In 4 more years I will be at full retirement age of 66 years 8 months. Covid-19 and FED zero interest rate policies seem to have expedited both leaving NYC, buying a home in Beacon, and the possibility of retiring earlier than planned as a possibility.
Seems like Zero Interest rate policy is making funding pensions almost impossible because of a lack of safe returns. New York State this month I have heard is offering "buyouts" to "de-risk" and get rid of pension liabilities. I can see me getting offered a buyout, but because of my long life expectenctcy the pension is better for me.
The city we know and love is gone, and it is a bit as if we flipped a switch and it is NYC of the middle seventies. Anyone that can leave is leaving. The suburbs are the place everyone that can is relocating.
The new epidemic here in NYC will be homelessness because eventually either the banks or land lords will take a loss. A recent headline is that there are over 14K vacant apartments alone in Madhattan. About one family a week has been moving out of my luxury building of 40 units.
Midtown office space is said to be only 10% occupency. No need for office space when working remotely is the the way forward. There is no-return.
I'm trying to protect "Maggie" who already is 67. She wants out too. Like I said, it is a very different city... Pretty much I have her locked down. Shootings have occured within a block of my apartment.
I choose not to photograph suffering and sadness, instead I print.
So photographically I have been printing books of my work. These are one-offs and expand on my "book of proofs" except the new image size is 13.3x20 inches on 17x24 sheet. I also added a thin acid free cover sheet to protect the pages. This book is very impressive and I designed it so that the book cleverly fits in a stock museum box. Clearly this is a fine art book.
The next stage would be to absorb the costs of printing out limited editions. The editions would be small in number, and of course I learned to keep Artist Proofs just in case something good happens...
I see what "Maggie" has to do. All the compromise to handle an audience. Selfish as it sounds, I'm cool with not sharing my work or never really putting it out there, but maybe I'll try to promote myself online.
I have a distaste for galleries, and all the "gatekeepers."
Anyways my work I did for myself, and it took a while to discover that the reason for all my manical shooting was to have a sense of home when I leave NYC which seems soon, even hough I likely will perform a long commute for as long as I can.
This home I will be going to will homefully help me attain my full lifespan of 106 years. My dad who was poor, illiterate, and was an illegal immigrant lived till 94. I did a test and even though I'm 62 1/2 (cronological) my biological age is only 39.
It is really interesting about how at my present age it has become like back in High School where I wondered about the future and what lays ahead, and the long term outlook and planning required to think out about what I might do over the next 4 or 4 and a half decades.
I realize and am thankful that back in the seventies in art school I made the decision to get a day job and not pursue being a fine artist and the life of struggle that goes along with that. I made the right choice, and now I don't have to please anyone but myself, my work does not have to be commodified, and my creativity does not have to be compromised.
Cal