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These images are different than I would have made when I was last proactively "making pictures". They are the same in that they are interested in trees and infrastructure. For the most part, I'm taking pictures of foliage in various states of autumnal decay (in Chinatown, Manhattan and Gowanus, Brooklyn) backgrounded by building facades. I'm trying to discover new (anti-) compositional strategies that hew away from my hyper-structural tendencies. There is a way to approach chaos from that direction, and I've explored that avenue in music moreso than in photography. But I'd like to try using the front door some day.
I suppose that in the interest of cultivating a heavier air of chaos and mystery, I won't attempt to write any more about the photos themselves.
The camera I'm using (an Olympus TG5) is might help to contribute to these explorations because it is
- basically a mid-fancy point-and-shoot with the advantage that it can go underwater and be dropped with minimal risk
- not a fixed lens (it has a 4x optical zoom)
- not particularly sharp
- even more compact than the Ricoh GRIII I used to use, because the "folded optics" (I keep seeing this phrase around but I can't actually find any techncial information about what this means) means that for all the versatility of the lens (incredible macro!), it does not protrude from the camera body at all.
- the cheapest camera I've bought at $150 used. (OK, I have a Pentax Espio that I think I paid $65 for, but I rarely use it in part because the viewfinder is profoundly unsatisfying.)
All this means that I think I'm having so much fun using this camera because it's probably the least pretentious (and least pretentious-looking) camera I've ever had or used. Despite its limitations, with some care, it's quite capable of producing compelling and printable images.
