Lemonade

Life in the slow lane, Southern California, copyright 2016 Douglas Stockdale

Yes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

So this may or may not develop into a full project, but at the moment I am reacting to this current experience. I have an assignment in San Diego that requires me to frequently drive down the I-5 freeway in the morning and become entangled in what is called the North County bumper-to-bumper traffic jam. Prior to this, for the same assignment, I was driving up the I-5 and 101 freeway into and through Los Angles, and experiencing a similar bumper-to-bumper traffic jam, just that the view while stopped on the freeway was different. Exactly; this crappy drive is like some really sour lemons.

Initially, it was pleasant time to listen to the XM tunes, but then I started noticing things while stopped in traffic that I had not noticed when blasting through the same area at 65 miles per hour. Similar to my In Passing and Lest I Forget projects, what I miss while hurling along through the freeway of life. So I started taking some photographs with my mobile phone and I found that these were kinda of interesting images. Then I started posting them on Instagram and surprise, others thought these photographs were kinda of interesting too.

So now I am evaluating the potential of using film or the larger DSLR with this project and the first step for me was to evaluate if a wider focused image was needed and determining what lens I might want to use. So I taped down my Canon 24-105mm zoom lens at 28mm which provides a wide view similar to that of the Samsung and these images would look similar to a 50mm f/4 Ziess lens on the Hasselblad. Since I would have very little time to grab a photograph with the Hasselblad when I had a random stop, I would need to pre-focus and set up the exposure ahead of time. Nevertheless I initially have gone with the DSLR at 28mm focal length and I find these urban landscapes really interesting.

Issue to resolve; driving south in the morning means looking directly into the rising sun and dealing with some mega-backlight conditions (see the lens flare in the first image below). Then driving back home in the afternoon, the same back-light conditions reversed. So I could either fight that or work with it, again try to make some lemonade. Either way, I will be driving down to San Diego for a while so I am trying to figure out how to make the best of this without going nuts, which is now my life in the slow lane.

Cheers!