A Scenic World

Beirut’s “A Scenic World.”

Or at least my website’s theme song. I wonder what my actual theme song is - hmmm, suddenly I foresee a long night ahead. Anyway, Beirut is awesome, as even Mike Autry has noticed, so enjoy!

I’m sprinting toward the finish line of my “favorite books” series for my 365 project. I already have Wednesday’s photo planned in my head, so in a sense, it’s just a matter of filling in the days until then.

For instance, today, I knew I wanted to do either The Grapes of Wrath or Darkness at Noon. I had had a disastrous try at the first one two days ago; one wet camera later, I decided to do the latter today.

“Darkness at Noon” is all about psychological torture in a totalitarian regime. So obviously, this photo wasn’t going to be about rainbows and fairies. My plan was to use a bright light, like an interrogator’s lamp, and have me trying to block out the light. The background would have to be dark.

I waited until noon to start, hoping that a symbolic act like that would somehow lead to a better picture. I duly hung up my black felt to block out the light coming from my windows, and as an added touch, to make me look a little more tortured (as if getting 4 hours of sleep wasn’t good enough), I put some dark eyeshadow under my eyes. Voila! I had a my-life-is-miserable-and-I’ve-been-tortured-for-days look.

I chose my 70mm lens, which is one of the harder ones to focus. With the room so dark and my “interrogator’s lamp” being just an old desk lamp with a 40watt bulb perched precariously on my bookshelf, I opted for an aperture of 2.4.

Twenty minutes later, I had let the autofocus do its thing a few dozen times and taken quite a few pictures. I headed outside to my porch to see if there were any actually in focus. Nearly the moment I stepped outside, I spotted my neighbor playing with her two-year-old son in the gorgeous weather (well, he might be two. Or one, or six. I’m really bad with ages). She’s half of this perfectly beautiful, hip couple that live across from me.

For the first time ever, she actually walked over and introduced herself! We exchanged pleasantries, and I settled down to review my photos. I thought I might have one or two decent ones, so I went inside to upload them. On my way to my desk, I caught sight of myself in the mirror.

I still had on that makeup.