Time to regroup

Winter has arrived in Minnesota. We had a long, unusually warm fall, and although we knew winter would arrive sooner or later, we allowed ourselves to think we might escape the chillbanes. Nevertheless, the itching has started, and the mercury has plunged below zero. Tis the season for sitting on Santa’s lap and wishing for an escape.

Alas, Jean Paul Sartre closed that door with his play, No Exit. We are stuck with one another in this closed space called Earth. Residents of the frozen north know that feeling as cabin fever. Joe McGinniss wrote a description of it in his book about Alaska, Going to Extremes. He said it’s like a “12-foot stare in a 10-foot room.”

When the fever hits, it’s time to regroup and make some plans.

I will be stepping away next week. I’m going in for my first of two knee replacements. These surgeries will take me off the dance floor for some time and will constrain my photography. But I have plans to keep engaged with ballroom dance by studying choreography. And I will be studying the structure of Argentine tango music to improve my musicality on the floor when I return.

Of course I also plan to keep creating images. I have some bird feeders stocked up and look forward to shooting photos through my kitchen windows. Several red bellied woodpeckers have visited recently, and a giant pileated woodpecker has been whacking away on a pine tree in the backyard. It even paused at the feeder briefly. It must’ve left an impression, as I dreamed about him last night. To my surprise, we were able to communicate. Alas, I don’t recall what was said.

I recently had the good fortune to photograph Matt and Megan Sieberg, who bought the old Carrier’s grocery and hardware store building in Roseville that most recently housed County Cycles. Now called Showtime Studio and Cafe, it’s a multipurpose space used for music lessons, all kinds of music jams, dances, gymnastics, an art gallery and a nondairy coffee shop. You can’t walk in this place without getting involved in a friendly conversation.

I just bought a Sony A1 and wanted to use it before I had cataract surgery this week. (The surgery went well.) Unfortunately, I was unable to connect my new camera to my Macbook Pro before the photoshoot. I tried my workhorse camera, the Sony A9II, but it also failed to connect. It turned out to be a software glitch in the Mac, but in the meantime, I had to photograph the old fashioned way — by looking through the viewfinder. That disappointed me as I started photographing the Siebergs. Even so, Matt and Megan seemed to understand, and the shoot went well.

To be continued…