As was the case just a few days ago, northern Illinois was once again covered by a blanket of spring snow yesterday morning. And just like last time, I decided that a careful morning walk with a camera was warranted. I decided to bring the D800 with my AI 50mm f2.0 Nikkor (a lens that I’m using more and more for it’s quietly nice rendering). There was one key difference this morning, though. I donned my newly arrived face mask as I walked out the door. That proved problematic…
For those that don’t know, I’m a glasses wearer. Almost exclusively. I’ve tried contacts but I don’t find that they’re a good fit for me. I’m much happier wearing glasses. And my vision without correction is around 20/400 or so. Wearing some sort of visual correction is necessary if I want to see anything beyond about 8 inches from my face.
Unfortunately, on a cold morning, warm breath circulating through a homemade mask is a recipe for this for glasses wearers:
I’ll be honest and say that I was pretty livid. I would try to clean the condensation off and within 3 or 4 breaths, the glasses would again look like this or worse. Between the pent up anxiety about the quarantine, worries about family members staying healthy, fears about the economy and being denied my vision while on one of the very few excursions beyond the walls of my apartment, I was in a pretty dark mood.
Part of me just wanted to turn around and head home without taking a picture. But part of me said that I had already made it out the front door with a camera, I might as well make an attempt to shoot a few frames. Since I had the digital along, it’s not like I’d be wasting film if nothing turned out.
Composing shots was certainly an experience. I finally got to the point that I gave up on the glasses and stuck them in my pocket. With 20/400 vision, I’d only have the roughest idea of what I was composing. Additionally, I don’t have enough dioptric correction in the D800 to compensate for my nearsightedness so I couldn’t really focus by sight. Indeed, I couldn’t even clearly see the ►●◄ indicators that Nikon uses as focus aids. I did, however, know the progression of those indicators and could tell which way I needed to turn the lens and when the object was in focus. By doing this, reviewing the resulting images on the LCD (which I can see since clearly when it’s within 8 inches of my eyes) and adjusting the composition based on that review, I was able to actually get some shots.
These may not be the best photos I’ve ever taken and they’re certainly among the slowest digital shots I’ve ever made but given the circumstances of my walk, I’m fairly happy with them.
After reflecting on this for a whole day, it made me think about the adaptability and resiliency of homo sapiens sapiens. We, as a species, do have a knack for adapting to change. It usually doesn’t happen until it absolutely has to and it can be annoying at best and dreadfully painful at worst but we are really, really good at accommodating new and changing circumstances. That gave me a little hope for the current pandemic. I hope that it leans more towards the annoying end of the end of the spectrum but even if it’s dreadfully painful, we’ll make it through this and will move on to conquer the next challenge that comes our way.
Finally, since no Covid post on my blog would be complete without a balcony shot, here’s an artsy-fartsy photo I took with the 400mm after I got home from my perambulations:
