Mercy, mercy, mercy...

One of the particular charms of analog photography is that sometimes mistakes happen, sometimes things turn out just a little different than expected. Sometimes adversity comes up. Cannonball Adderley, the great jazz alto player, offered up some pretty solid advice on how to manage, way back in 1966. This is how he introduced the song "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", recorded live at 'The Club':

You know, sometimes we're not prepared for adversity. When it happens, sometimes we're caught short. We don't know exactly how to handle it when it comes up.

Of course, the tune itself provides the complete answer to the question, so you'll have to listen to it at some point. How does this relate to photography? Well, sometimes you just don't love a certain film stock, but you bought a brick of it. What can you do with 10 rolls of film that you are not that fond of? Maybe just experiment a little bit and see what happens. In my case, I decided to expose a couple of rolls while I was streaming TV. I played around with exposure settings, especially dragging the shutter.

The image below shows one of the more interesting frames I got. It has not been manipulated at all (except for being rotated 90°). I'm still not quite sure how this image came about, but I think it works pretty well as an abstract composition. For me, it references the landscape. By the way, it was captured using the Leica R9 with the 135mm f/2.8. For whatever reason, this lens is not very popular and copies can be had for bargain basement prices. Yet the lens was designed by the famous lens designer Walter Mandler. It's a solid performer.

The second image was captured with the exact same camera and lens set-up as the one used for the first photo. I do like this image, but the color balance is more of a push for me in an image that tries to be a faithful representation of what was in front of the lens.

At the end of the day, I prefer the first image of the two. It is an interesting direction to possibly explore further. I hope you enjoy the images and discussion, and have good light this weekend!