Lens: Voigtlander color-skopar 35mm f2.5
Camera: NEX-7, ISO1600, f2.5, 1/6, raw
An old field camera. It doesn’t work, but its lens and ground glass are relatively fine. And the focus rail slides with enough precision. I put it over my in-laws bed, facing the glass brick wall. Behind it, the sunset is at its peak. I focus the field camera on the window, the NEX-7 on the field camera, I set the exposure and I shoot.
Today we had a huge lunch at my in-laws. My parents were also there. We had pasta all’amatriciana and dinosaur-cow steaks. I’m the one responsible for the grill and the meat. Which is nice, since this way I get to stay in the terrace cooking while everybody sits in the living room drinking, eating, and small talking. I don’t really like this kind of lunches, the level of the conversation rapidly goes to the sort of safe minimum-interest where everybody agrees regardless to his (political/religious/philosophical) views.
And there is another reason why I’m glad to be in the terrace waving with the old newspaper at the fire. It’s because since a couple of years my parents are in complete denial about my photographic skills and my life dreams. They want me to be happy, of course, and they are afraid that leaving my research career for photography would make me unhappy. That said, their level of denial is brutal, and it gets quickly ridiculous every time they are together with my in-laws.
This is the scene: I show my lasts shots (for the project) to my parents, which wave their heads without even stopping to small talk with the strangers they sit next to. Then my mother in-law sees the iPad and wants to see the shots as well. They are big fans of my work, my in-laws, so when they get the iPad they stop whatever they’re doing and start praising me highly and loudly. My parents don’t even answer. That is not a kind of topic they’re interested in.