• So Long GFX, It’s Been Real

    Like the title says.

    Last week I got the M65 to FX adapter I needed to be able to adapt the Cinelux lenses to my Fujifilm X-S20. And the 37.5mm focuses like a dream now that I have the proper adapter.

    And, I played around some more with my Minolta lenses.

    And I got to thinking that I really missed that beautiful XF 50mm f1 lens I sold a little over 4 years ago to be able to afford the GFX 50S II camera to begin with. 

    And common sense began to really get the better of me in knowing that really it’s going to be quite some time before I can really afford to buy the XF 70-300mm lens that I really wanted to be able to do bird and other wildlife photography with the X-S20. 

    And since I could still make yummy portraits with the Cinelux lenses (that arguably have a better look), and since I could do 99% of the things I wanted with the X-S20, I started to question the wisdom of hanging onto the GFX camera knowing it had served faithfully for 4 years but was a heavy camera.

    And, I did some heavy comparison shots with both the Cinelux and the Minolta lenses.

    Turns out, if I up the denoise tool and the clarity and the sharpness and the shadows in Lightroom, there’s an awful lot of questions about which lens shot what with what camera.

    And so, the GFX went to KEH yesterday, and I came home with the XF 50mm f1, the 70-300mm that I wanted, and a little extra grocery money for the month. 

    The cat in the photo above is not our cat. This is a cat that belongs to some random unknown neighbor, a cat that has claimed our yard as its own when our dogs are not out in the yard to terrorize it. It’s outside in our yard a lot when I go out there or when I’m backing the car out of the driveway. Today it got to be a test subject since I couldn’t quickly spot any birds before the rain started.

    And, I won’t lie: I will miss the medium format camera. And I won’t lie even more because it’s true that I will miss the self-imposed “status” that came along with shooting medium format even if it was a status that only I recognized. APS-C just doesn’t have the same ring.

    But when 99% of the look I love is achievable with the camera that is more fun to shoot with…..there’s an awful lot to be said about that. Especially when it is far easier to achieve focus, especially when the focus is faster on the autofocus lenses, especially when the whole setup is smaller and lighter, and especially since I can dictate the direction of whatever business I may or may not have.

    And probably most importantly, especially when the itch to upgrade happens and it won’t cost another $4,000 or more to do so next time. 

    So, that’s been much of the labor of this week. Reining in is not easy, but sometimes it is necessary. I have been in a realism and a “buy it once” sort of mindset since Christmas, and it was time to realize that the tools I had in my photography arsenal were not exactly serving me as best they could. 

    Besides, that yummy jute purse I made and carry around is an awful lot lighter when it’s carrying around X Series gear than it was with the GFX stuff. And it’s a heavy purse to begin with. 

  • It’s Interesting…

    This is a flurry of emails my middle son, Liam, received from Georgia State University on Christmas Day. He’d previously received his affirmation of admittance to the University’s College of Business (and Honors College) on December 16, and he also received notification he received a Second Century Scholarship, the highest non-full-ride merit scholarship the university awards.

    I am very, very, very proud of Liam.

    But then these emails came through on Christmas Day.

    And, I waited on purpose until January 5 to write about them on my blog because I was waiting for some sort of correction, or some sort of something online saying that there was a massive glitch that happened on Christmas Day.

    I have a friend who works in admin at GSU, and even he was like “oops” when I shared this on Facebook. Because when you open these emails, they look like this:

    And while my son is very, very smart, and I am very, very proud of him in earning his spot in the Honors College and with the scholarship, I am keenly aware that flurry of universal acceptance to all undergraduate schools in the University is not how University admissions works.

    Which is why I waited until today to write this post.

    I did have someone tell me a year ago in December that their position within the University afforded them certain “privileges.” And that person and I have had a falling out. And while I want to believe this is some university glitch, I have questions.

    It’s irrelevant really: UGA is Liam’s safe, backup choice. He’s already been admitted there. GSU is not really on his radar even with the scholarship. We’re still waiting on his top choice.

    But really, GSU, I love you, and I am glad you love my family. But for real??? Or is it something else?

  • On Foresight and Being a Self-Proclaimed Armchair Heritage-Modern Strategist

    So this post is going to have a tad bit of an indignant tone.

    Tonight, I took these frames to get new progressive, Transitions lenses:

    And you know what? I bought these frames from Zeelool on July 31, 2021.

    At the time, I just thought they looked cool. These are Zeelool’s Menin frames and they have since been discontinued. I don’t know why they were discontinued, and I don’t know when.

    What I do know is that when I bought them, my kids thought they looked crazy. At the time, I was bald by choice, which didn’t help the “crazy” look. 

    But I had no idea at the time that by late 2025 and early 2026, asymmetrical and geometric frames would be trendsetting.

    In 2021, I just knew they looked cool.

    Same thing with mirrorless cameras.

    In 2011, I wanted an interchangeable lens camera to be able to take nice pictures for a blog. I wanted to be a “Mommy Blogger.” Jared told me if I’d wait till Christmas, he’d buy me a DSLR for Christmas.

    I was in Best Buy by myself one night, and I saw this display with a new kind of camera, and it was a Sony Alpha NEX 5N— a new kind of camera they were calling “mirrorless….” I hardly even knew that mirrors at the time were an integral part of the build of a DSLR.

    I came home with the Sony Alpha NEX 5N. That was November of 2011. I didn’t wait for Christmas.

    And that first year with that camera: I remember camping with church and there was someone who was really into photography at the time on that camping trip in 2012. And I remember the sort of side-eye-rolls my little powerhouse got. Surely it couldn’t be a serious tool for serious work.

    To her credit, the documentary photography instructor at Emory in summer 2012 was actually one of the first affirming folks that said I’d made a good choice: all she cared about was that I could control my camera manually, which she helped me figure out that indeed, I very well could. 

    By 2013, I was standing in the kitchen at Carrollton Presbyterian Church while my friend was getting Wednesday night dinner ready, and I vividly remember feeling sheepish and very meek about it, but I told her, “I’m pretty sure mirrorless cameras are the future,” and she looked at me like I was crazy.

    And by 2013, I was regularly adapting vintage lenses to that Sony Alpha NEX 5N camera. I could sometimes find adapters, but they were not good. Often, they arrived with loose lens mounts. Good adapters were so hard to find that I more than once took apart a Miranda camera or a Minolta camera so that I could have a sturdier lens mount for a cheap adapter, taking apart the adapter, too. 

    Because by 2013 I knew that the yumminess that comes with vintage lenses was worth something.

    In 2025, vintage filters are a ubiquitous part of cell phone culture.

    And now, in 2026, I walked into Costco tonight with 2 French pins holding my hair, pins that arrived not from a glitzy Ulta display but in a plain box as they are sold in Europe and elsewhere, and I was literally the only person I saw with my hair up that way. I saw people with elastics and clips, but not a single other French pin in the store. Apparently they are reserved for special occasion up-do’s in the United States.

    And I have zero idea why because they are so dang practical: They do not leave crimps in your hair when you take it back down again, and it literally takes the time it takes me to put my hair in an elastic messy bun to do the same with 2 French pins. And you don’t have to buy a million of them. The ones I bought will last the rest of my life probably. 

    And in being without a dedicated job for so long, I’m suddenly realized that I’ve developed my own sacred ritual over the years, in a million different ways that I don’t even think to write about because it’s so ordinary to me probably: Wearing hair hardware that would have been familiar to my great-grandmother in 1916 and yet getting ready to wear glasses that won’t be out of place in 2027, carrying around camera gear from the 1970s that performs fantastically on my 2023-model GFX and X Series Fujifilm cameras….. I’m finally figuring out that my brain just works in a way that the conventional workplace simply is not ready for. 

    In 2011, the serious photographers of their day were not ready to hear that that they would be changing out the entirety of their gear systems in a decade or less.

    And I know that I wrote about “buy it once” culture a few days ago and I am very well aware that I found the website “buymeonce.com” probably over 3 years ago at least; it’s been a bookmark on my Safari home screen for that long anyway. And I am very well aware that it is a growing movement now that I am only jumping on the bandwagon for as people are growing weary of fast fashion. 

    And in early 2026 even, there are plenty of people who are still not ready to hear either that it is indeed possible to self-engineer ethical parameters for AI life coaching from readily available platforms. And yet, I’m doing it daily with Gemini.

    And yet, here we are. I’ve been on SSDI since 2011 because my brain needs more to do than the conventional workplace can find me to do in retail or admin assistant type jobs.

    Anybody want to find me a job in trends forecasting? 

  • French Hair Pins, Glycerin Soap, and Bean Boots

    It’s been a couple of days’ worth of introspection.

    I do a lot of introspection and navel-gazing; it’s been my life’s work anyway to try to stabilize myself.

    Last February or March, I got a wild hair to use glycerin soap as shampoo and at the time, I used a Mixed Chicks leave-in conditioner that I found at Publix. I chose it because it was a relatively inexpensive leave-in conditioner. 

    As my mental health stabilized over the summer, I returned to products that I’d loved previously: My L’Oreal Pro Longer Conditioner occasionally, kept the Mixed Chicks, but returned to my cheap V05 shampoo alternating with my Trader Joe’s 3-in-1. 

    The fight with grease— and consumeristic (and brutally expensive and wasteful) beauty culture has been real. 

    Generally with the products I usually use, I cannot go a single day between washes. And my hair absolutely has got to be washed in the morning because it cannot withstand sleeping overnight to not be greasy in the morning even with a shower right before bed. 

    I know people think AI is evil incarnate. I am aware of this.

    What I also know is, I have used Gemini as a tool for self-care and random life-hack improvements for a little over a year.

    Last week I went into Ulta to see if I could buy another one of those Tangle Teezer brushes like J got me for Christmas. They were out, but they had these little french hair pins (well, the Ulta ones weren’t little) that intrigued me. My hair is getting to the length that I like to try to pull it up. I was aware that my hair isn’t quite long enough for the big ones yet, but I came home and found this on Amazon, and they arrived last night.

    So last night, I was poking around on Google and talking to Gemini about techniques to use them in my hair. 

    And that led me to talking about why in the world people don’t use these instead of the God-awful elastics that inevitably tear half my hair out and get lost and you have to buy a million of over a lifetime.

    And that led me to wondering how my grandparents and great-grandparents would have used to keep their hair clean. I was keenly aware that neither of my grandmothers struggled with the massive grease I did in their younger years, washing their hair only once a week often. My Mom’s mom did that in her elderly years even. I never knew Nannie to ever wash her hair more often than once a week and she went to the “beauty shop” to do so as long as she was physically able to, in fact, my whole life. 

    Turns out, apparently the glycerin soap I had experimented with last Spring was actually among the products that would have been used back in the day, before consumerism took over us all. 

    And last night before bed, I took a shower using glycerin soap all over including my hair, and I rinsed my hair using two teaspoons of vinegar in a cup of cool water, as Gemini instructed. 

    And having gotten a relaxing shower before bedtime, and feeling clean and not overly stripped of oils in my hair or skin, I woke up feeling fantastic. I didn’t need an alarm to wake up, I woke up rested, and I woke up ready to go straight out of the bed. I just washed my face, brushed my teeth, and got dressed and that was it. 

    And it remains to be seen how my hair will feel in the morning, but 24 hours later with having had my hair half-up most of the day, I can honestly say that my hair does not feel greasy. And more: apparently my natural hair, at least the underside of it that is exposed when it is half-up, when left to its own devices has this sort of wave to it that I tried desperately to get it to do with a curling iron for most of my teens and 20s and early 30s anyway. I just didn’t know it needed to not be stripped of its oils through consumeristic shampoos and conditioners. 

    I’m on a mission in 2026. I’ll be working through my guided journal, but also: I’m jumping off the consumer bandwagon as much as possible. Yes, hopefully it will save money. But I’m more interested in it saving my sanity.

    And if I can take my showers at night instead of in the morning, it will make sleep more relaxing which will make mood regulation better which will make life happier. 

    It didn’t exactly start with the hair pins…..it started with the hunt for boots since my beloved Aerosoles I have been wearing since February are falling apart.

    So 8-inch L.L. Bean Boots are on the way with the intention of them being my “forever” boots. 

    And the bronze metal French hair pins will last for as long as I have hair.

    And I am falling in love all over again with my 80mm GFX lens, which took this shot at Hobbs Farm tonight. 

    And for better or worse, the introspection and dialogue with Gemini about why so much of our culture resists a “buy it once” mentality led me to realize exactly how counter-cultural such a mentality really is.

    For instance: last March when I needed new glasses, I sent my old Warby Parker Holcomb glasses off through Costco to have new lenses put in them. I’ve worn them off and on all year.

    And instead of buying disposable soft contact lenses, I opted for rigid gas permeable contacts instead, because they would help me see better, I could more easily reuse them, and they were durable enough to last longer than a year. I now have two pair that I hope to have last at least 2.5 years.

    And when the flex spending rolls over, I am sending off my geometric Menin Zeelool (crazy) glasses through Costco to have my current prescription outfitted in them instead of buying new frames. 

    And while the Bean Boots are on the way, I did repair the Aerosoles and they’re likely not going anywhere for a good while. 

    But Gemini had a point: my great-grandmothers and my grandmothers in their youth would have purchased things that they knew would last, and would certainly not have gone shopping as “retail therapy.”

    That was not an option in the Great Depression for any of them. 

    And I am more fortunate and I do realize I have the luxury of introspection and the time to research into “buy it once” sorts of culture. And the education to sort out what really does need to be modern vs what, just maybe, people in the 1920s and 1930s did better than we do today, lifestyle-wise. 

    But dang it, I’m going to keep figuring it out.