I am painfully aware - in hindsight, how much my diary text often suck. I have been so focused (on many things) while at the same time, a lot onto old photos from 1993 - of which some never seen the light... until now. But to fill my Diary pages with rich, deep text... for get it. It often appears to me that it is just babble. As if I can't focus on many things at the same time. At least not with quality.

 

It is like running after... a ghost ?

A time that has passed 20, 25 even 30 years ago - (25 yrs ago my homepage here started). But i seem to be stuck in a sort of limbo (That is what i assume).

On top, people too have changed; orientations have changed often towards a much stronger self-orientation / ego, and overall, it seems like the majority of the world have become... mobile-phone zombies. With a lack of observation of their surrounding, and i also believe increasingly, that empathy is about or has gone out of the window. Hyper sensitivity to all form of critic can be added to the whole.

However, my observations of other people are conflicting - as I also have seen gentle dispositions in people, perhaps even naiveté at times - in which younger people show consideration and help others in or with tasks that sometimes make my eyebrows raised... ) Sort of reminding me, that while I am excessive critical, I might sometimes fall into the trap of becoming or being too narrow minded - overlook that in some people, who do dear things.

 

Conflicting input, Conflicting Output

Facit; i get conflicting input from observations about other people, which in some ways conflicts me, because "I can't make up my mind". Perhaps that is the (my) problem; wanting to put things in one bowl altogether. Well, nature and people can't all be in the same pot. It just isn't so simple. And sometimes i tend to knee-jerk reactions (inside my head about others). Luckily, I do observe people - and when i am wrong - i always reminds ME, that i was either wrong, too harsh or not nuanced enough.

So, it then becomes MY PERSONAL lesson instead.

 

Thoughts about my Diary

However, I do feel stuck about my homepage. Well, i have done that many times. The more i read (mostly in English), the more literature and scientific oriented stuff... the more i understand English in a wider way - which makes me sometimes painfully aware of how simple i write in my Diary. (Begs the question; why not. It is a diary, for heaven sake, Ralf).

Yet.. sometimes i would like to see me writing better somehow. I often get a repetitive feeling in what I write. Or the problem might be, that i am actually more concerned about the quality in my photography, rather than the text i am writing in each entry. There i notice that i can be... less focused. Less concerned about how or what to describe. Reminding me of being a bit... sloppy, simply spoken.

Maybe that is the problem. I am too sloppy in my writing ?

 

Yeah. I do enjoy my photos

- i really do. Both old ones 30 years of age, coming to life. As well my attempt to new ones in the photo studio we know have in place, almost complete. I think i have done a great job at times.

But that's about it. The rest is babble and repetition, it seems. I do of course keep in mind, that the older parts of my Diary got erased. Now it is only going back to January 2024 - merely a year old. The rest is archived. So, i do repeat myself, several times.

These are the ambivalent words of a man, who still writes a "sort of Diary", decades later. Diary roots which in fact go all the way back to Nov 1981 when I started to write my first Diary (15 yo) in secrecy - while still living at my "parents" in West-Berlin.

In the mean time the rest of the world has changed.

Well, it always does, doesn't it. I mean, what new is there on the horizon. I think most older people made that experience, realizing one day, that the world isn't and never will be, like when you grew up, or when you where between your 20s and 30s.

It always is like that.

 

What am I doing ? Where was i coming from ?

Sometimes I really don't know, what am I actually doing... I'm certainly not as deep as i used to be. Perhaps it has to do with that my psyche; emotions and thoughts aren't exactly living their own life on my outside. It used to be like that, and i defended it as being "spontaneous". But I am not living that kind of life - even if i still have lots of temperament, personality and joke around a lot. Sal said, that is why he married me. Even if i sometimes joke a bit too much with him - he wouldn't want to have it otherwise.

So yeah, spontaneity still is in me - a lot. But my emotions are not unstably living on the outside. Which I actually like. I often felt in the past, like 30 years ago, that everything felt so incredible dramatic, and i felt both lonely and unsafe in so many ways. The expression "floating on an ocean filled with waves", sometimes comes to mind. That is how it felt in my life - for a very long time. While I still remember everything of it - most moments and details, with plasticity in images in front of my inner eye...- i do not often feel the that passion in those emotions. It is more like watching a pretty old movie, but without it actually getting caught in it. Without it touches me as deeply.

I guess i am calmer. But that depends on whom you ask. MY husband would say, I am pretty lively and unusual. I can come up with most hilarious things, out of the blue - to cheer up. To surprise. To be childish in the most phony way. That's still with me. Who knows, maybe more than ever before - because I don't need to hide.

Not with Sal !

 

Back then, 25 years ago, my younger, prettier self - sorrow and deep emotions and thought reflections - who somehow were both naive and had quite a bit of "victim-hood" attach to it - dressed me very well. I even had the looks and proper words for it. I frikkin lived it !! A sort of seeking, sort of handsome young-ish dude on a fresh, new internet. And i wasn't prepared over how much old stuff would come out of it, within me, out of me.

I don't have those desires today, and I don't live them either. Because my life is much more stable, too. I guess that adds a lot. I just hope i do have that strength, when times come that are rough. It will show if i learned something essential, or if it is just a make-up designed by good times.

It is easy to be, feel and live nice and stable, when times are good.

 

As long as i can

I LOVE photography. I really love the personal, more simplistic style in portraits - as well occasional experiments. I think the more simplistic style is something that has been forgotten in more recent digital photography - let's say 15-18 years. Kind of gone into Über-Perfectionism, while another branch has gone into a lot of sloppiness, that sometimes makes me eyes roll and wonder...

I also love to see my many decades old color negatives come to life, in a far more fresh, high quality kind of way (which i never dreamed about that those negatives would reach one day). I really, really enjoy that so much !! From old photo session 30+ years ago, I noticed, that despite limited means, i did actually out a lot of effort in those photo shootings (and following final prints). I think i showed much more sloppiness later on... More wasn't necessarily better. Sometimes i seemed to achieve the opposite. (alternative; delayed it by many years).

Mobile Phone photography most of the times is almost like cheating. Encouraging sloppiness big times. Like dressing up a pig and putting lipstick on it. More often than not, I mean. (I have seen good photography made with mobile phones, but the majority is really just sloppy shit. And memories created "on-the-fly". Similar equivalent how we used Polaroids in the 70s and 80s, i would say.

 

My tiny photo bubble

Even if what I do is basically just something in a very, very small - like a tiny bubble. I do it with a lot of love. Especially in photography, I mean. Even if i at times get sad - that i am doing it all isolated, alone... with almost no reactions - because people are too busy with their mobile phones and themselves. the time of feedback is over. People wants. People however don't give (share for real) with interest.

I guess I am not the type who invests so much in it. Been there, done it. Wasn't that fun or any deep really. It so easily becomes mainstream and routine with people. I... sort of... don't like that. Never have.

 

The Big Search Engines Matrix

By the way, the "million" of searches in search engines about photographic stuff - i have never, ever encountered my homepage. It means, I am pretty much 99,999999999999999999999999% invisible.

One would have thought that I occasionally would bump into my own homepage, due to specialized words within photography I sometimes use - - but that has never been the case in the past 15 years. Which is a bit strange. Certain words are so rare that you in the past got really far more specific homepages and links of value.

But all i get - are super commercialized links. Sometimes duplicated 10-30 times with basically exactly the same content. I want to puke. I do puke !! Such little value comes from the big search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo etc.

 

AI created commercialized advertising to the max

However, when I search with Russian Yandex as an example, I often get better results, leading me also (not only) to personal photographers, photo forums and entries, as well photo sites you normally never encounter via Google - containing far more substance with personalized content to read. The stuff that actually is interested, when you are into a specific area of interest, and wish to read something else than just sponsored and deliberately linked commercial stuff (on sites that often have no comments what so ever... telling you that they are just produced to multiply ads for a photo product - but not actually read by people any deeper). Almost as if AI produced most of the same bullshit to the max.

It literally is puke-worthy !

Today's search engines are a catastrophe of epic proportions, with propaganda, with most real subjects filtered out, and mainly oriented at commercial pages.

It is so sad.

So sad.

 

 

 

Time to go out... into the boring weather

It is my free day and i intend to go out. The weather is extremely boring. It has been like that for days; overcast, 2-3°C, and drizzle. Day in and day out - constantly the same weather. The urrrk-type of weather. Neither friend nor foe. The onset of ever lasting cyclones never seem to stop. The massive cold air over the Northern Americas, induce plenty of new cyclones over the Atlantic - which on their way to Europe, create a constant stream of clouds, mild air and rain in Stockholm. Of course also milder than normal weather. This will last like this, for the rest of January, and into February.

Unusual ? Not at all. It has happened 300 years ago, 100 years ago, as it happened in the early 90s. The ever lasting stream of cyclones raving over Scandinavia. Then you get a mild winter - it is that simple. Other time, vast amounts of ice cold air flush down from the north and then a high pressure area, makes the temperatures plunge deeply down to -25°C in the outer suburbs.

 

The Extreme 24 Jan 1875 !

when Stockholm had a fascinating -30°C, while Uppsala -39.5°C, and Falun a whopping cold -42°C. There might even been -50°C but the network at that time was limited. Albeit it is believed that the extreme North of Sweden likely had slightly milder weather, due to that west winds were coming in from the Atlantic. But Dalarna in middle Sweden near the Norwegian Border, often a sort of cold hole - must have had bizarre cold - perhaps down to -50°C.

Really ice cold bizarre.

We tend to forget, that Scandinavia is still... a polar region sometimes !!


Page 33 • Year 2025