I had what I thought was a great plan yesterday: go to see the Lee Friedlander exhibition at the Met, followed by some photos in Central Park. The museum was crowded, but the show was excellent and worth the effort.

The weather on Saturday was beautiful and the park was full of people. Normally I would find that a bit discouraging, because I tend to prefer solitude while I’m out taking pictures, but I didn’t let it get in my way, and I did manage to find some out-of-the-way areas to explore. Well, as out-of-the-way as you can get in Central Park, anyway, which isn’t much.

I took a nice long walk and shot two rolls of film with my Mamiya C330. I was feeling great about the photos I was taking; I think I was quite energized by the Friedlander show and the lovely weather and found what I thought to be some very interesting images.

I’m starting to wonder if my head really hasn’t been in it lately, though, because again I’m completely disappointed with the results. There are actually some fine compositional ideas on the contact sheets, but everything is either over-exposed or over-developed and in general it all just looks really ugly. This has been happening far too often lately.

I’m wondering if I’ve been spoiled by large format and my new Hasselblad, but one thing I’ve noticed about yesterday’s batch of photos from the Mamiya is an abundance of flare and horrible bokeh. I honestly never thought I would hear myself complain about bokeh, but I went back and looked at a bunch of photographs from last summer, when I was using this camera more often, and there it is: the lens is flare-prone, the out of focus areas are really ugly, and in general a lot of the images are just really flat. I remember thinking at the time that I was doing something wrong, but comparing photos from the Mamiya to photos taken with my YashicaMat right around the same time—same film, development, and similar subjects—the YashicaMat shows much nicer contrast, tonality, and a sense of depth that just isn’t there with the Mamiya. The lens on the Mamiya is technically sharper than the YashicaMat, which is what impressed me when I first started using it, but there was a subconscious reason I felt the need to move on to the Hasselblad, and now I know what it was.

So, at least I got that out of the way. The Mamiya is kind of a clunker anyway. The screen is beautiful and bright, but it’s really a bit too heavy to walk around with and not exactly what I’d call “fun to use.” I find myself making a lot more mistakes with this camera, too, just by virtue of it’s somewhat clumsy layout. Now I know that if I want to walk around with a TLR, I’m going to stick with the YashicaMat. More than likely, though, I’ll be reaching for the Hassie.

The development issues bother me, though. I still feel like I’m flailing. I’ve been shooting B&W film for a year and a half with relatively few problems and some wonderful results, and now, nothing seems to be going right. I think I need a little vacation. I might take a break for a couple of weeks, work on some printing, and look at some photography books. I think it’s time to buckle down and do some process calibration while I’m at it. And maybe I need to switch it up and shoot some color, or play around with large format again. A change of scene sounds really nice right about now.