Category: The pandemic world

Summer food stuff

Mid-July and much of my work has sort of slowed. Being freelance, I can focus my attention to other things. Well, things that don’t require too much movement, too much exertion during a massive nationwide heatwave. A little over a year ago, I was trying to find ways to be creative as we crept toward a post-lockdown world in fits and starts. COVID waves kept coming and going, and every creative effort I tried to make felt forced or like wandering. I want to avoid going there again, so I use many of the tools outlined in Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. Amazingly, I read it over 20 years ago and still utilize her very simple approaches to creativity: daily journaling (morning pages), artist dates, and later on she added regular walks.

I think summertime is made for a slight sense of boredom. In the midst of it all, the days are almost too long. The afternoons linger with a bit too much sun into golden hour. It try to be outside for that every day of summer. I’m happy to have a backyard and a grill that I can use so I don’t heat up the house unnecessarily.

It’s no secret that I love to cook. I do secretly love food writing. I think if I had the time and dedication, I’d pursue something in that realm. Indulge me in some of my food stuffs from this summer. Some grilling, some whole roasting, some pasta, some salads, some pink pickling red onions–all vegan, of course.

Like all things, I’m sure the world of food writing and photography has its downsides, its shadows. Anthony Bourdain comes to mind, while many of the food writers I follow today make it seem so easy. An endless stream of farmers markets with oversized produce (no mention ever of their prices), lovely evenings tending their kitchen gardens upstate, and oddly zen-like and immaculate kitchens. I cannot pretend that’s me. Sure I love to cook and shoot colorful, fresh foods, but my kitchen is constant chaos in need of constant cleaning. I’ll stick to the close ups on the kitchen table.

New year, new me?

It has been quite awhile since I’ve posted anything here. To tell you the truth, I’ve had this URL since about 2000 and haven’t added much to it. It used to be a catch-all site for my fledgling acting career back then. Then came the rise of the blog, then the rise of what we called the micro-blog, the then the rise of the social network, and that became the rise of the social media. Now seems to be the fall of social media as we know it, with some of the most reliable platforms seeming to fall under their own weight…or onto their own swords. I still love them, despite that everyone seems to regard them as “hell-scapes”. All this is to say that now seems to be more important of a time to keep one’s own website updated with quality content and connection.

Where have I been? Well, it’s nothing serious. After several years of building a freelance photography career, only to have it put completely on hold at the start of the pandemic, things have been back. I wasn’t doing all that well during the long stretches of lockdown months. For any creative person who found that time to be ultra-productive, great for you. Despite my introverted nature, I found my anxiety to be barely manageable and I had almost no ability to actually concentrate on a single project. In fact, I think I just got my brain back within the last year or so.

But, yes, things have been back since last fall. I’ve built relationships with a handful of new clients who have been fantastic and who have kept me busy. I expected maybe a few bookings last fall, but the phone kept ringing right up through the holidays and into this year. I’m a very lucky photographer because I know a lot of us went out of business in 2020.

It’s been a year of shifts. No, it’s not January, but I think of this time of year as a New Years in many ways. My birthday is in summer, and I tend to take stock of myself and my year around June/July. Many shifts began about a year ago when I was approaching a big birthday. Friends I had regarded as ride-or-die seemed not to be “ride” at all, and I had to sort of quietly let them go. A family member was in the midst of a health crisis and I spent several weeks in the hospital with them during a record heatwave in Southern California. (They are doing much better now.) What I thought would be a joyful celebration of me entering into a new decade surrounded by friends actually had me feeling very alone. Most plans I had made to welcome this next stage of my life all seemed to fall completely through amidst a bad COVID wave.

Things can, and do, change. I had to accept that as I watched relationships in my life shift. As I watched my priorities realign around certain people. As I understood that by embracing my own personal growth I had to course-correct certain precedents I had set around how I had always allowed myself to be treated before. I’m risking this post becoming a bit long and cliche, but that is sort of it in a nutshell.

Again, as social networks continue to annoy and/or disappoint their users, I am aiming to be more committed to this space. I’ve never been much of a writer, but I’d rather my words and quality creative efforts go here.

November Photo Walks

The days in November seem to quicken as they go by, probably since they do. And this is made worse by the coming of Standard Time (the fall-back time change). People seem to love the extra hour of sleep, while I bemoan the shortened days. The sun sets around 4:45 p.m., and I can’t get anything done. I do revel in the changing light, though. Everything starts to become tilted and surreal. Dali-esque shadows stretch lengthily across streets and sidewalks.

I’ve been busy with client work since the world as started to reopen again (thank you, vaccines). I’m grateful for the work, and it reminds me to get back to shooting personal work again. I’ve been creatively depressed during the various lockdowns and, while I can’t stand the crowds back out again, I’ve been taking the few extra moments to go on photo walks with whatever camera I have on hand.

A Break In The Rain

It’s mid-March and I’m reading one piece after another about being a year into this pandemic, at least in the US. Much of these sound familiar. The brain fog, the struggling with meaninglessness. Me, I often feel like I want to be a go-with-the-flow guy–to take these prolonged months as they come and try to make the most of them–except the flow often doesn’t really want to go with me.

A break in the rain

Small moments of chaos break out. Our elderly dogs eliminate on the floor. Water leaks under the sink. I’ve become excellent at clearing decades of clutter Marie Kondo-style into donation boxes, only to have to drive all over town looking for a thrift store that’ll actually take them. (Note: thrift stores are overwhelmed with donations and are usually full by noon.) As a freelancer, any sort of work or creative project usually ends in a false start.

My complaints are little. I’m navigating much of this with enough privilege to usually keep these things to myself. So when small chaos seems to reign, there goes my flow. Any kind of flow.

A walk per day keeps the fog at bay. Just like our usual March here in SoCal, the rain has been off and on. A small break in the rain makes for a lovely iPhone shot. And maybe some hope that as more of us get vaccinated, this storm might actually break.

A Garden in the Rain

A closeup photo of seed pods in the rain

” ‘Twas just a garden in the rain

Close to a little leafy lane

A touch of color ‘neath skies of grey…”

A Garden In The Rain (Carroll Gibbons / James Dyrenforth)

A very rainy week or so here in Southern California. One of my favorite times to take my Leica outside. Carefully, of course, as droplets are still dripping off of things.

I haven’t posted anything since last year, but feeling a sense of re-focus on creative pursuits. Pandemic life and political crises have occupied my mind almost non-stop since who knows when.

I know we aren’t in a clear space yet, but it’s nice to feel a storm has come to wash away and refresh.

Wildfire damage in natural forest land.

Photographing Damage From The El Dorado Fire

A few weeks ago I made my way up to a special place, a place I’ve thought of as home since I was 14. A place where I still return to every summer to work with a small arts non-profit (www.campbravo.org). A place that was nearly burned down by a massive wildfire.

Camp de Benneville Pines is a small UU camp located near Angelus Oaks, CA. The El Dorado Fire started in far away Yucaipa and was allegedly started by careless people setting off an explosion as part of a so-called gender reveal stunt–in a dry grassy field, during a record heat wave.

The wildfire raged into the hillside directly above camp, but the camp itself was spared. Thanks to many hardworking firefighters who skillfully fought the blaze even as it entered camp in some spots. The very thought of this special place burning down due to such carelessness was enough to have me spiraling.

Reading that they were seeking local volunteers, I drove up there to donate some photography hopefully to help illustrate just how bad the damage is, and how badly this tiny camp needs extra support in order to stay afloat during such impossible times. The camp executive director took me up the hillside to the fire damage is. Where once was a beautiful, lush forest hillside now stands an ashen waste land.

Thankfully, there are some trees still standing. But the destruction this fire wreaked spans tens of thousands of acres.

Growing up in SoCal, I knew about earthquakes of course. I knew about fire season. It’s only been in the last 10 or 15 years that fire season has become something else entirely. Months on end of endlessly destructive wildfires, apocalyptic skies, and terrible air quality.

My hope is that a few of the snapshots show just how badly we need to address our current climate crisis and its effects. In the meantime, if you would consider visiting the website for Camp de Benneville Pines and supporting them with a small donation. On top of being a small business having to navigate being shut down all year, they are now having to manage soil erosion and mudslide risk.

A happy cabin and tall trees spared from any fire damage.

All images are Copyrighted by Matt Lara (Matt Lara Photography) and may not be reproduced without permission.

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The Lonely Street Photographer – Bowlium and Bobcat Fire

Bowlium Lanes in Montclair, CA

I realize my posts are pretty heavy on the black and white images, when normally I enjoy vibrancy, bright colors, lots of contrast. The truth is the last few weeks have been a doozy for me personally. Much of where I’m feeling mentally has been marked by a sense of melancholy. The bleak skies of Southern California during fire season. The tilt of the earth as seasons change and shadows lengthen. On a fairly decent day, one that was still blazing hot, I took my camera out near my old hometown of Ontario and snapped this vintage bowling alley, Bowlium. Only to realize of course that the Bobcat Fire had sent up a new plum of smoke and seemed to be heading toward my home.

All is well at the moment. My main objective in a very chaotic time is still a lot of self care.

All about the pause

The calls are coming from inside the house. The weight of anxiety around person problems. Lack of sleep. Worry over lack of direction in a pandemic world.

And the calls have been coming from outside the house, too. Raging wildfires destroying the west coast. Friends, family, and myself out of work. Teacher friends struggling just to do their job. Anything on the news.

Not to mention I can’t be outside doing what normally calms me–exercise, hiking, and gardening. It all makes me realize that you can’t whip yourself out of this space.

Reading this piece on why I’m feeling so awful right now hit all the right points for me. The ambiguous loss, the unproductive feelings, the lack of normal self-care activities.

Today has been all about the pause. Hitting pause to allow myself to re-adjust, and realizing it’s a privilege that I can even do just that. Pause, and lots of rest, and keeping stimulation low.