I recently had a little chat about music and street photography. For those who watch my shared slideshows on YouTube, you get a taste of what I love about music. It’s basically rock, folk. I bring a lot of importance to the choice of music that accompanies my photos. For a long time, YouTube blocked my videos because of artists’ copyrights. For several months now, I have no more worries. I can’t monetize my videos, but I’m free to use whatever I want.

These choices can be questionable, and some people have even found the music distracting. I am sorry. I will continue to share my photos, but also songs that particularly affect me. Among the artists you may have heard were Sufjan Stevens, Snail Mail, The National, Cat Power, Asgeir, Massive Attack, Mutual Benefit… I’m sure I’m forgetting some. Stuck in a moment … is the title of a U2 song that was covered by Scarlett Johansson for the animated film Sing 2. It pretty much sums up my state of mind at the start of 2022.

It’s been 2 years since we’ve been caught in this pandemic that keeps turning our lives upside down. 2 years that we’ve been careful not to catch this crap. We waited for the vaccines hoping that this would be the solution or at least that it would allow us to get out of this situation, but the vaccine has been here for more than a year and as U2 would say, the prevailing feeling is that we still can’t get out of it… We dodged the virus for more than 2 years by restricting our social interactions as much as possible. We’ve been in Reunion for 2 years and it’s not tomorrow the day before that we’ll rebuild a group of friends like we had in our life before…

We always go out masked when we make our rare trips to the cinema or to the restaurant. But we have to believe that we will not escape it. We were at La Saline for a week for the summer holidays with my sister. I don’t know how we got infected, but all in all, we went to 2 restaurants, a cinema (to go hear Scarlett sing…) and we went to the aquarium. Otherwise we stayed at the beach right in front of our house with very few people. We once went to Boucan Canot and it was clear that it was swarming with people to get into the water… Same thing for a restaurant in Saint-Gilles where all the terraces were crowded. We were a little scared, but we were masked, so we thought it would pass. You have to believe that it would be ok with Delta, but Omicron is much more contagious and this kind of behavior no longer forgives.

So my nephew Pierre was patient 0 for us. He was tested positive last Tuesday. We all got tested the same day and we were negative. On D+2, Joachim and Ronan had symptoms and we tested them. Both positive. My sister, who is immunosuppressed, started to have symptoms but was still negative on D+2 and found herself positive on D+4… Her husband is still negative. On our side, our protocol starts from scratch with the infection of our children and on D+2, we are negative. We take a lot of precautions with children, but will that be enough? Does the vaccine protect us? Until when ?

What is certain is that Omicron is more virulent with children. Ronan and Joachim had a lot of fever on the 1st day, stomach aches, vomiting, headaches… In short, no more asymptomatic children. On D+2, things are better, they still have sore throats, but apart from Ronan who still has stomach aches, they seem to be out of it. Finally, they remain contagious, so we have to be extra vigilant for us…

So yes Stuck in a moment…I’ve been on a buying fever lately. After my Nikon 50mm f1.8, I bought myself a brand new Ricoh GRD IV to replace the one I was currently using. But I didn’t stop there! Taking more and more pleasure in using my Fuji xE2 manually with the Nikon 50 mm, I bought a 35 mm f0.95 lens more suitable for portraits, but also more versatile. Yes I know Gear doesn’t matter! But hey, in these somewhat complicated moments, it feels good.

Aside from the 50mm, I haven’t had a chance to use my other purchases too much yet. It’s already mid-January and I haven’t set foot in Saint-Denis yet. The Ricoh GRD IV will wait until February to take its first photos. The 35 mm f0.95, I intend to start using it as soon as the situation at home allows it… In principle the kids, my wife and I should be OK next Tuesday. We cross our fingers (and we are especially careful!), so that we are not contaminated by the fucking Covid…

I wanted to buy this 35mm f0.95 to put on my poor man’s Leica (aka Fuji XE2). I invite you to reread John Harper’s article about the Noctilux 50mm f0.95 and also to look at his sumptuous photos taken with this lens. One thing is certain, you have to know how to handle it and it’s tricky to focus. I will ask him for tips when I have used it a little more. What I started to realize was that for maximum effect, you had to not be too close to the subjects being photographed, but you also needed the background to be full of detail for the bokeh to be surreal. I still have to do some tests, but for 1 week, it has been raining heavily at our place. Torrential rains like only tropical islands can have. So not great for taking pictures. Anyway we’re confined to our house with the kids…

I put you here, the December slideshow. These are the last street photos I took with the Ricoh GRD IV. The January slideshow will be very thin…