Professional Photographer Playing Umineko & Elden Ring - Why Am I Making This? Issue #24
Hello dears,
Julien here. Your summertime-sadness photographer and gamer friend.
It’s dread season. Feeling the approach of July and August is like standing at the edge of a yawning abyss. The primary upside to this season is that I’ve been doing a lot of photography, and a lot of it has even been in a professional capacity. When I look at my photography journey over the last 5 years or so, it’s almost impossible for me to make sense of it or understand how I’ve gotten to this point, but I’m grateful nevertheless. This month, I took a deep breath and decided to finally make a website framing myself as a wedding photographer. Here it is. If you know someone looking for a quirky, primarily-film wedding photographer, feel free to link it to them!
I thought in this newsletter, I’d share photos from a bunch of the shoots I’ve done from April through now that I haven’t shared in the newsletter yet. But first, let me talk a little bit about the video games I’ve been playing. Yes, these are relevant to my creative process.
I have talked pretty regularly in this newsletter about finding it hard to take a break in a meaningful way and feeling some degree of burnout almost constantly. At the end of May and through all of June, I was having trouble with this once again and decided to spend most of my free time playing video games instead of doing pottery or whatever, which I think was a great decision. I “played” most of Umineko: When the Seagulls Cry, a famous (infamous?) sprawling visual novel. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you can stomach a lot of strange anime tropes, reading a slow-paced, epic-fantasy-series-length story (we’re talking well over a million words here, basically an 8-book series of long books), and generally all the weirdness that comes with the visual novel genre. I regret to inform you all that I loved it, and have become incredibly attached to most of the characters. If you've read it, let's chat about it??
I have also been playing the wildly popular 2022 game Elden Ring, my first foray (like many others) into a FromSoftware game. I don’t typically like 3D games, and it took me a few hours to feel like I was actually having fun, but I admit now that I kind of love this game.
Finally, I started a new save file (my 4th) in Hollow Knight, my official favorite game. I cheerfully made it to the City of Tears in just an hour and a half and have been continuing to move through familiar landscapes at a quick pace. Moving around the world in that game is pure joy. I was a little bit inspired to play it again because the sequel, Silksong, finally got a new trailer this month, and has been kind-of-promised to be out within the next year. Fingers crossed. My partner hopes that it will surprise release at the end of June for pride month, with the additional reveal that Hornet, the main character, is gay. We can only hope.
In all seriousness, both video games and photography have been giving me a much-needed reminder lately that it is still possible for me to have fun. Sincere thanks to both of them.
If you’re still here after that video game ramble, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Here’s your photos.
1) Miscellaneous film photos of my pottery, from several rolls of film taken in April and May.
2) Memories of springtime. (I really like how low-fi and grungy a lot of the photos from my new-to-me Olympus Pen FT are.)
3) A walk with family near Boothbay Harbor.
4) At my cousin Jaime's beautiful wedding.
5) My friend Ruby, on film in the woods and at the beach.
6) Photo walk with my friend Coco on Mackworth Island.
7) Photo walk with my friend Jess at Old Orchard Beach.
8) Photos of an educational foraging walk with a local herbalist.
9) Scenes from a Tender Table picnic.
10) A wedding on Peaks Island that I second shot with Andrew Hager - Andrew has his own newsletter with stories from his photo outings, which is hilarious and really interesting. Highly recommend it. Some stories about this wedding (featuring yours truly!) in his most recent issue!
As a final note, something else I have been enjoying lately is low-key content about niche things I like. Infinitely soothing. My three current favorites are grainydays (YouTube, film photography), mossbag (YouTube, Hollow Knight lore) and Triple Click (podcast, general video games).
That’s all for this month. I will leave you with general condolences for current political events, a hope that you like summer more than I do, and that if you don’t, a hope that you, like me, are at least hanging in there.
Julien