About
Why Lazy Xenon Ions?
It started with a cheap manual lens on an outdated camera. Less than £100 spent. Something to play around with on the days when the light was bad.
The lens was a Zonlai, the camera a Sony Nex model. So the project was named Lazy Xenon Ions, an anagram of Sony Nex Zonlai.
Shooting manual was a revelatory experience. A renewed appreciation of photography. The process slows down, decisions about aperture and focal point become more deliberate.
When the lockdown narrowed the world to the distance of a walk, searching for Lazy Xenon Ions meant finding beauty in the ordinary, giving substance to the mundane and accepting, no, embracing the imperfect.
B. Hartig
Volume 2: New Home
For a photographer in search of lazy xenon ions, moving home is arguably akin to a painter embarking on a new canvas. Time for a new perspective, a different palette.
A warmer tone and a new lens were deliberately chosen to change the mood, shift the focus and restrict the view, making it necessary to take a step back out of the comfort zone.
But the town intractably concealed itself behind fences and hedges, unveiling a uniform colour range and an often bland bourgeois character with few prominent peculiarities.
Consequently, the habitual pattern recognition was misfiring and quality finds were hard to come by. Eventually though, after repeated looks, prolonged breaks, longer paths and fresh angles, another collection of lazy xenon ions slowly emerged.
B. Hartig
Lazy Xenon Ions is currently playing Volume 3. You can buy the first book on Blurb. The second book will be released soon.