Photo of the Day: Kyran Thrax at The Gold Rush
I’ve had one clear-cut brush with greatness: it was either a Bacon Strip or Blue Plate Special. Sylvia gave an intro, “Here’s a new member of the Bacon Strip family, and she’s one to watch. Please welcome Jinkx Monsoon.” The last time I saw Jinx was on Broadway in Chicago, which I think constitutes “making it” to some degree.
This is likely my second brush: Kyran Thrax. As I write this (a bit late, compared to the date on the blog), Wikipedia was just updated to show that she won Snatch Game. This picture is from five years ago, October 28, 2019 at the Gold Rush, when she was less well-known. I don’t remember her exact progression in the Gold Rush; I went back to the US around Thanksgiving and missed a few shows. By the time I was back and the whole Christmas season was over, there were wider concerns about a novel coronavirus emerging in China.
This was one of my first outings with “The Wrong Lens.” This was an intentional choice to pick a lens that you would not normally want to use for that task; think “extreme telephoto for landscapes.” In this case, it was a 45mm f/2.8 tilt-shift lens for portrait work in low light. (Now, I would argue that TS for portraiture is not a bad idea. But in low light, it’s a hard lens.) The TS features highly in the “wrong lens” series.