Sakura

One of the things I love about my town is that it is quiet at night. I live in a small town about 45 minutes away from Portland and I love the stillness of it in the evenings. The downside of this is that there isn't much to do here in on a Saturday night. Often, my husband and I will go for walks. This past Saturday our walk took us to the local Goodwill - the only business (besides the bars) that is open until 9:00 on a Saturday night. 

I made a beeline straight to the discarded camera section. It is bin in the very back of the store filled with all kinds of sad, old, electronics. Every once in awhile I will find something interesting. There were quite a few good things Saturday but the camera that I came away with was a Canon Sureshot.

I took it out for a spin yesterday and am rather delighted with the results of this little camera. It didn't do well with close up shots (I tried a few portraits of my husband and they were blurry) but it did pretty well otherwise. You can read a great review here on Jim Grey's blog "Down The Road." 

Here is a shot I too on Hawthorne Blvd  in Portland. 

Film used was Arista 100 and it was developed in Diafine. 

"I can't remember anything, can't tell if this is true or a dream"

The snow is all melted and long gone. It's like it was all a dream. 

The snow is all melted and long gone. It's like it was all a dream. 

I am not very good at coming up with titles of things. Photos are some of those things. I think titles are so important. As I move further into this hobby I am realizing this. I am realizing the importance of storytelling. I think the title is one of the very important elements in the story telling that goes on in photography. The viewer doesn't have much else to go on, there is the title and then there is the image. It is up to the viewer to create the story in their mind. The story is completely up to them. 

So I am trying to get better at titling things. 

With that in mind, I was looking at this image I took the day after our Ice Storm (this past Monday). I kind of liked it and thought I would upload it to Flickr. But, for the life of me, I couldn't think of a title. I thought of my standard "state the obvious" (ice on branch) but i'm sick of stating the obvious. I wanted to come up with something better than that. I decided to do something else, since my brain was being uncooperative.  I would let fate title this photo. 

I turned iTunes on random and thought, "the first song that comes on, the first line of that song, that will be the title of this photo. I don't care what it is." 

So I pushed play and Metallica's One came on. I listened to the beginning musical lines and thought "wow, if I could title this photo with music this would be perfect" because have you ever sat and listened to the musical introduction to this song? It's really beautiful and sad and it seemed fitting. But then the first lines played: "I can't remember anything, can't tell if this is true or a dream." It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

 

Camera: Canon EOS Elan ii
Lens: Canon FD 50mm 1:1.8
Film: Fomapan 100
ISO: 100
Dev: Diafine (home developed)
Scan: Epson V500

Let's go for a walk in the snow

Last week I found a camera in my closet that I'd completely forgotten about: A Praktika MTL3. I bought it last summer at at thrift store for $10. It came with another lens and some other extender thing that I haven't a clue what to do with. 

I hadn't heard of this camera before but I decided to buy it anyway. I brought it home and shoved it on the top shelf of my closet and forgot about it until last week. The weird thing about finding it when I did: It seemed like everyone on my Twitter feed was talking about the Praktica last week. In fact, someone posted a photo of the very same model that I had. So I decided that Fate was trying to tell me something. I loaded it up and took it with out on a snowy walk the other day. 

I really enjoyed using this camera! It is so old school but so incredibly easy to use. Very intuitive. I like the results from it too. My husband likes them too. He has decided that he wants this camera for himself. I think that's a great idea! 

Camera: Praktika MTL3
Lens: Pentacon auto 1.8/50
Film: Kodak Tri-x
ISO: 100
Dev: Diafine (home developed)
Scan: Epson V500

Produce Stand


This week I decided to take out my favorite camera, my Yashica Mat 124g. I bought this camera two years (ish) ago. It was the first nice film camera I bought - a step up from my Holga. So this camera is very special to me. When take it out it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. 

Over the past couple of years I've decided that for this camera I like using Black and White film. I also really, really wanted to try shooting portraits with it. So last September I loaded it up with film and it has been sitting on my fireplace mantle ever since. I decided that neglect needed to end so I shot the whole roll on Sunday in about an hour and then came home and developed and scanned the negatives.

I have to say, there is something really awesome about not having to wait for someone else to develop you negatives. That waiting game has taught me lots over the past couple of years but, wow. I really like the (almost) instant gratification of doing it myself. 

Here is a shot of an old building in the small town I live in. It's kind of quirky and i love it. 

Camera: Yashica Mat124G
Film: Fuji Neopan Acros 100
ISO: 100
Dev: Diafine (home developed)
Scan: Epson V500