Category Archives: creative

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Dead Pine Tree

Taken on Saturday, June 4, on our way to Cleveland for my step-brother Philip’s graduation.

Things to note:

  1. How is there one singular dead pine tree in the midst of a line of perfectly healthy ones? That was what drew me to this urban vista in the first place.
  2. Doesn’t MCO’s new logo look kind of like the Republic’s crest from Star Wars?
  3. How and why have I started taking great pictures of my freaking middle finger? God’s sake… out of the 21 exposures that came out before my Lomo had its little shutter crisis that day, my finger is prominently displayed in four. WTF?
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Holga Me

I’ve been waiting impatiently for my Holga to arrive from Hong Kong. Since it’s not being tracked, and I have no idea how long airmail from Hong Kong will take, I decided to play with Photoshop and Holga-ize this image to bide my time.

From surfing around lots of Holga sites and photoblogs, I think I have a pretty good idea of how this photo might have turned out, had I taken it with a Holga. Of course, the Lomo with which I actually did take the photo is a decent low-light camera, and the Holga certainly wouldn’t have performed quite as well. So, I took some liberties.

I cropped the photo square to go with the 6×6 format I intend to use. Then I burned in the edges to simulate the vignetting of the lens, and I blurred the outer edges of the photo to add to the softness of the image, while leaving the center of the frame clear. As an afterthought, assuming I would have been using a super-fast film to capture this low-lit indoor image, I added some grain. And this is what I came up with:

I know I don’t have it quite right, but… *shrug* It was still fun to play.

I can’t wait to get my new Holga and try out a roll of test film to see how bad the light leaks really are. 😉

photography

New Obsession?

Last weekend, as I was snapping off some shots with the lomo after Philip’s graduation, a minor catastrophe struck.

The shutter release on my lomo stuck down. The film advance kept advancing. It wouldn’t stop. My heart leapt into my throat, then sank.

My poor lomo. I <3 my lomo. I would be sad if it were gone. Not to mention that bitch cost me $100 used on eBay. Luckily, the next day, I looked up how to do emergency surgery on a Lomo LC-A—basically, how to take off the cover and look at the insides. Just doing that must have jarred something back into place, because now it seems to work fine. (We'll see for sure after the post-op roll comes back in another week.) In those 18 hours or so before I managed to get the lomo back on its photographic feet, though, I entertained the idea of buying another "toy camera." I'd heard about the Holga, and I knew that the Lomo LC-A was actually a knock-off of another camera, which was based on yet another camera, so I knew there had to be something else. And, as much as I <3 my lomo, I'm in no hurry to cough up another $100 for one. So, after a little online research, off to eBay I went, searching for Holga 120‘s and Cosina CX-2‘s and Minox 35‘s and Olympus XA‘s and even Diana cameras and Fed 5B‘s. Finally, after some sticker shock on certain models and some disappointing bid-sniping for others, I managed to get myself a brand-new Holga 120N. Now I need to get myself some 120 film (I forgot that this auction didn’t come with any), and wait for my camera to arrive…

Here’s the danger: if I <3 my Holga like I <3 my Lomo, I could see myself becoming a collector of "toy" cameras. No, not just a collector, but an enthusiast. "Collector" makes me think that I'd have them all lined up on a shelf, pretty-like. Kind of like Mr. Marks, my clarinet instructor, did with his vintage clarinets. No, if I had more cameras, I'd be taking pictures with them, that's for sure. I'd want to start with the cameras-I-can-fit-in-my-purse genre, though, because that's the thing I love the most about my lomo. It's *there*. It's like the old #1 rule of photography: f/8 and be there. (If the part about f/8 —that's a setting on the camera, you non-photo types—if that's right, I should be happy with my Holga: it only has one f-stop. I think it's f/11, though...) The other thing I really love about my lomo is that it has depth-of-field. Again, for you non-camera types, that's where the subject is sharp and in focus, but the background is fuzzy (and sometimes the foreground, too). It took me a while to get the hang of the range focus concept—there's not a focusing ring, there's a focusing lever with four selections—but once I figured it out, I loved the results. The Holga, with an aperture of f/11, isn't going to have that so much, but it'll be a square format, and it'll have that vignetting (darkening around the corners) that looks like you're about to pass out. I think that's a fair artistic trade. We'll see. I hope this doesn't suck. I might have to find a place that develops 120 film locally, so I don't have to wait a whole week to get my first roll of Holga prints back. Of course, I've had poor luck with most any local photofinishers I've tried... so maybe I should just cultivate my patience. Or maybe I should wait until I even get the damn camera before I start worrying about it. 😉

family, memories, photos 1 Comment

My Memaw

Me and my Memaw

My Memaw knew a lot. She wasn’t particularly book-smart—I think she completed 8th grade—but she knew little, important things. How to keep my ballet recital costume from unravelling. How to french braid and how to do a french twist. How to make awesome fried chicken, and tuna croquettes, and dozens of other wonderful foods. How to grow an avocado plant from a pit. How to grow plants in general.

About plants: Memaw definitely had a green thumb. Not in that Jerry Baker sort of way, though; he knows all sorts of bizarre tips and tricks for keeping your plants and lawn green and healthy, like spraying it with a solution of dish soap and beer and ammonia and some other household chemicals. Memaw had the other kind of green thumb, the kind where she had only to stick a plant in soil (or in water first, to root it), then water it (from the bottom, always), and poof. Big, healthy plants. Or so I remember, anyway… I was still kind of young when Memaw’s plant collection was in its heyday.

(Funny, isn’t it, how we never seem to take pictures of everyday things, like our living room… but, years later, we find ourselves trying to remember details that we once thought we’d never forget. Like how many plants sat in our windowsill in Apartment A-13 when I was 7 years old.)

Anyway, I wish I’d been able to ask her about more of the little, important things. As I got older, and as she got older, I did write her letters and ask her about some of the little things. How to make tuna croquettes (which I still haven’t attempted). How many different jobs she held, and where she worked (which I wish I’d written down, but I was in the car on the way to BG). And my Mom gave me the recipe for meatballs that Memaw had gotten from the Italian girl that worked with her at Bix’s Restaurant.

How to grow plants, though… if she had a secret, I wish I could have learned it. I do well enough, and I certainly *have* enough, but sometimes I wonder. I think I managed to inherit some of that green thumb, but… you know.

Sometimes I miss her.

—–

Next Friday, I’ll be participating in the American Cancer Society Relay For Life in Bowling Green. If you’d care to sponsor me, you can donate online all next week, until the event. Donations are, of course, tax-deductible, and will forward the fight against cancer.

Someday, I hope someone else gets more time to ask their own Memaw the questions I didn’t.