memories 8 Comments

Portraits of Christmas Past


Since Aaron and I moved in together and bought ourselves our very own plastic prelit Christmas tree, I decided to initiate a new tradition: Christmas family portraits. This year, with the arrival of the new Nikon D50 digital SLR (read: fancy camera), I decided it might be fun to look at the photos of our Christmases so far.

It’s interesting to see how we’ve changed, and how my craft has improved over the years.

I do have to mention, though, that one thing remains constant. After witnessing my mother trying to pose the two of us for portraits way back in ’97, I know that the basis of getting a good portrait with Aaron is making sure he is comfortable. Mom can pose portraits well — she worked for Olan Mills for 10 years or so, and continues to work in a portrait studio — but Aaron’s back doesn’t deal well with the kinds of sitting and twisting she requests sometimes. Make sure Aaron’s comfy, then fit me and the cat in the picture, and everything’s on it’s way to being good. 🙂

photos

My Grandparents, May 2003

As promised, a photo of my grandparents at my wedding. I think they look pretty damn good for being 70-whatever years old.

Aaron and I, on the other hand, were 50 pounds overweight. Yeesh. Too bad the wedding photos had to be the “before” pictures.

photos 1 Comment

Christmas Ornament Self-Portrait


[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].


So, I finally succumbed to the Flickr thing. Actually, I didn’t succumb — I think it was Yahoo that automatically signed me up for a free Flickr account somehow

I’m not thinking I’ll be posting very many pics to Flickr, or posting photos to my blog this way, as I can’t set the category to “photo” from Flickr itself, and I can’t post photos in my preferred 480-pixel width.

Still, though, it’s a cool function. If I decide to start an honest-to-god photoblog someday, this might be a quick and dirty way to accomplish that.

ruminations 1 Comment

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like…

I’m in quite a mood this holiday season. I’m not sure how to describe it, or what caused it, but I’m just not enthused about Christmas this year.

The cat has made our prelit Christmas tree her personal playground by chewing through one of the wires and playing with the ornaments. Now only the top half of the tree is decorated, and the bottom tier of branches is no longer lit.

My great-uncle died this month; and while I don’t particularly miss him, not having seen him for over 15 years, his passing serves as a reminder of how rarely I see my remaining family anymore. I have no family nearby, and no friends — well, Aaron’s friends are my friends now, but it’s not quite the same. It’s not like I’m planning to exchange gifts with them. (Note to my friends that were Aaron’s friends first: if you’re planning to get me a gift, you might want to give me a heads-up, so I can find something for you…)

Christmas songs have been maddening this year, too. Like nails on a chalkboard. In years past, they’ve been merely annoying to me. This year, though, they’re driving me to rage, and I don’t know why.

After being in drum & bugle corps, it occurs to me that if a Little Drummer Boy played his drum for an infant… I don’t care if it was for the Son of God or the brat down the street, but at the sound of up-close, live percussion, any infant would instantly start crying bloody murder. There would be no cute baby smiling involved.

Every time I hear “Sleigh Ride,” I think of that very first Christmas Concert I played with the high school Wind Ensemble, after I first learned to play clarinet and somehow landed the first chair clarinet spot. None of the clarinets could play the high notes; none of us knew how to play notes that high. It sounded horrible. And the trumpets couldn’t get the rhythm of the jazzy section, so the most interesting section of “Sleigh Ride” was left on the proverbial cutting room floor.

I don’t understand my mood at all. I can have moments of genuinely enjoying myself with my co-workers — but as soon as I return to my desk, I’m back to the same depressed rut I was in before. I just don’t get it.

And we’re supposed to get at least six inches of snow during the day today. Chances are that the employees who live farther away may be sent home early, and those of us who live in town will stay until 5:00. That’s not helping my mood at all. (Edit: No one got to leave early, and the roads really weren’t that bad by 5pm.)

Merry Freakin’ Christmas.

test rolls

Brownie Bullet Test Roll

This should be a familiar sight by now, as I take this photo as one of my basic test shots with every camera, it seems.

After some online research, I discovered that the going price for developing and printing 127 film is about $15. With this in mind, I opted to order a proof sheet from Main Photo, instead of individual prints, just to save a couple bucks. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me that this would totally eliminate any chance the lab had of adjusting the tonality of individual frames (that is, making sure all the different pictures came out right).

So, I now have a particularly dark proof sheet, all but the above picture, and three negative strips that won’t fit into my scanner. However, I did some experimenting with the scanner, and discovered that scanning black and white negs in reflective mode isn’t a complete loss:

Although I don’t think my scanner has a very professional… what’s it called? Delta-V? It’s been a long time since VCT 208 or whatever it was. Anyway, I don’t think my scanner is terribly good at capturing the differences in grays, especially when scanning transparencies in reflective mode, but it’s a decent enough scan to help evaluate the camera, I think.

Basically, if I’m planning to do some shooting outdoors, in sunshine, and decide to go all artsy, maybe I’ll get some more 127 film and bring the Brownie as a backup. Apart from that… I’m not in love with it. Maybe I’ll change my mind if I get some reprints made of a few of the images on this roll, or if I try taking some snowy winter pics and get real prints made.

My opinion as of this moment, though, is that the Brownie Bullet is merely a neat and functional art-deco knick-knack I got for super-cheap at the thrift store.