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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?
photos

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. 😉

randomness

Movie MIA

It’s not very often that I want to watch a movie. But when I do decide it’s time to waste two hours of my life on pure entertainment, it really pisses me off when I have to spend another half hour searching through EVERY GODDAMN BOX IN THE CLOSET and I STILL can’t find fucking Victor/Victoria. 75% of the VHS tapes in those boxes will NEVER BE WATCHED AGAIN, and I just sifted through them all.

OMG. WTF. All I want is my goddamn movie. Aargh!

Settle down, Beavis…

ruminations

Gayness

I don’t remember what age I was when it occurred to me that some men like other men instead of liking women. I’m sure it must have been the movie Victor/Victoria that introduced me to the concept; it was (and is) a favorite of my Mom’s, and it was released in 1982. I don’t remember ever being creeped out by the idea, though, even when AIDS became widely known in the eighties, and everyone associated the condition with gay men.

I didn’t actually *know* an openly gay person until I was in high school. (At least, not that I was aware of.) Tim was a co-worker of my Mom’s, and I got to meet him and hang out with him quite a bit during high school. Tim was freaking cool: he had a few cats, he listened to Peter Gabriel and Ravi Shankar, he had an awesome huge five-foot-tall cactus that wore sunglasses and a hat, and I just remember him being generally fun to be around. Some of his friends called him “Timberly,” although I’m afraid that, for awhile, I knew him mainly as “my gay friend Tim.”
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