The Sun and the Water.

Have a good weekend.

The Closeup.

I recently scored an iPhone 3G from eBay. Since they only run on AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s networks, my intent was just to use it to take pictures and maybe shoot the odd video from time to time. This was a brilliant plan, as the new iPhone 4 had just come out and I figured an iPhone 3 would be cheap.

The hitch came right after I won the auction and realized that I wasn’t buying a “jailbroken” phone, but a *broken* phone. It didn’t work well. The listing said my new acquisition came without a battery and without cables. It wasn’t as bad as they’d made it seem when it finally arrived at my house, but the device was definitely not functioning correctly.

I sent it to my friend, J.P. in Seattle. He does a lot of things, but notably, he runs a business repairing Apple products. It’s called My Mac Hero. He fixed it and had it back to me in like 3 days. He’s brilliant. (and here on twitter)

I trust J.P. ’cause he’s the one who got me mixed up in all this Mac business in the first place. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have bought the used Blueberry iMac that was my introduction to the Mac world.

Anyway, I’ve been playing around with it (you may have noticed) and several post processing applications -the iPhones are absolutely rife with choices – and shot this of a buddy wearing an old WWII French gas mask.

Ascension.

More with the film camera. I need to get out more and do that.
It occurred to me when one of my images made it here.

A Personal Challenge.

This is what having a digital camera does to me.

Awhile back, I challenged myself to shoot a roll of black and white film in a day. I failed. It took the better part of two weeks. To be fair, the day I picked was a school day and I had a lot of other responsibilities, but it kinda hurt to realize what I used to be able to do in 15 minutes I couldn’t get done in 8 hours. I used the Hasselblad, which creates 12 6cm by 6cm images on a single roll.

You’re doing the math right. I took the better part of two weeks to shoot 12 pictures with a camera I used to use all the time. It made me feel like I was losing my touch. There’s something about using medium format film that makes the photographic process slow down: Click the meter, check the light, think about where the image wants to be, recheck the light, focus the camera, set the aperture and shutter speed, frame it up, push the button, advance the film… It gets to be a mantra, but it’s a slow, measured way to make images. Moreover, there’s the singular joy of waiting for the film to come back. I knew a guy who described it as “Christmas morning, every time.”

Anyway, that small trip down memory lane is only to set the stage for this image and the few others coming down the pike.

When There Was Film.

This is ancient. And it’s a scan from a print, not the neg.
It was cold and Katie understood how silly she looked and was therefore doing her level best not to giggle for this exposure. Right after this instant, she doubled over with laughter.

Go figure.

Nice Legs, With a Side of Books.

A buddy of mine who blogs had a boooooring photograph as her icon.
I suggested that we fix it.
This is what we got.

She hemmed and hawed about the way her legs look, complained that they weren’t the ones she saw in the mirror every morning.
We got to thinking, how do you ever really know what you look like to other people until you see yourself in a photograph? I know that every now and again, I pass by mirrors and catch a glimpse of what I really look like instead of what I think I look like, which is who I was when I was 22. It’s funny.

And probably why I’m more comfortable on this side of the camera.

To Grand Central and Beyond.

Another from the archives. This was on film (yeah, remember film?) on a trip to New York a couple of years back. The shutter was open for like half a second or something while I held my breath, trying not to jiggle the camera. It might be fun to go back to try again at some stuff like this.

We Come In Peace.

This is an old film shot. It’s cross-processed Fuji 64T film, shot in natural light.
I’ve long since lost the raygun, but the image was of a student of mine who, if memory serves, is a senior in high school somewhere.

I always loved this.

Say Cheese.

I was looking back through old stuff on flickr and “found” this in my photostream.

I uploaded it just over two years ago, but I distinctly recall shooting it when my wife was pregnant with my daughter. I made the mistake of going to NYC with a big heavy film camera instead of either a smaller film camera or a digital camera and still I managed to score this one. I wonder if it wouldn’t have looked better shot through a Holga…

A Lack of Color.

I was moving my Lightroom catalog over from one machine to another and saw this image, shot digitally in color, and did a quick color conversion and crop. It works and makes me think it might be fun to sift back through the whole catalog to see what images re-present themselves to me.