tende

One of the side trips we took during my study abroad trip to France was a hike in the French Alps.  I recently chose a photo from that day to put as my desktop image on my computer and so I've been thinking about that hike a lot.  Decided to go through the photos and choose a few to post (there were 254 photos from that day, many of them almost identical cause I mean there were just a lot of really pretty mountain views, ha).

Train ride photos = favorite photos?

photographic inventory of photographs

A friend who was over at my apartment on Friday made the observation, upon seeing the decor in my bedroom, that I have a lot of photographs.  Of course, it's true, but I hadn't really paid attention to just how many are hanging on my walls and living in frames on every flat surface...

My desk

friday film

Just some film I had developed right before I came back to school for the semester.  I messed up the roll while rewinding and somehow managed to get the film completely out of the canister so that I couldn't remove it from the camera.  Luckily, I was able to catch the photo tech at Costco before his lunch break and he used the black tent thing they had to take the film out of my camera and put it into another canister for developing.  Some of the photos were wiped from the roll (I kept popping the back open to check to see if the film had rewound) and others have light leaks but overall the roll wasn't ruined, so that's a plus!
I shot this roll starting at the end of December through mid-January.  Each photo feels so much like home.

wednesday

I scanned this little collection of photos I took with my Polaroid today after deciding that each photo depicted one of my favorite things.  I was feeling pretty glad until the day pressed on and little-to-none of the snowfall promised for the area appeared (when there's a Winter Storm Warning in effect for the entire day, something HAS to happen, right??).  Work was awful and when I went outside, all there was to be seen was wet pavement reflecting the orange glow from the streetlamps.  

I dislike the winter but I'd sure like to see some snow.  If and when the winter decides to behave, there will be photographs abound.  I suppose there's some snow in the forecast for Friday, but after today's epic fail (I was promised anywhere between 2 and 8 inches and it seems to have fallen everywhere else in the state but here) I'm not sure if I can trust the weatherman anymore.  I've requested formal apologies from those forecasters who have lied to me via Facebook.

Also, picking back up the Polaroid for a little while (obviously).  I went on a small kick in October and the camera and film had been sitting dormant ever since.  Ideally, snow Polaroids will happen.  

What a weird post.  It's late, so that's my excuse.  Regular photoblogging to resume shortly?

monday

Just a few happy things to start off the week!

My order from Four Corner Store was waiting for me when I got home from class/the gym/lunch just now.  Ten rolls of film (the blue roll is ISO 200 Konica Centuria that I plan to shoot with my Konica, of course!) and a QuadCam, which I've never used but am looking forward to trying.  All this stuff was only $25, plus shipping! 

not photographs

Over Christmas break during a miniature photographic identity crisis I played around a little with paper and gluesticks and decided it was actually pretty fun.  Tonight, in an effort to avoid doing any actual schoolwork, I played around a little more.  Now's as good a time as ever to share what I've made so far, right?

This was my first attempt and my favorite to date

peanut butter cups

Today, I made candy for the first time.  Evin's grandma always makes a delicious assortment of candies for holidays and I've taken quite a liking to her homemade chocolate peanut butter cups (she sends them to Evin in the mail and I snatch them up).  Since I couldn't go up to her house over winter break to visit (/learn how to make these delicious treats), she did the next best thing for me: created a cute little gift package containing everything I'd need to recreate them myself.  This morning I gave it a shot.  The recipe was rather simple, but putting together all those peanut butter cups was time consuming.  SO worth it, though!

sureshot

On a Goodwill adventure with my mom before Christmas, I found quite a few sweet things for not a lot of money.  9 records in reasonable shape (that I've actually heard of!) for 99 cents each and two compact film cameras, each $2.99.  One seemed more promising than the other, as it looked like it had barely been used, while the other was more questionable, as the battery contacts were corroded.  After hunting down and paying more for a battery than I paid for the camera (the first camera, of course, with good battery contacts), I shot a roll and the results weren't bad.  The camera is a Canon Sureshot 60 Zoom.  It looks like this:

And takes photos like this: (ok these are just the photos from the first roll I shot with it)

via julia-augusta

I'm in the process of backing up my photos to my external hard drive, and in doing so, I keep getting distracted and going through the pictures and remembering things (of course, I also have an essay to be writing and plenty of other things that need to get done before I go back to school this weekend).  Anyway, I'm just sitting here reminiscing about how absolutely gorgeous France was and how I don't think I fully appreciated it while I was there (but now that it's winter, I certainly appreciate its beauty).  Here are some photos from the day we took a trip up a winding road to visit a winery--Via Julia Augusta, if I'm not mistaken.  I don't remember many of the intricacies of the nature of the name or the grapes but I remember the wine tasted nice.  It was my first official wine tasting :)

second roll

Photos from the second roll I shot with my newest camera (the Nikon EM from the previous post).

new camera

A few hours before leaving Blacksburg for winter break, I met up with a friend who gave me his old Nikon EM from his high school photography class days (I may have mentioned this a few weeks ago when I got it).  I've so far put two rolls of film through it and have been rather pleased with the results!  I'm home, bored, and sick and therefore making a blog post containing the photos from my first roll through the EM.  I shot it on expired Kodak HD 400 film (no idea how old it was).  The first two came out dark and I'm not sure why since the camera is aperture priority (automatic).
To me, the entire roll feels rather quiet.

powershot

While cleaning out my room a few days ago, I found a photo album stuffed unceremoniously under my bed containing images that took me by surprise.  The album was from my trip to Wales during the summer of 2006 and all the photos were shot using my Canon Powershot that I'd had for a few years.  Looking through the photos brought back memories of the beauty and green of the country and I now really, really feel like making another visit.  I was impressed with the image quality I found in the pages of the album, with the brightness of the colors and sharpness of the details.  Scenes from the countryside and photos of friends were all just lovely.  I decided to dig up the digital copies of the photos and spruce them up (mostly crop and straighten) to share.  They're all already on my Flickr, but I wanted to post them here too with a little more description about the camera that made them.