more tilt-shift

Just playing around some more with my newest toy.  Can't wait to bring it to the Caribbean (SIX DAYS)!

tilt-shift experimentation

I finally built a tilt-shift lens this weekend after wanting to do so for months.  I've been playing with detached lenses (reverse-lens macro and freelensing) for a while but wanted a better solution for tilt-shift stuff.  I ordered the components but when they had all arrived, I was bogged down with schoolwork and had to wait until the weekend.  I followed this tutorial (a friend, who built his own tilt-shift lens in the fall, sent it to me) and used the same lens shown in the tutorial (Bronica 75mm f2.8).  

I've played with the lens a bit but it will be a while before I master it.  Guessing at exposure is tricky, as is making sure the focus is correct.  It's definitely a lot of fun and I look forward to being able to play with it when I'm not feeling rushed (I took it to the frisbee golf course and on a walk around the duck pond with Evin and his parents--both times I didn't really have the opportunity to stop and focus).

This was actually before I built the tilt-shift mechanism...just freelensing with the Bronica lens.

cross-country film swap!

I swapped film with Katie this winter.  She shot a roll of Kodak 200 in sunny California and mailed it to me to shoot in cold, wintry Virginia.  Ideally, I would have had all the glorious snow that we got last winter to really contrast the bright sunny happy California halves of the photos, but mother nature didn't quite cooperate with me.  Still, the photos are finally developed and I'm really pleased with the results!  We both shot with Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim clones (made by Superheadz--hers black, mine white, which I think is kind of funny).  I've swapped film twice now and it's so much fun--looking forward to doing it more!
The photos are all jumbled up and out of order for some reason...but I brought them all into Aperture and tweaked the blacks and the white balance so they didn't look so blah (as we know, Snapfish scans aren't the prettiest things).  The exposures are fairly well lined up, but you can tell on every photo to the left that my shots didn't exactly line up with hers.  It could be worse--I swapped film with Holly in the fall and we used different cameras (her, a Holga 135, me, a Nikon N80) and each of my photos had two different halves of hers.  Additionally, Katie's exposures seem to show up stronger than mine--my guess is because of better sunlight in California?  Ah, well, experimentation!

valentine's

Saturday morning I walked into my apartment to find this little setup.  SO cute!

record shopping

Today, Evin and I drove up to Roanoke to check out what we heard was one heck of a collection of records for sale.  The place is called Happy's Flea Market and when we got there, we weren't really sure what it was going to be like...but the first thing I saw when I walked in was thousands of records in boxes lining a wall.  Boxes so full you could hardly flickr through the contents.  Then, a sign, pointing around the corner into "The Record Shop," full of CDs, video game cartridges for every imaginable console (and some consoles too), DVDs, and of course...records.  Up front and organized by artist were the popular, high dollar items--Rolling Stones, Beatles, Pink Floyd--so we jumped on that first.  Evin found a copy of Sticky Fingers (missing the zipper) for $14 right away and picked it up.  There were copies of high dollar records that would sell for much more on the internet, but we didn't pick much out from that section.  The man at the desk told us we could go browse the $2 section if we left our selections with him--through a door to the left, every single record was $2.  There were tens of thousands.  There was some form of order but not really and I wouldn't even dare think how long it would take to thoroughly scour the stacks.  We came across multiple copies of so many albums and I wished the whole time that my mom was there to tell me what was good and what wasn't.  I think we did ok though--we obviously didn't go through everything, but what we did find (/what we've listened to so far) was definitely worth it.

We got 11 records in all (my purchases in bold)

• Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers
• Billy Joel Glass Houses
• The Outfield Play Deep
• The Hollies Distant Light
• Joe Walsh “But Seriously Folks…”
• CCR Green River
• Eagles Greatest Hits
• Electric Light Orchestra Out of the Blue
• Al Green Let’s Stay Together
• Bruce Springsteen Born in the U.S.A.
• America America

Evin's selection

early february snapshots

Just some random digital stuff from the last week or so (all shot in my apartment cause my D80 hasn't seen the outdoors in forever teeheewhoops).

on photography

I came up with the concept for this drawing while trying to fall asleep some night last week.  In thinking about my photography and my style and the way I like to use my camera, this sort of thing made sense to me.  The idea of reaching through the camera to grab up everything in view, to pull it in through the lens and to save it via film or digital sensor just feels nice in my mind.  To photographically grab up the things I see and file them away to review later, to save everything while only touching the shutter button, allows me to keep memories in prints or computer files, to back them up in case my brain loses the visual tidbits.
I like photography.  I like to save things this way.

gelato

This is a gelato appreciation post.  All photos taken this summer during my study abroad trip (most of the photos are from France but 2 are from a side trip to Italy).  I'm working on cleaning out my photo archives to put them on my external hard drive (again) and realized how many photos I had of this delicious treat...

canon sureshot, second roll

Another film post today?  Guess so.  Snapfish seems to be pretty unpredictable lately but they posted the scans from a roll of film I sent out Tuesday morning to their site this afternoon so I figured I'd post 'em.  These were shot with the Canon I got at Goodwill for 3 bucks several weeks ago (this post) but this time it seems like it didn't perform as nicely as it did last time.  Oh well, how much can one really expect from a thrift store point and shoot?

ZOOM!fish

ultra wide and slim, second roll

Finally received prints back from Snapfish from my second roll of film I shot through the Superheadz Ultra Wide and Slim.  Had to finish it up so I'd be ready to start shooting the roll Katie sent me to double expose (photos will definitely be shared from that when I've finished...)
This roll, though, was shot during December and January in mostly crappy weather I guess (however, I'm still waiting on some real snow to photograph!)

roses

Evin bought me a pretty bouquet of little teeny hot pink roses yesterday after plenty of begging and pleading and bad moods from me (not bad moods about flowers, bad moods about other things).  He's not usually the type to get me flowers (I think this is the third bouquet of flowers I've gotten from him in 3 and a half years) which might explain why he didn't think he needed to stick them in water when he got them home...anyway, they're pretty and adorable but today I discovered that some of their necks are already droopy.  Having taken Floral Design last semester, I remembered my professor saying something about submerging stems with bent necks in a bathtub of warm water.  You might be able to guess what I spent some time doing this afternoon, but if you can't guess, well, you'll see...