• a variety of fine pickles •

how adorable is my family!?

hasselblad 500c, shot on ilford delta 400 120 & processed at home.

congratulations, mr & mrs gildon!

congratulations to my sister megen and her new husband kirk!

the wedding was a success! we had a few bumps in the road mainly because i was in the hospital the week before the wedding and didn't get to rehearse. but other than a few "uh-oh" and "oops" moments, it was absolutely beautiful.

my back yard was lit by twinkly christmas lights wrapped in yards and yards of tulle, and beautiful wrought iron torches lit the path that megen walked to the altar, and there were silver paper lanters hanging in my apple tree. my back yard was definitely transformed and i thought it was just beautiful.

my house was packed full of people; so many people that at times you had to elbow your way through the crowd just to get where you were going. i loved having that many people in my home! the food was fantastic. my mother really outdid herself with the stuffed mushrooms and the pork loin and i heard the groom's cake, a german chocolate cake, was out of this world.

dylan looked so handsome in his suit and tie and little kirk and gracie were adorable, little kirk in his suit and curly hair and gracie in her little black & pink frock with curly pigtails. she was dressed to party.  and my cousin will was there with my uncle butchie & aunt dyan, and kirk, gracie & will played all night, running up and down my hallway and laughing. adorable, the pitter-patter of little footsteps in dress shoes.

gracie sat on uncle butchie's lap and ate wedding cake. actually, true to mcgee woman form, she ate the icing and left the cake on the plate.

some of my favorite photos from the wedding:

the matron of honor, tina; the bride, megen; the maid of honor, my sister kristen. this photo is way washed out due to the flash i used, but there's something i just love about it.

megen, cloistered away in my bedroom trying not to be nervous before the wedding. she was wildly unsuccessful.

my mother awaiting a dragon to land on her finger, gracie peeking in a box and dylan getting busted picking at the reception spread.

my back yard as the sun was setting, and my good friend craig standing on my deck. i was standing behind where the wedding was to take place, in front of the oak tree tied with tulle. another photo plagued by lighting issues, but again, i just love this photo.

the bride and her bridal party acting like goofballs.

megen said she learned this pose on america's next top model.

my nephews dylan and kirk junior in his daddy's arms. kirk made such a dapper groom!

my little sister. she's married now. :)

i  have to say a very heartfelt thanks to some wonderful, amazing people without whom this wedding wouldn't have happened:

amanda, you are the hardest working woman in the wedding business. sit down!
craig, you're my bitch and you're damn good at it. your help was immeasurable and hilarious and kept us all from cracking under stress. you know i love ya. new york, this is your last chance!
tina, i didn't even have to ask you to jump, you did it on your own.
fosheezee, where would i be without you?
scotty & chris, amazing hair. fabulous lighting. world class bows. it was like a wedding on broadway.
bino, i'd lay my life down for you, chola. thank you for EVERYTHING. la raza!
doel, you're now a master of all things electronic and you're awesome in a pinch!
marcus, what can i say but it's not the first time you've been there for me...
megs, you shouldn't have had to lift a finger but you did anyway.
nash & kirk, you guys turned my yard into a wedding wonderland!
mom, you rock, plain and simple. we'd all be starving if it weren't for you and your amazing kitchen-witchery. nobody does it better than you, mom. nobody.

i know there are people i'm missing and they definitely deserve a huge thanks... if i left you off of this list it was completely accidental, and thank you very much for helping make my sister's wedding day so very special!

aaaaaaannnnnndddd scene.

well, i can't believe i actually did it.

after years and years of coveting and lust i finally did it.

i bought a hasselblad.

i tossed and turned and fought with myself and my camera demons, but in the end the deal was too good to pass up. so maybe i'll have to tighten the purse strings a bit for the next two weeks... i should be doing that anyway, right? and not too terribly; i did get a great deal on it.

it's not new. it's probably got a ding here or there, and maybe some brassing... maybe even some other minor cosmetic abnormalities, but i don't care. it's nothing that will affect the quality of the camera or the quality of the photos that it helps me produce. i couldn't be more thrilled unless someone had just handed it to me.

mine won't look exactly like the photo above; that's a newer model than mine. different positioning of the winding crank (mine is on the film back instead of on the side) different lens, and probably not quite as shiny. other than that, the differences are completely negligible. and, it's still a hassie.

here's the lens i'm getting:

i got a hasselblad 500c with a 12A film back and a zeiss 150mm f4 sonnar lens. i opted for the 150mm lens instead of the standard issue 80mm lens because i have an 80mm on my mamiya. if i want an 80mm lens for my hasselblad, i can buy one later. right now, i wanted a little more room for distance.

hasselblad is the camera. it's the highest of the high end medium format cameras. it's the camera that all other medium format film cameras aspire to be. it's the one i've always wanted. if i didn't make it abundantly clear earlier, i couldn't be more thrilled.

here's a very famous photo taken with a hasselblad - it's buzz aldrin on the moon.
enjoy while i wait with baited breath for wednesday to roll around...

i can't wait!!!

good, cheap film

i got a package yesterday that i'd been waiting for from freestyle photographic, containing some "trial" film i'd purchased. it's arista ultra 400 speed 120 size medium format black & white, and it's DIRT cheap. seriously. $1.99 a roll. DIRT. i got several rolls just as sort of "throw away" film to keep in the fridge for when i don't want to shoot on something as expensive as ilford (at $4.29 a roll). i figured i'd keep it for times when i just want to load up one of my cameras and roll out in my car to shoot anything. still, i had a bit of trepidation about just how good this really cheap film would be... i wondered if it was going to turn out to be a complete wash.

i shot a test roll yesterday out in my front yard, just shooting arbitrarily at anything and everything with the intent on just getting images on a roll of film, then processed it in the bathroom and WOW! i'm totallly impressed with this new, cheap film. it's super-contrasty - which i love - and has a good, tight grain for a pretty sharp image. when i was sitting in the complete darkness in the bathroom, unrolling the film from the spool to load it onto the developing reel, it felt sort of flimsy and thin... i'm used to ilford and fuji which are a bit thicker and stiffer and easier to handle in the dark. i knew i'd have a hard time getting this thin, flimsy film onto my stainless steel developing reel, so i felt around until i found one of my aprons (the clear plastic "lasagne" film reel) and got it rolled up onto that in no time then popped it into the tank and turned on the lights.

i have to admit, i viewed the entire processing event with some skepticism, thinking that when it was all said and done i was going to end up with some pale, hardly-there images on very thin film... imagine my surprise when the "test" images i'd taken in my front yard turned out like this.

i know the photos aren't anything to scream about, but just look at that contrast! it was a bright, sunny day at about 5:30, and this is 400 ISO film so i think the "cheapness" might lie in the fact that it shoots more like 100 ISO... with all that sunlight, these photos should have come out WAY more exposed, but i've always been a fan of contrast and dramatic exposure, so this mighe be my new favorite outdoor film.

i think i'm going to tootle around town today with some of my new film in one of my holgas, and load up some fujicolor color 400 in my mamiya and see what i can find...

yay for cheap! 

 

light leaks magazine

i got an email this morning from light leaks magazine
telling me that this photo of mine was chosen to be published.

yay :)

light leaks magazine is quarterly, so it will be published in the fall, in light leaks volume 7. won't see it for a while, but that shound make for a nice "oh yeah! i almost forgot!" when it's finally published.

for those who don't know, light leaks magazine is a publication for holga and toy camera users and enthusiasts; it's a place where ideas and words like "sharp" and "in-focus" are tossed aside in favor of ideas and words like "fuzzy" and "out-of-focus", and all other things that holgas are known for.

the untold story of uncle nick & homer

when i was little, every sunday after church my family would drive to see my dad's elderly great aunt berta in ft. worth, texas. aunt berta was in her 90s when i was 10 years old. she never married or had any children. her home was always spotless and filled with black and white photos and tin-types in ornate frames, lots of china and porcelain, and i remember that she had a lot of knick-knacks, but her house never seemed cluttered. we would spend a couple of hours with aunt berta and afterward we always went to the colonial cafeteria in the ft. worth hospital district. i always hated the colonial cafeteria, but was usually starving by the time we got there, and my dad had fond memories of eating there as a child and while he was at TCU. i always got the chopped beef (and doused it with a copious quantity of worcestershire sauce at the table) and the mashed potatoes (runny and oddly grainy) with gravy, and usually mushy, overcooked italian green beans, which were the least offensive of all of the remaining side vegetable choices. i would tuck in to lunch with my parents at the table and anxiously wait for my parents to finish so we could get out of there and head off on our last stop and my favorite part of our sunday: the cemetery. we'd always finish our ft. worth sundays with a trip to one of the city's marvelous historic cemeteries.

i grew up in a family that had a healthy respect for cemeteries as a source of history and quiet beauty. some of my friends used to refer to my family as the addams family because of our love of cemeteries. i always thought that was kind of cool, actually.

cemeteries haven't ever been something creepy or scary to me, except for an old cemetery in euless with the headstone that glowed in the dark; sara might remember that. it was pretty creepy. oh! and that cemetery in bedford where somebody named jacob bobo was buried... i'm digressing again. back then, cemeteries were almost always a place to admire beautifully carved mausoleums and headstones that dated back to the early 1800s. some of the headstones were so old and weathered we couldn't read them without making a rubbing of the stone. i used to still have a few rubbings left until a few years ago, but they have sadly been lost.

my love for cemeteries was born then, on those sunday afternoons in ft. worth, down on my hands and knees, rubbing a black crayon over a piece of paper held up to a gravestone to be able to read the names and the dates. i always made up stories in my head of how these people died and dreamed of one day writing a book, using the names of those i'd found on tombstones as characters. i wanted to tell somebody's story, even if i had to make it up.

when i was in high school, i read edgar lee masters' "spoon river anthology" and my love for cemeteries and the stories that they tell was ignited all over again. this was a story all about dead people; a collection of poems written in the form of epitaphs. there was something so sad and sweet about it. i remember reading spoon river anthology over and over, falling in love with each of the poems and wishing i'd written it myself.

about 6 years ago while driving home from a scuba diving & camping trip at balmorhea, we drove through a tiny little texas town called east sweden. as far as any of us could tell, east sweden was home to an old abandoned school house built sometime in the early 1900s, a church built around the same time, and in the field to the west of the church, a cemetery.

we turned the car around.

east sweden cemetery was surrounded by a chain-link fence on all sides, and was well maintained dispite the fact that upon closer inspection, the church looked to be about as abandoned as the old school house. there must have been at least 150 ground-set headstones in the cemetery in tidy rows; i think i must have read each and every one of them. there were two headstones though that particularly caught my attention.

they piqued my interest and broke my heart.

these two headstones were in one of the corners furthest from the church, up against the chain link fence. they were nearly completely obscured by grass growing around them, even though the rest of the cemetery seemed to have been cared for and maintained. they seemed to be removed from the rest of the headstones in the cemetery, sort of forgotten.

the headstones were semi-square natural stones, just a little larger than bricks. they were weathered and spotted with moss and at first glance it wasn't immediately obvious that they even were headstones. they weren't ornately decorated and carved like the other headstones that said things like "beloved son" and "loving father".

these headstones read very simply.

  "(a negro)
    uncle nick
    born about 1853
    died december 28, 1898"

and

  "(a negro)
    homer
    born about 1860
    died december 28, 1898"

that's all. still, even with as little as both of these headstones revealed, they told more stories than any of the other more stately, ornately carved headstones in the rest of the cemetery.

i wanted so badly to remember exactly what they looked like, so i snapped a picture of each with the only camera i had with me; one of those one-time use, disposable cameras. this one was encased in a waterproof housing and we'd used it to take pictures underwater for our diving trip. unfortunately, the housing had cracked at some point during the trip and water had leaked into the camera, so all the film was ruined. no diving pictures, but more disappointing for me, no pictures of uncle nick & homer's grave markers.

uncle nick & homer's gravestones haunted me for weeks after that. i wanted desperately to go back and take pictures with a real camera, and just be able to sit and look at them. i wanted to know their stories; why did they both die on the same day? were they in a fire? an accident? were they murdered? hanged? had they been accused of some horrific crime and been mobbed by the townspeople? were they related? had they been slaves? was there anything else known about them other than the day they died and that they were black?

i've been searching the internet ever since, trying to learn something about uncle nick and homer online. so far all i've managed to glean is that east sweden is considered a certified texas ghost town, and that the history of east (and west) sweden is short and fraught with tragedy; the church was destroyed by a tornado in 1916 before being rebuilt in 1920 and the school house was destroyed by a fire in 1933 and rebuilt in 1934. nothing at all about the town's residents, itinerate or permanent, except for the founder of east sweden, swen leander hurd, a swede from williamson county who wrote to family in sweden and encouraged them to migrate to the "new sweden" community he and his family had created in texas along with 2 other families of swedish descent.

i've gone so far as to contact the mcculloch county offices to see if anybody working for the department of county information would be able to help with any information. no joy. not only was the woman i spoke with genuinely disinterested in my query, she had a tone in her voice that seemed to say "move it along, folks. nothing more to see here." this, of course, made me even more curious.

when the weather gets a little cooler, i might make a trip west about 130 miles to east sweden and start knocking on doors. it's not that far really, only about a two hour drive with some pretty nice texas postcard views along the way. i would like to go and take some decent photos of uncle nick & homer's headstones as well and as i mentioned before, just sort of sit and feel them. remember them.

there's a cemetery here in temple, a potter's field or pauper's cemetery. as is common, it's located on a narrow strip of field between a road and the railroad tracks, hidden in the shadow of hillcrest cemetery whose entrance is at the end of my street. it's called seven star cemetery, taking it's name from the underground railroad. presumably most of the bodies interred at seven star were slaves and freed slaves. the majority of the headstones at seven star read "unknown", spray-painted in black on cinderblocks. other headstones are made of woodplanks nailed together, bleached by 100 years of texas sun. still others are crude slabs of cement with names - sometimes only a first name and "title" like "miss annie", written with something like a stick or a finger while the cement was still wet. because seven star is so close, i go out there pretty often, and i'm always alone. i've never been to seven star cemetery while there's somebody else out there. it's a sad but beautiful little cemetery. i just read the article (linked above) about a church group taking care of seven star cemetery yesterday and was glad to know that somebody has taken some ownership of the grounds. apparently no local or state government entity will claim it, and since it's a potter's field, it isn't a private cemetery. seven star cemetery belongs to no one. maybe it belongs to everyone. i imagine there are quite a few stories to be told at seven star cemetery.

it's heartbreaking that someone lived their life without leaving the story of their life behind, no matter what that story might be. realistically i realize that this happens every day. i suppose that's just life; people live and die without leaving any kind of a legacy.

or do they? maybe everybody's life tells a story.

one day, i'd like to be able to tell the story of uncle nick & homer.

maybe that could be my legacy.

elements of an opry

why i love cats

because they don't like to fold laundry any more than i do.

wish i was here

may 16, 2004, the tail end of my time on tour with deryl dodd.

sunday morning. checked out of the hotel. we said our goodbyes, and i started to leave for home.
before i went home though, i made the drive back to whitecap beach on south padre island where deryl and i had gone the evening before to take some photos before his show.

i sat there on the sand for about an hour, just absorbing. i knew it would be a while before i made it back again, and i wanted to remember the sun, the sand, the sound of the waves, the cry of the gulls, and the scent and feel of the salty ocean spray.

i scooped up some beach sand and a bit of water from the ocean into a clean glass bottle, dusted the sand off of myself, and drove back home.

i still have the bottle full of ocean and sand.

wish i was there right now.

polaroids

if i'd ever had a baby, i'd have wanted a little girl.









stop by flickr for more.

polaroid 664 film, polaroid 250 land camera. 

birthday parties ROCK with photo goodness

my very dear friends bob & mary threw a birthday party for me last night (my birthday is monday, so friday just seemed a natural for a party) and a great time was had by all, and i had a little too much to drink. yay, me!

bob got some amazingly attractive photos of me (sarcasm) looking like an escapee from some sort of institution. seriously, i have a knack for just looking completely nuts in candid photos. but he did get some photos that my mom wouldn't balk at.

big thanks to everybody who attended my party last night, and for all the goodies! thanks to kata, john, erica & ellie, steven & becca, joe (and the conspicuously absent and terribly missed lynn), monique (thanks for the picadillo!), jaz & nico, mariah, aislyn & ian, mark, and bob & laurie in absentia. and a humongous, ginormous thank you to bob & mary (the cake was gorgeous and delish!) for such a great time.

fuzzy navels are awesome. candles that don't go out even on the 5th try suck.

bob was kind enough to snap like a mad man during the party last night, and then give me permission to use them on my blog. here are some of the highlights, and a few lowlights:

mary made me a birthday cake!!!

good lord, somebody call the fire department.

wish made: check.

wait a minute... are these those wacky re-lighting candles?

yeah, i guess they are. you people suck.

alright, i'll play along.

okay, are you kidding with this? what the...

okay, one more time.

oh COME ON. I'M NOT GETTIN' ANY YOUNGER HERE.



mary tried to stab me but i was able to talk her out of it.

sometimes opening presents makes me giggle!

and sometimes it makes me look nuts.

i like to pose in an adorable fashion with new gifties.

i like to smell my presents.

and sometimes i like to smell my friends.



sometimes, i channel the spirit of peewee herman.

i get really excited about ceiling fans for my tent!

my favorite little evil faerie! really.   

i had such a good time. thanks again to all of you for making my birthday so special.

reward

i spent more than 5 hours having mammograms and ultrasounds today. i am worn smooth out.

maybe i'll write more about it later, or maybe tomorrow.
right now i can barely keep my arms in an upright position...

ouch.

i miss too many sunrises

woke up earlier than usual this morning for a day of doctor's appointments and tests, which i'm not looking forward to.

this made waking up early completely worth it.

click on it. it's delicious.

gracie & the sunbeam

i went to my mom & dad's house today and got to see my neice gracie. she had a bad cold, and her sweet little cheeks were flushed bright red, but she hadn't lost her urge to laugh and play and run around, and pose in a sunbeam for her aunt lissa's camera. she even got the hang of putting the lens cap on my camera. maybe she was trying to tell me something.

   

i can't get enough of her. she makes my heart smile. 

       

okay. i kept my promise.

i promised i would shut my fat yapper about my new holga until it arrived.

it's here!!!

i can't stand it. i want it to be daylight so i can go outside and take a whole roll of pictures.

i've got it loaded with a roll of HP5+ 120 film and a modified 6x6 mask. it's got velcro holding the back on (thank you SO much randy - you're a freakin' genius, i swear to god.), randy smith's custom cable release, randy's custom bulb modification, custom tripod mount, interior flocking so it won't reflect light, and the lens cap is IN MY JUNK DRAWER, just as randy prescribes. not throwing it away, just putting it away to avoid shooting a whole roll of film with the lens cap on. this ain't digital.

i am giddy like a school girl and i can't quit grinning.

i said it before, but i'll say it again because it certainly bears repeating, again and again...

if you're going to buy a holga, please do yourself a favor and spend your hard-earned money as wisely as you can, with randy smith at www.holgamods.com

i have never in my nearly 36 years experienced the level of customer service that randy has given me within the last several days. i'll be purchasing more holgas in the future, and i'll be buying them from randy, and no one else. nobody else. ever.

i've spent the time since i got home from work this evening loading film, attaching velcro, running around like a 4 year old, taping up the back of my camera to avoid light leaks, laughing uncontrollably, and taking 2 pictures in the brightest light possible. i took the obligatory "picture of myself holding my new camera reflected in the mirror" in the brightest of my 2 bathrooms, and then i went into my studio and lit it with studio lights and took a photo of those terribly cute, terribly terrible necco valentine's sweethearts (the ones with the messages on them) that nobody ever actually eats because they taste like flavored chalk.

i took a picture of them last valentine's day as well, in color, in digital:

but this one was black & white, and it was with a HOLGA!!! no telling how it's going to turn out, or even if it's going to turn out... but i don't care.

i may not sleep at all tonight!

the love of my life

my neice, mckayla grace. to me, she's gracie. i love her so much it makes my heart ache.

 

new haircut!

i LOVE having short hair!

one last thing about the holga...

then, i PROMISE i'll shut up about it. until it arrives, that is.

i mentioned before that i purchased a custom modified holga from randy at www.holgamods.com and i just have to take a moment to scream it as loud as i can that i have never, as long as i can remember, had such a wonderful customer service experience than i have had with randy.

to the best of my knowledge, holgamods.com isn't a huge corporate machine. as far as i know, it's randy, modifying holga cameras by himself, and that may be all.

after several years of making online purchases with a machine, recieving a reciept from a robot, and a few days later getting a box or envelope in the mail, that's what i've become used to: no interaction whatsoever. randy changed all that. he's a real person. he's a real nice person.

i not only bought a holga, i made a friend. i have honestly never had customer service like he has provided before. maybe not even in person. he's just a decent, nice guy. there's a very short list of that type of person left, especialy when you're talking about the online marketplace.

here's another little "something" - randy emailed me this morning with the head's up that his interview in JPG magazine was published. you can see it here. it's on page 40, and although you can "flip through" the pages of the magazine from the website, i suggest you download the PDF of the magazine - MUCH easier to read... you can actually make out the words that way. besides that, there are some great photos and articles and they're worth the read. but especially the article on randy.

my friend, randy.

thanks again randy. i wish i knew more words to say how appreciative i am.

about a cheap, plastic girl: part II

i bought it.

it'll be in the mail in a few days thanks to the fantastic randy at www.holgamods.com who is custom-modifying my spankin' new cheap plastic chinese camera.

yay!

there are many different types of shoppers out there. impulse shoppers, cautious underspenders, shopaholics... the list goes on. i'm a little harder to pidgeon hole than that. there's not one specific category that i fit neatly into when shopping is concerned. i'm as guilty as anyone else could be when impulse buys are concerned. sometimes i do a little research before i make a purchase, usually with bigger ticket items - nothing out of the ordinary there. then there are other times that i research something to death before i buy it; also not out of the ordinary. until recently.

if bigger ticket items require a little research on my part, that's understandable. take a camera, for instance. if i'm gonna drop a grand or more on a camera, i want to know something about it. hell, i want to know everything about it. so it would stand to reason that something that i have researched to death would probably cost an arm and a leg, right? nope. how about twenty-two bucks?

i'm talking about a holga.

the glorious holga, right out of the box.

a holga is a cheap, plastic, shoddily made toy "camera". i use the quotations because the word "camera" hardly seems to fit. it's appearance is less that of a camera and more that of something you might find in the 3 + under section of a discount store with "fisher price" stamped on it.

however, turning the phrase "making a silk purse out of a sow's ear" never seemed so appropriate.

the photographs that are possible with a holga aren't just good, they have the potential for turning out surprisingly gorgeous. artistic. edgy. all those buzz words that mean pretty.

it was manufactured in china back in the early 80's when the most popular, plentiful film type was 120 medium format (which TOTALLY excites me) although it can be fitted to house and utilize 35mm film, which i have quite a bit of experience with, albeit experience that i gained years ago and haven't used in... well, years. in fact, it's been... well, years since i shot anything other than digital. which is where the over-doing it with the research comes in.

how bad could it be? it's not like i'm gonna have to brush up on my manual film camera settings; the holga only has 2 apertures; f/8 and f/11, and even those are something of a joke. you don't choose an aperture by it's size - you choose it by what holga-veterans lovingly refer to as the "mystery button" - a sliding mechanism labled "cloudy / sunny". pick your aperture. however, reading all that i have about the holga, as it turns out neither of them really work, so you just sort of get what you get. could be cloudy, could be sunny. YOU NEVER KNOW.

there's one shutter speed: 1/100. that's all. there are modifications available that will allow you to keep the shutter open for the length of time you depress the shutter button, but i don't think i'm going to go that modification route right off of the bat. a longer exposure time would be nice, but i think i want to get to know it before i start modifying it. maybe. i'm still researching that part.

one of the great things about a holga is that by virtue of the plastic lens - that's right, i said plastic lens - you get this incredible, unpredictable vignetting on some of your shots. (visit this link if you didn't click on it a few paragraphs up) sometimes you get it on all of them. sometimes you get it on none of them. that's part of the beauty of the holga; YOU NEVER KNOW.

the camera body has to be held together with black gaffer's tape (not included!) because the housing is made of plastic so cheap that it doesn't fit together like it's supposed to, and when there's a roll of film loaded the back tends to pooch enough so that the back has to be taped to the front.

holga, in all of her gaffer's-taped glory.

BUT - one of the coolest modifications possible with the holga is the "holgaroid" modification; outfitting the holga camera with a polaroid back. not the new generation of polaroid where the film comes shooting out at you, but the old kind of polaroid, with the peel apart film.


my polaroid 250 land camera - currently not in use!

i happen to have one of those - a polaroid land camera that isn't getting a whole lot of use at the moment... possible modification? YOU NEVER KNOW.

as of this writing, i have reached 100% certainty that i'm going back to film, at least part-time. one of the hardest parts of converting, at least part-time, back to film is the loss of instant gratification. that's one of the best parts of digital. instant gratification and 0% waste. with digital if you take a crappy shot, you know it right then and right there, and you can simply click & delete it right off of the camera. you didn't just screw yourself out of an exposure. but something about that makes me want to go back to film again too... it's sort of like a test for my eye. it's a creative stretch to not just shoot anything, but subject matter that, well, for lack of a better term, matters. at least to me. that's an exciting prospect. i think digital makes me lazy and i'm looking forward to shakin' it up a bit.

since i'm done researching the holga ad nauseum, i'm going to start looking into places to develop my negatives and prints. i'd like to do it myself if it's at all possible, but i can't afford the investment of all of the equipment (though nothing in the world would make me happier than to OWN my own darkroom equipment - and i know exactly where i'd put it.) but i would like to develop my own photos. nothing turns me on like the scent of darkroom chemicals... developer, stop bath... mmmmm. so i'm going to research (that's right, more research, but quicker this go 'round) the local college and see if they allow for outside darkroom usage for set fees, or if i have to take a photography course to be able to use it and rub elbows and suck up to the professor in charge... which i would totally do. the sucking up part for sure but also taking a refresher course in film photography. i could use it, that's for certain. they'd be teaching 35mm photography, not medium format, but that's alright - i can MODIFY for that!

so i'm set. i'll be recieving two holga cameras (they're cheap $-wise and, well, CHEAP production wise, so i'll be needing a backup) soon. i'm looking into places to develop my prints or at the very least making sure there's somebody local who can develop 120 medium format. i'm certainly not selling or otherwise giving up my DLSR. i've gotten way too spoiled to go COMPLETELY back to film and abandon my digital... after all, this ain't swiss family robinson. i'm not laura ingalls wilder. a girl has to have some mod-cons. but i'm giving it a go, and i am ecstatic about it.

my question is this: anybody out there own/use a holga? any insight? tips & tricks? any caveats?

holga photos - www.holgamods.com

i feel pretty!

turn up the sound - and click here !

ICE STORM 2007 : landlocked

i officially have cabin fever. so does willie, and he is none too quiet about it.

we've all been working from home since yesterday which is fun, but MAN i want to get out of the house. much easier said than done, if you knew the predicament i have with my car. ever since someone at work hit my car and drove off, my floorboards in the back seat fill with water whenever it rains. they only hit and broke out the taillight on the passenger side, but they bent something just enough so that water is getting in. it ain't gettin' in through the trunk, either. it's been poked, prodded, looked at ad nauseum, and nobody can figure out where the water is getting in. i just need to get a new car. that's not happening today though.

at the moment, my car sits in my driveway, glazed over with a half-inch coating of ice, and two huge chunks of solid ice in the floorboards of the back seat. it rained before it sleeted or snowed here, and the night that all of this started, it really poured.

it sure is fun going to the carwash after it rains so i can vaccuum all of the water out of the back of my car! and that's just a bonus; normally, i get to spend about twenty minutes dredging the water out of my car before i schlep myself to the carwash. yes, sure is a hoot. good times. not to mention how cool it is that my car sweats from the inside. condensation on the inside of my car? you bet!

speaking of fun, willie and i are just about sick of each other. he wants to be outside in the cold, but i don't want him out there very long because i don't want him getting a cold. whatever. he is mad at me because i'm rationing his time outdoors. so needless to say, with working at home, he's vying for my time while i'm on the phone with clients. so far, thankfully, he's been doing so quietly, nudging me and nibbling at me.

i've been bored, people. i haven't left my house since SUNDAY. did i already say that? maybe it bears repeating. here are some of the fruits of my cabin fever.

now here's where i really got bored...

my first "tea for one" teapot, a gift from my downstairs neighbors when i lived in dallas.

my glassware in my glass cabinet. exciting.

my big gay tea-for-one teapot collection. yeah, i collect 'em.

and here's some rocks.

and a lady that hangs on my dining room wall.

i need out of the house.            

congrats, bob!

my friend bob sumbitted a photo to cnn.com yesterday with all of the icy weather we've been having, and they used it!

click on the photo and you see bob's photo a little better, and read what cnn.com wrote.

you can also click here and scroll through to see his photo and the rest of the photos taken by people all over the country. 

congratulations, bob! 

snow day!

we're having a snow day in texas!

well, a snow day for texas, anyway.

it's 27° and we had sleet and freezing rain overnight. snow? not so much, really. just a nice, shiny, slippery, deadly coating of ice all over everything. it sure does make crap look pretty.

   

i barely ventured outside for these pictures, just onto my side porch. it is C-O-L-D.

what's ironic is that today is martin luther king jr. day, which texas observes as a holiday. all those kids who pray for ice and bad weather so they get to stay home from school are probably piiiiiisssssssed. suckers!

it's looking like it'll be this way tomorrow too though, so those kids may catch a break after all.

willie *loves* this weather, and keeps clamoring to get outside. he frolicks and plays and jumps and barks at the icicles... it's great. he's a flash of white, otherwise i'd venture outside to take his picture. no sale. hank always hated this weather. i spent last winter's "snow days" cleaning up hank poop from the dining room floor because he refused to do his business outdoors.

maybe more pictures later. i'm still trying to defrost from having been outside for the four minutes i spent on the porch.

i needed to have a good time something awful. mary and i had some kind of fun today, that's fo sho!

it was rainy and gray today, but we managed to have a great time. as evidence of a great time had by all, here's proof. mary had gas.

we gassed up and went to mary's cardiology appointment where she was fitted with a 24 hour holter monitor, and then had an echo cardiogram. i got to see mary's heart... it was really something to see someone's heart beating; the valves opening and closing, the rushing sound of blood and the visual to go along with it. that was pretty amazing.

after the doctor's appointment we headed off to the orchid for thai food.  mary had never had thai food, so i introduced her to my favorite thai dish, shrimp padd thai. she liked it, and i just can't get enough of it. i wanted to take a photo of the padd thai when it first came out, but i was so excited that i just started chowing down and forgot to take a picture until we were nearly done.

mary's shrimp padd thai



the 3-ring binder menus at the orchid. pictures! w00t!



then we headed off to the tattoo shop where cameras and camera phones are strictly verboten, so no pictures of the actual tattoo process, but both of my tattoos only took about 10 minutes, and mary's only took about 5. that's right kids, mary got a tattoo as well! we got the same tattoo.

that's mary on the left and me on the right. i know i said i was gonna get my heart covered with a star, but i decided at the zero hour this morning at mary's house that i would get the heart fixed after all, just filled in solid black. mary called me day before yesterday and said she wanted to get the same star tattoo as me, so voila! as seen above. mary's is a smidge smaller than mine, but it's the same star. we're like sisters, mary & i.

and peek-a-boo: all those wires are from the holter monitor.

so now the grand total of tattoos: 6.



 

i kept saying "5 is enough. i'm done." 

sure.

tattoos. people either love them or hate them. people either have them, or they don't.

i have them. i have 5 of them. no, my parents aren't thrilled about it.

of all 5 tattoos, all are in places out of the view of the general public save for one. I have a small tattoo of a heart on the inside of my left wrist that i had inked 2 years ago on valentine's day. the heart had nothing to do with it being valentine's day; it was for other reasons, to remind me that my heart belonged to me and no one else. it was supposed to have been a solid red heart, but something went terribly awry when the artist went too deeply with the needles on the inside of the heart. if you know anything about tattoos, you know that the outline is always done first, and it's usually done twice with a very fine grouping of tattoo needles, usually between 2 and 5. the shading can be done with a larger group of needles, anywhere from 7 to somewhere around 15-20ish or so. i'm not really sure how large they can go.

about 2 days after i got the tattoo, a perfectly heart-shaped red scab came off of my tattoo. yeah, it was pretty grody but also it left only the outline of a heart. 

the outline, also done with too heavy a hand, is a little blown out, or blurred. you can see it a little closer-up here.

as you can see, there is residual ink in the middle, but only a small bit. the result has turned into what my mom calls my "heart-shaped ringworm", and what my friends have begun referring to as my "prison tat". i fully intended to go back and have it fixed as soon as it healed, but clearly i never followed through with that plan. i joked that although i got the tattoo to remind me that my heart belonged to me, my heart was telling me it was empty.

come on, it was only a joke!

i'm not going to have it fixed. i don't take color all that well. black is my best ink. this friday i'm having it covered with a small, solid black 5 pointed star, just big enough to cover all of the red. fortunately the scar tissue is minimal, and has left no raised scarring.

my friend mary is coming with me, and i'll make sure we have a camera to have the cover process fully photo-documented! i'll post photos of the new tattoo as soon as i get it!

 
yay for stars!