I got out of bed at 4:30 to catch a bus to South Seattle in time for the sunrise and Murphy’s law did it’s thing: the morning was fully overcast as daylight came. Mostly undeterred, I shot 22 or so frames of the area. Here are a few I liked.
Nikon F3, Series E 50mm/f1.8, Ilford HP5+. Scans done by Omega Photo, numbered by frame number.
A bible should be filled with food crumbs, ink stains and creased pages.
Ilford XP2 Super. I like this film a lot, but it just doesn’t have the nice grain and tone of the HP5+.
All except for the beer-and-chips shot are from a day a few weeks ago when we spent the summer day helping Alicia get started painting her and Jon’s house (while Jon was on a business trip in Alaska–surprise Jon!). Don’t get me wrong, we did stay well nourished and hydrated while painting. A watermelon fight also took place, but I didn’t get any pictures of it; turns out it’s difficult to get good action portraits while dodging flying pieces of watermelon.
Overheard at the boxing gym today, coach to a newcomer who was struggling to get good power in his left jab:
“Don’t reach in man, step in. You got nothin’ if you just reachin’.”
Here are some more color shots–same old color film, same real nice slightly reddish vintage tones. I saved one roll of it for a special occasion, and I’m going to buy some film this week to sock away for a few years down the road. Nikon F3, e-series 50mm; no photoshopping or cropping.
The way a soccer player celebrates a game-winning goal has to be one of the greatest things ever, whether Saturday morning pickup or the World Cup final. Iniesta looked like a little kid after he scored the goal today*. Picture a child one sunny afternoon celebrating a backyard goal in London or Guatemala or Seattle or wherever else; it’s just so honest, pure and joyful.
The same goes for the moment of a loss–a missed shot or a bumbled save. Straight up pure sadness, dejection and disappointment show their full colors. Again in that moment the pro athlete is no different than the little heartbroken child.
In these greatest moments we’re all like children in wonder and feeling. That means something and is not small.
We all should take this to heart more often.
—
*For when I can’t remember why that means anything special: the ’10 World Cup final was today, Spain vs. Netherlands, and Iniesta put the ball in the net in the 26th minute of stoppage time for the win for Spain. VIVA ESPANA VIVA VIVA LA FURIA ROJA!!!!
By the way, Iniesta’s tank top writing is a tribute to a fellow Spanish soccer player who died of a heart attack not too long ago.
If a picture doesn’t speak for itself than words won’t either.
This shot fits:
–and I’m paid hourly.
Spain’s got this.
I mean it, and I’m done writing now.
Graduation gift-money + selling math textbooks –> new old-camera owner and thank-you notes aplenty, and sad feelings of having betrayed my old standby math book.
I’ll miss you, oh antiquated 3rd edition Taylor and Mann calculus text.
Six important things she does:
1. accept 35mm film
2. aperture priority mode
3. meter light
4. time things (12 seconds, namely)
5. battle-mace duty in case somebody thinks they’d like have her, or other things
6. exposure lock
Six important things she doesn’t do:
1. shutter speed priority mode
2. automatic mode
3. auto focus
4. kill batteries (battery life measured in years of use…let’s see a dSLR do that)
5. exposure bracketing
6. tempt me to ruin moments by snapping off eighteen frames when one is perfect.
“Bess,” maybe?
(shot with my digital camera. odd) It turns out that if you let color film sit around for 5 or 6 years, it makes for real neat vintage colors. Old film makes old-esque pictures, cool eh?
Coincidentally, pops gave me a handful of old film the other day, leftover from when he shot a friend’s wedding.
Nikon F3, Nikkor 50mm f1.4, and Fujicolor Super HQ 100.
I burned up the first roll just goofing around in the front and back yard; the second was the progress-keeper of project lets-paint-alicia-and-jon’s-house-while-jon’s-out-of-town (Alicia and Jon being my older siblings, one an “in-law”). I like shooting color, but it seems easier to say things with black and white shots. Different strokes for different days and lighting and things, I guess.
Beyond the nice ones here, most all of the shots on these two rolls were horizontal and I have no clue why.
That’s my new (and likely semi-permanent) favorite phrase.
This how it came about. We were sitting eating hamburgers and salads, and I was reading the backside label on the bottle of Newman’s own Light Honey Mustard dressing.
It went like this:
The Great Salad Dressing Balloon Race. An armada of balloons loaded with Light Honey Mustard. The starters gun – Bazoombah! They all rise majestically into the air. Newman’s Own Balloon, with fewer calories, more taste, and secretly propelled by charity, flies faster than Kraft and further than Wishbone. First across. First on the ground. El Piloto quaffs much quaffs of Newman’s Own Light Honey Mustard in victory. A medium light Italian starlet, daughter of Butch Cassidini, named Bitch Cassidini, leaps into the balloon basked, kisses Piloto, her lips smeared with Newman’s Own Light, she murmurs, “You taste of Sicily, of Vesuvius, of Naples, baby,” and patting his fanny she whispers, “and no fat.”
–the ingredients list is after that, followed by the nutrition information. That is nuts! It’s slightly vulgar and very odd. It’s seriously gutsy and awesome marketing. Naturally I then read the backside label on the bottle of Newman’s Own Ranch Dressing:
LEGEND: When Butch Cassidy got zapped in Bolivia circa 1911 by the local cavalry, he had a revolver in his hand, six peso in his pocket, and a recipe for Ranch Dressing in his safe deposit box which was later given to me in reverence of the motion picture and in return for a percentage of the gross. On the back of this recipe in Butch’s own hand was writ: This stuff is so good it ought to be outlawed.
Again, awesome marketing.
After a bit of talk and laughing and some mild arguing, this happened:
David (me): “and that marketing director had to stamp it off, and be like ‘yeah, put that on a label-
Jason (my brother) finished the sentence: -baby.”
And so it was made: put that on a label, baby.
That’s my new line; I think I’m going to keep it for a while too.
Ok…I’ve resisted a long time. I have not wanted to be one of those harking naffs who writes a really boring several paragraphs every day about every day. Well here are lots of paragraphs about today, because today was nuts.
1. World Cup:
-Tim Howard, you are incredible. Past making boss saves, the one corner at the end, when the other keep jumped up to punch it and his HAND was just barely higher than your HEAD. That is awesome. To the rest of the boys in red, white and blue: you rock. Way to represent your country to the world, what an incredible run. I can’t say it any better than a radio announcer did: “there is nothing left. Those boys left everything they had on the field.”
2. My little sister:
She’s in Texas right now for the annual National Jumprope Tournament, she spent all of yesterday puking her guts out and her 4 person team took first place in their age bracket today. Like…what? How does that work? How is that humanly possible? She will be on ESPN competing against all other 4 person teams for the Grand Champion title.
Dear Beth: go hit your routine tomorrow like you never have before. Go hit it in the teeth with a big chair so hard, swing for the fences and show’em what you’ve got.
(no photo can capture the awesomeness here, so no photo here shall be)
3. Ham Radio:
After one evening (6+ hours) and one morning (2+ hours) of intense strong-coffee-aided studying of radio, I passed the FCC General Class Amateur Radio exam (lots of capital letters there). Jason and my pops did the same. We can now use all VHF/UHF bands and almost (there are, like, two tiny restrictions) all HF bands. “HF” means wavelengths from 10 to 160 meters. That’s some long waves. With a bit of practice, that means free (well…after buying a radio. Ouch.) and cooler-than-skype worldwide communication with friends and family.
It’s also a good excuse to, someday when I have the pickup I’ll go offroad-camping-exploring in, have a wicked awesome radio on the dash and a nice big antenna swaying from the back bumper.
4. “You can put that on the label, baby.”
(see the post above this one)
What a day.
Edit:
…and I just now (10:30pm) discovered a better way to slice cheese. No joke.
Pre-post note #1:
It’s a bit late to finish it now, but I’m working on writing/editing what I think about the “best” photo(s) I will ever take in my life. Hopefully this weekend I’ll have it coherently together.
Pre-post note #2:
These are the last shots I’ll be taking with Dad’s Nikkormat; hello Nikon F3 :D. Dear new camera: I hope you and I will do lots together and I appreciate that you double as a battle mace when I unlatch one side of your neck strap.
I decided to try Ilford’s C-41 400 film (so I can get it processed for…*drumroll*…cheaper. notice a trend?), XP2 Super. I like it, and when I finally get access to a good scanner, I’ll put it up against the non-C-41 (HP5+) shots I’ve got and see what differences there are.
This roll is the best photography I’ve done. I could be wrong about that..time may tell (do I hope it will in fact tell? I’m not sure). Here’s something odd though: I was convinced that one particular frame was the single best picture I’d taken, ever. Like, no doubting at all, I knew this. It wasn’t…it flopped. It flopped really badly. Composition, focus, aperture setting and all the works. It’s frustrating, but I can’t bring myself to be too cranky, considering how well so many other shots came through. Uncorrelated to that, I pulled my act together and numbered the scans by frame # finally.
Without more ado, here’re eight shots I feel good about:
Two things I hate:
1. Hurtful words; straight up my friend, I hate these.
2. “What could’ve been;” the quotation marks are important here…I have never seen good of any form come from “what could’ve been,” and I know a lot of bad of all sorts that’s come from it.
Two pieces of wisdom from a dayhike to Camp Muir:
1. Put on sunblock the second time. Always; period.
2. As calories begin to seem positively delicious entirely because they simply are calories, so does any/all food begin to seem positively delicious. Finishing a long hike at 5:00pm = hello you beautiful lukewarm Burger King Sausage Biscuit that I left on the dashboard 11 hours prior. Mmmmmm.
Two aspirations:
1. Have a porch and make real nice wooden chairs for it.
2. Tend a small garden, and keep a planter box (for the aforenoted porch) of flowers; I think they’d be Carnations.