A Fine Day For Some Film Fun

I put together a Gakkenflex TLR last night, and took it out for a spin today on a little photo adventure with James in the Ogden area of Calgary. The camera takes about 2 hours to assemble, and seems to be hit and miss when it comes to focussing (very difficult to nail), but it takes fairly interesting photos with pronounced vignetting and blurring as you go out from the centre.

All photos shot on Konica VX 400 (expired in 1993).





























I'll do a more in depth review next time, going skiing tomorrow, must sleep now. G'night!

The Film Developing Virgin, Deflowered.

I finally worked up the motivation to develop my own black and white film at home. I shot a roll of Neopan 1600 at the Hannah Georgas show this weekend at the Republik, and processed it last night with minimal problems - no spills, no burns, no chemicals splashing in my eye. Win! Sadly, the film came out extremely grainy and underexposed, even when pushed a stop. Ah well. I still like the results. It's like your first car - total piece of crap, but you still love it.















In case you're interested - this was Fuji Neopan 1600 (shot at 3200) developed in Ilfosol 3 at 1:9 dilution. 12 minutes at 22 degrees C. Continuous agitation for the first 1/2 min, then 5 second inversion/ agitation every 30 seconds after.

Hannah Georgas, Live at the Republik

If you don't know who Hannah Georgas is, that's okay. I didn't either until I saw a print ad for her show the day before. She's a Canadian based singer/songwriter type, and while those seem to be a $0.10/12, she has a certain sound reminiscent of Feist, with a bit of Amy Millan-ish vocals mixed in as well. I don't feel like writing a full on review of the show from last night - just know that it was pretty good as long as you remembered to check your masculinity at the door (it's a good thing I'm such a girly man and have no problems in this type of environment). A 'Three Inches of Blood' show, this was not.

I liked the Republik as a choice of venue, it was large enough that you weren't packed in like sardines, but small enough to have a very intimate feel. Me thinks I may be hitting up shows here more often, regardless of if I know the band or not.

Mach vs. Food - The Live Squid!

I'm a bit of a sucker for eating weird food. If it's weird, and somewhere in the world people eat it, I'm probably going to want to try it. So when we watched an episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, in which he goes to Korea and eats a live squid at a fish market, I immediately said "We HAVE to do that when we're in Seoul later this year!" And that's how, on a frosty winter morning in January, we ended up at the Noriyangjin Fish Market in Seoul Korea, picking a squid out of a bucket, and watching the thing squirm around in its death throes prior to entering the cavernous abyss known as our mouths. Watch the vids, and be grossed out. Cause it was actually kind of gross. Seriously. The tentacles squirm and sucker to everything (the serving tray, your chopsticks, the top of your mouth) for long after they've been chopped up.

La Tour Eiffel... and a couple asses

Okay, so this isn't the promised start of photos from Vietnam, but they are pictures. That's a start, right? Plus, there are two really nice asses for you to check out (totally SFW too). For the film nerds: all photos shot with the Holga 120N on Ilford XP2 Super 400.







See, told you there'd be some nice asses to look at:




And for good measure, here's a goat, a car, and my sis-in-law and nephew. How's that for a completely random collection of photos.








And for the math nerds: This is my 333rd post to this blog.

Back from 'Nam

We're back from our month long jaunt to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Korea - and only one of us got traveller's diarrhea. YAY! Except, it was me. So BOO! Anyways, it may be a case of exhaustion, but I can't seem to conjure up any words to convey the feelings and adventures we went through on this journey to my parent's birthplace. I also feel overwhelmed when looking through the 50+ gigs and 17 rolls of film that I shot while over there, that I can't even select a starting point with which to share with you guys. Hopefully in the next few days, I'll get that inspiration, and open the floodgates.

In the meantime, I wanted to share two quick photos with you. The first is one of my absolute favourites from this trip. It's a candid street shot of an older gentleman, having a smoke on a footstool in the old quarter in Hanoi. For me, what makes the photo remarkable is that I was literally in his face, and shot it without him even noticing I had a camera pointed at him from 2 feet away. Street photography is a genre that I haven't done much exploration of, so to capture a natural candid moment like this incognito feels so rewarding.



The second photo is pretty much the complete opposite. I bought a Leica M6 while I was in Seoul, Korea, and this was one of my first shots I took with it. The camera is fully manual (focus and exposure), and in my haste to get a shot off before the moment was gone, I completely and utterly failed to properly focus on the dude. I just can't get over how awesome this photo would've turned out had I nailed the focus. Sigh.



To end off this first entry of 2013, I wanted to say a belated Happy New Year to you all. Looking forward to catching up with everybody soon!