_my drop kick homage to Van Damme, c. 1990_

I was out jogging in the late afternoon today, when a fatass in a white Pontiac Sunfire gave me a drive by heckling. The bastard rolled down his window, squeezed his pudgy face out of it, and heckled me with some unintelligble high pitched yelling while he passed me. I slowed my pace for a second in confusion... I was slightly disoriented, and momentarily thought I had travelled to some alternate universe where obese men cruising the streets of suburbia in an old white Sunfire was considered cool. But alas, I regained my senses and realized HA - there IS NO.SUCH.UNIVERSE! Seriously, a Sunfire! The most pathetic excuse of a vehicle a man could ever drive. Google 'Is a sunfire' and see what the auto fill comes up with, and the page results for those autofills. He may as well have been wearing a dress, sporting a perm, and pounding Taylor Swift through the tinny speakers.

Sadly, I got over my confusion too late to chase the unlikely bully down and dropkick his car into oblivion, Van Damme Style. You know THE KICK, where JCVD jumps and spins and does the splits while connecting with a vicious back heel, and the victim's face does one of those slow motion mouth wiggles as teeth and spit fly in 3 different directions. Only, in this case, it would have been the Sunfire's radiator exploding into a fountain of green gatorade from the impact of my drop kick homage to Van Damme, c. 1990. Sorry Mr. Damme*, I let you down.

*Do you think he goes by Mr. Damme or Mr. Van Damme? Is Van a middle name, or an additional surname? Why didn't they teach us these important facts in school?

And in a completely unrelated matter, this is a photo I took of stuff . Good times.


Three overlapping exposures, taken with a Diana mini on Ilford XP2 Super 400 film.

Kodak Discontinues Colour Reversal Film Stocks

So Kodak has discontinued production of their remaining 3 colour reversal (slide) films as of yesterday. Seems like every day, there is some announcement of the demise of yet another treasured film product. One could almost make a drinking game of it: pound back a scotch neat every time Kodak discontinues a film stock. At least you'd drown your sorrows from the news at the same time.

While the last remaining E6 (slide film) processing lab in Calgary shuttered that part of it's operations last year, this news still makes me sad knowing that I only have limited stocks of the E100 series of Kodak slides left that I could cross process. I had some fun results with these films over the past couple years. They will be missed.

And yes, you know you're an old luddite with no life when you're at home on a Friday night lamenting the death of analog.

Transmission Incomplete

I recently heard someone ask the question, "Why would anybody shoot film?!"... The irony of this was that he was deciding on which framed print to buy... from a photographer who shot film. It was hard to restrain my derisive snort at his idiotic comment.

I shot the following series using my Diana Mini on 35mm Fuji Provia 100 in Budapest, Hungary. The Mini has a loose switch for bulb and N modes, and often moves to bulb without me knowing it. I have blown out many a shot as a result, but occasionally, a few do turn out kinda interesting. And as more and more folks pick up dSLRs and similar larger sensor digi cams to produce noise free tack sharp images of blah, I find myself increasingly drawn to the allure of flawed lo-fi analog imagery. I especially love the scratches, dust, and imperfections in the first shot.

...from the Red Deer Lodge

Bored. In Red Deer. Me wants go home. But until that happens, here's some toy camera work for your viewing pleasure. Shot as multiple overlapping exposures with a Diana Mini somewhere in Prague. Film scanned, then converted to B&W in lightroom. Click on them to see the enlarged versions (worth it).





-G