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!

My annual year end soapbox rant... and a photo mosaic

This is a little earlier than I usually do this, but seeing as we're leaving tomorrow morning for 'Nam, and not coming back till 2013, I guess this will be my final post for the year.

We're in the midst of a season of gluttony and overindulgent consumerism, and while we toss away unfathomable amounts of money on meaningless trinkets and junk, I'm hoping these few words can serve as a reminder that there are many struggling folks that could use a helping hand... whether that's a donation to a food bank or charity providing services for the needy, or volunteering to help out at whatever social agency you see fit, I'm hoping that we can all find the time to think of those beyond our immediate circles, and give back to society for all that it provides for us.

For my part, I chose to do something that has significant meaning on a personal level. A little context: this time of year always brings back emotional memories of my childhood - I LOVED this time of year, but for reasons entirely different than the average middle class child. We were poorer than poor (I remember living in a house that was so badly insulated, the front door would freeze shut from the inside, and we had to chip the ice off with a cleaver just to get out). So rather than gifts of toys and other fun things, we were told at a young age that we were too old for money wasters like that. They simply could not afford them, and rather than sugar coat the reality of our situation, they told us like it was. And so while we did not receive much in the way of fun and entertaining gifts, I still LOVED the fact that catalogs and flyers of all the latest cool toys and games would be printed and delivered with the papers. I remember staring at each and every page of these toys for weeks on end, imagining how much fun they'd be to play with. And as sad as that sounds, that truly was satisfying, because that was the best we could make of the cards we'd been dealt. So this year, we decided to buy up a bunch of toys to donate, hoping that some children in similar circumstances to that of my youth won't have to spend weeks looking at toy catalogs, dreaming of what it'd be like to have something for himself.

If you've read this far, I plead with you to take a few minutes and do something that has meaning to you for those in need. That would be better than any 'trinket' or 'gift' you could get me.

With that, I want to leave you with two things: 1) a mosaic of my year in photography, and 2) wishes for a wonderful holiday season filled with the love of friends and family, good food, and as much drink as you can handle without regretting it the next morning. Cheers!

-George

Confessions of a Cameraholic - pt. 2

I ran a test roll of Ilford XP2 Super 400 through the Pentax 6x7 last weekend. I'm quite pleased with the results - the 105mm f/2.4 lens is killer. Not quite sold on the 165mm yet, but I did only shoot a couple things indoors with it. Can't wait to try this lens outdoors for some portraits. Who wants to come for a portrait session? Promise I'll do my best to not make you look fat.

We leave for Vietnam in just over 72 hours. Shiat, I have a lot of stuff left to do before then. Someone please find me that time stopping sub-weapon from Castlevania.

Confessions of a Camera-holic

I've officially lost my mind. I bought my 30th camera this week (25th film one at that). This is my new (to me) Asahi Pentax 6x7 medium format SLR, with 105mm f/2.4 and 165mm f/2.8 lenses). It's a beauty - I'm going to borrow a description from that Chinese newspaper/ The Onion's declaration of Kim Jong Un as Sexiest Man Alive - and say that this beast is 'Devastatingly Handsome.' You don't get a true sense of scale from looking at these photos but it's a tank, weighing in at over 5.5lbs (and a bit heavier when mounted with the 165mm f/2.8 lens). When the shutter is fired, the mirror slap sound is like cocking a shotgun on steroids. Oh the glorious photo adventures we will go on.