State of the (Photo) Nation

So it's been a while since I did one of these where I go over what camera's I've been using lately.

I am extremely sad to report that my beloved Canon AE-1 is no more. This winter it completely tanked on me and a camera repair guy informed me that its a fault of the circuitry that makes the AE-1 so popular (it was the first camera with a built in CPU, historic!!), and that it would cost and unholy amount to fix. So with that ends the chapter of my (well it was my dad's) first old camera that I've taken everywhere. It's been to more places than I've ever been and it died a distinguished, painless death of old age. RIP.

This, with the inexplicable sudden death of my Yashica Electro 35 in Japan, and the ridiculous, crippling light leak and light meter failure (meaning camera failure) of my Yashica ME-1 left the state of my photographic house in severe state of disarray.

However, with the total and utter failure of these machines also came the opportunity to re-collect junk and rebuild a set up different from my ADD induced, too-many-camera's-than-I-know-what-to-do-with set up that I previously possessed. I had the opportunity to start new with some camera's that required me to think differently and focus(pun!) on what I really wanted from a camera.

I decided to settle on the cheapest possible decent rangefinder I could find for a 35mm camera, and just one camera. I dont think it's a good idea to shoot with more than 2 different cameras of the same format because you become too fragmented and never get any good with any one of them. So after some searching I found a this little Yashica minister III (seriously, this is my 5th Yashica) for really cheap and It's been treating me real good. It's an eccentric little thing with the most bizzare light meter, but I've been having fun with it and I got some pictures I really like with it.



Medium format has always interested me and I've wanted a medium format camera more than anything. After month after month of looking for a medium format camera, I finally snagged this incredible Bronica ETRSi for a very decent deal. It shoots 4x5, which isnt my ideal situation (6x6) but after one roll I've had some pretty good results and I cant wait to see what I can get with some Ektar 100 in it.





Viva Film!

New Header

Like a friend said in the comments, I thought the old header was a bit jarring with its underlining. Instead of fixing it, I just though id make a new one.

Source Picture (from trincomalee, overlooking the ocean from Koneshwaran temple):


some photoshoppery later:


It's interesting that after switching the header to the right, I still kept the headers square or at least rectangular in shape. Dunno how it occurred to me that I could experiment with different shapes and forms and placement of text. This ones a bit safe but I like how it looks. Maybe ill do something more adventurous later on.

I think this header was partially inspired by penny shaped Daguerreotype photographs. I like how it was the style to set portraits in circular frames, I guess this is still seen as a natural fit considering how people vingette studio portraits in an ellipse around a portrait.



I've been watching this great show on BBC called genius of photography, and thats what got me into daguerreotype. I think you should check it out if you're even partially interested in photography, the production quality is fantastic.



The youtube channel contains all the episodes. I'm on episode 4 now. Episode 3 was really good, if you want to just get your feet wet.

Sunday Morning

New Header

It's been a while since I've had a new header, so I went ahead and made this one:



Using this source picture from the prayer tree in the Trinco

.

How does it look?

The details

When you live away from home for extended periods of time, the first things you start to forget are the little details: textures, the colors and how the little things are just slightly more different than anywhere else.
When you come back home after being gone for long, when you look out the the window from the plane and look down at the distant shapes of the paddy fields that grow bigger until you can start making out people and houses, it all starts flooding back.
By the time you're in a van on the way home from the airport, at Negombo street level, the sensory overload just starts overwhelming you- its like revenge for forgetting how things smell, and how personal space is scaled down relative to the country you're in, and how much out of sync you are with your surroundings.
These senses fill your jet-lagged, emotionally overworked brain and starts to fill you with worry: that things have changed and that everyone has left you behind.

And then you come home. Everything starts settling down and the familiar starts rushing back and you're rested enough to know where to file away the different sensations that are vying for your attention.

I go through the pictures I've taken during my time at home and I realize that half of them are wide aperture shots of little details. You always remember the shape of the house, nothing can make you forget that. But you start to forget the layout of the garden, the shape and the feel of the rock and how peaceful things are. I think I took these so I wouldnt forget those things.

Kites

Kite season was in full swing when I was back home in August. It drives the kids nuts and I feel like someone was always trying untangle a kite stuck on a lamp post/tree/roof near where we live.

Paddy fields are naturally the best places to fly kites because none of the aforementioned structures obstruct the kite's path. So anyone looking for the smarter kids on the block should look no further than at those flying kites in paddy fields.
My logic is flawless.



The picture however, is not.

I have ridiculous dogs

Prayer Tree

Koneswaram.

Trinco

Strange bunker like thing, built on some rocks on the ocean. I bet when the tide is low this thing is less peculiar.

Koneswaram Temple

Koneswaram Temple was, and still is an incredibly fascinating place.
I love the intricacy of the design of Hindu temples, it's like layers and layers of detailed carving that is the antithesis to the extremely minimal Buddhist temple exterior. Even the relatively busy looking gothic churches have strongly defined vertical lines, while a hindu temple (I feel) is built upon the vertical stacking of horizontal elements (like plates). Does that make any sense?

And the colours! I mean where else do you get colours like this?!

Trinco

A few shots from Trinco. It was in the mid thirty's and the sky as bright as ever, I cant believe the film didnt melt, let alone work.

A quick picture before I get back to work. It's been a crazy three months, if that counts as an excuse.



Uppuveli beach, trinco.

I love road bikes.

Jon Take his lens cap off.

The rose bush outside my house really blew up this spring.

These beautiful yellows are all I want.

A while a ago, I tried an experiment in Redscale film. I locked myself in the closet, pulled out a roll of expired kodak 100, cut it, reversed it, taped it back in and wound the film back into the canister. I shot the film with the light meter set at 25 asa, not 100.

Besides the one picture of joe below, I dont really know how the rest of the roll turned out. See, the person at the drugstore where I got this developed was completely befuddled by this film and didnt scan it straight, it seems. Like the picture below all the pictures are segmented, scanned in half frames. This was the only picture usable out of the whole lot. I'm going to have to scan these in my self to get all the pictures out of the roll, and I dont have a film scanner. So, uh, its going to be a while.

But aren't these colors wonderful?

Drugs: The Movie, The Movie: The Pictures

Film






Digital












Here are some pictures of my friends Drugs: Themoviethemovie. They wanted a few pictures to use and I suggested that I come along for one of their practice sessions so I could take some candid pictures of them, while they perform. I hate (and suck) at making people comfortable in posed situations so this worked well for me. I shot a bunch of film and a bunch of digital pictures and I've upload some for your viewing pleasure(hopefully).

I came up with the fairy light idea after getting pleasing results from the crane in this post. Does it come off as campy?

This is mostly the same people in this post

Flowers and Eyeballs.

Carnival

envy

Pitt had a spring carnival thing during the weekend with some sketchy rides and even sketchier(?) bands playing. It was fun and I rode all the rides till I couldnt walk straight. I also tasted the quintessential American fair ground classic the corndog. I say 'tasted' because I couldn't even finish the vile, over-priced hunk of processed-meat-wrapped-in-processed-corn-and-dunked-in-hot-oil-on-a-stick (can also be dipped in cheese for an extra $.50).

See, sometimes and I get and embrace the America attitude of excess when it comes to food (BACON FTW). But this is just too much- especially after being strapped into the rides you see above.