The New Post

Back in June I was fortunate to wake up one morning, log on to the internet with my PPP dial-up TRUMPET WinSOCK pipe and find a Nikon Coolscan V ED on eBay for a decent price from a seller I’d dealt with a number of times in the past. I have been using it for a bit now and it only has one minor issue but, specifics aside, I have scanned at least 300 or so frames with it wondering why I bought it at all since I’ve scarely transmitted any of these bits to this wonderful and festive environment and by that I guess I mean the webernet, not just this bloggery. Somehow I have not been as enthusiastic about it all as I expected to be. Some of this is probably due to the usual fun (;wackel) factors of gear problems none of which I can afford to fix properly (promise I won’t whine long) and seeing the varying results of my attempts to compensate for focus and shutter problems does not always give me the encourangement I might like. Then I post a stupid thing to test my blog and in response people say nice things and it totally changes everything.

So I have been working up the courage and playing with the devices a bit, dropping things on dA, Facebook, and flickr in some random ways. But also, I kind of want to ramble. So let’s get to it.

Let’s pretend it is the summer of 2008 and ladies are nice.

In the backyard of my grandparents home we sat in the grass for a while. It was Canada day.

Yep.

Some good scratching going on. In this shot actually you can see the problem with the scanner. Guess it was too much to ask that one thing I bought ever worked properly.

My nephew and his grandma. Figure that one out, right?

I think that is the longest I’ve seen his hair before. He has gotten this under control recently, I am happy to report.

I’m still not sure what I was doing here. I think I just really like bricks.

We should build more castles.

Sorry, kids. I am self-taught at photography but one day I will get to college and learn how to focus. This is the balcony outside my apartment. Actually, to ruin my amazing sense of humor, the focus is bang on (at least where I wanted it) but the Zeiss 50/1.4 is a little soft wide open, the contrast drops off significantly below 2.8 although hey try doing this with an ASPH…

His shirt ended up looking so strange here. I’m lovin’ it. ;]

When I make my portfolio I won’t neglect to mention that I specialize in shoulder photography.

I don’t know what it is but I still find scooters the most irresistible subjects to be personified.

Somewhere inside I want to be good at these. Practise makes perfect.

It looks like this when I take my glasses off.

Geez, dust your elbow off, Beardy.

The beers are good as ever.

Erotic beer photography. Beerotica. And Leica straps.

It seems there may have been some dispute as to the contents of that glass. Odds are that Kevin was putting something like salt and pepper, hot sauce and french fries into someones nearly empty beer and then challenging everyone to drink it. In these scenarios it is impossible to convince anyone to actually drink that horrible shit and he ends up drinking it himself once he feels guilty enough for having ruined the remains of a beer. Pretty sure that’s exactly what happened this time. He manages to pretend that it tasted just great too.

Beardy is congratulating me. I suggested that we complain about the length of time it took for our food to arrive. Not always the most noble suggestion. The manager visited the table to apologize. He seemed very sincere and as recompense he brought us a massive plate with samples of every dessert on the menu.

The elevator at work.  We went back to finish some work still waiting.

Randy likes to point out that he has Leica glass too. This has to be the focus assist because I figure the flash would be way too bright but I’m really not sure. Caught some flare. Too cute.

Later that week we went to Las Margaritas to enjoy the authentic Mexican cuisine. After dinner we asked for a round of tequila but didn’t know what to order. The waitress asked her husband and she brought his favourite. I have never been a tequila drinker and don’t know how to appreciate it well but I was surprised by how good it was.

Looks like it also affected Kevin well.

Okay, that covers one roll that happened over a year ago. It was Tri-X +1. Fortunately (or not) between then and now I didn’t shoot much because the absence of a darkroom from my life took its toll. That was kind of fun. I think I will do this again.