September 26
[Taken 16 Sept 2006 | Happy Birthday Grandma | Cleveland, OH]
I love you, Grandma. I am lucky to have you around so long. (I finished the shots from the party finally.)
Now... about the 4x5 film that I need to get developed. Apparently the only place in town that handled processing sheet (large format) film either went out of business or decided to no longer process large format film. So I now need to use the combined power of the internet and Google to find someplace anywhere that does. Too bad that the film negatives in question are color, otherwise I it would probably be easier to find the appropriate chemicals and do it myself.
September 24
[Taken 16 Sept 2006 | Leaf | Cleveland, OH]
I finally finished up work on the photos from the dance show (available here) and got started on the photos from Grandma's birthday celebration.
John and I took the beast (a.k.a. the Calumet field camera) out to the arboretum this morning while it was very briefly nice out. (Other then a few hours in the morning, it was gloomy and rainy pretty much most of the day.) Since I want to bring to Calumet to Cleveland to do some formal family portraits before and during my uncle's wedding, we thought it would be a good idea to get in a couple of practice runs with "real" film, as opposed to the 4x5 polaroid film that we have been using.
Loading the film for the Calumet was a pain in the butt. This isn't like loading a camera that takes "normal" film like 35mm film or even 120 film where you take the film spool that contains however many exposures, which is covered with some kind of protective coating so you can just pop the roll of film into your camera where ever you are. Oh no. Each exposure of 4x5 film is its own individual little sheet, and you have to slip each exposure into a nifty little contraption called a darkslide, which is basically a holder for the film that keeps it protected from the light until you want to take a picture, and that can hold two exposures at a time. (I have 8 darkslides for the calumet.) Because the 4x5 film is what it is, it has to be loaded into the darkslides under completely lightless conditions. As we lack an actual darkroom, I loaded up the darkslides with the 4x5 film while sitting in the walk-in closet in the master bath with the bathroom lights off, the bathroom door closed, the closet door closed, and a towel stuffed under the closet door for good measure.
John and I took two photos with the 4x5 film at the arboretum, and I have yet to drop off the darkslide at the photo shop to have it sent out for processing. I honestly have no idea how the nice photo people are going to handle it, but at least it isn't my problem at that point. I do hope that they remember to give me the darkslide back, though.
September 20
[Taken 9 Sept 2006 | Becky | Centerville, OH]
It was in the upper 70s and 80s when I was in Cleveland this weekend. I wore t-shirts and wished that I had brought pants that were a tad lighter then jeans. Today it is in the 40s and I am wearing a long-sleeved shirt and thinking that this weekend I need to put away all of my t-shirts, and bring the heavier clothing out of summer storage. Guess it is finally really fall.
Because I have been working longer hours then usual, work on the photos that I took at the studio on the 9th is going a lot slower then I would like it to… as is work on the photos that I took at Grandma's 90 th birthday celebration this past weekend. I confess have only managed to get as far as downloading those from the camera. With luck I will have the dance photos done by Friday so that I can start work on the family photos.
Grandma's party was very nice. I made her special yellow sunshine sponge cake – it wouldn't be a party without it – to bring as my contribution. (Thankfully the cake turned out well, as this can be a touchy recipe to make.) I got to spend time with relatives, some of whom I haven't seen in several years, and had a wonderful dinner.
I don't get to spend nearly enough time with my family these days, and I realized shortly before I drove up to Cleveland this weekend, that I had not been there since Gramps' funeral.
90 is an extremely respectable age, and Grandma is a very “good” 90. I hope that when I am her age, I am still able to live independently, and am as feisty as she is. While I can only hope that she continues to achieve extremely respectable ages, I know that time is limited and that I am very lucky to have had her around for as long as I have…
September 15
[Taken 9 Sept 2006 | Dharma | Centerville, OH]
I took this shot during the show at my dance teacher's studio last weekend. It was billed as a variety show, and a "celebration of movement", though still consisted largely of bellydance, or bellydance-fusion. Not that I am complaining... all of the performances were excellent. Some of the exceptions included traditional Hawaiian and Polynesian dance, a hip-hop duo, some extremely cool martial arts, and an interpretive piece under black lights. (I didn't even bother trying to photograph the blacklight piece. I don't even know what kind of an ISO I would have needed in order to get anything, and using a flash would have completely ruined the whole blacklight effect.)
Most of the past week has been taken up by going through and editing the 3+ Gigs worth of RAW photos that I took. That would be 3+ Gigs after I discovered that my 2G memory card had bad sections on it which meant that about half of the photos on it were corrupted. Irritating that. My largest memory card is no longer usable. I had this problem with bad sections before, and ended up completely reformatting the card, which I had hoped would take care of the problem. Apparently, this is not the case, and I will have to toss the card. Pity.
September 7
[Taken 15 August 2006 | The head of Clan Tynker, juggling near the merchants' row | Pennsic XXXV, Cooper's Lake, PA]
I am blowing off photo club tonight again. It is one of those classic "I enjoy it, but…" situations. And in my case, the "but" is that it lasts forever.
The meetings start (or rather, you are supposed to show up at) 7pm, and run until, well… last time I went, I left at about 10:30pm, and I left early. It looked like it could have continued for a while. On one hand, I can see why the meetings are so long, especially since they only happen once a month. You have to get through the socialization at the beginning, the club administration stuff, the special program, the snack break, the break time socialization, the photo contest(s) of the month, the critiques, and the socialization at the end of the meeting. Looking at that list, I am actually surprised that the club manages to get it all done in about 4 hours.
I think that I would go more often if the meetings were more frequent, and were shorter. I can do an hour, I can even do 2 hours, but 4 hours is a bit much…
Oh well. I am not even sure that I was getting out of the photo club what I wanted to get out of it anyway. (Even though that may sound like sour grapes, especially coming after a complaint about how long the meetings run, I assure you it isn't.) I suppose what I really want is more one-on-one and group critiques, more lessons, and actually learning how to improve my photography. Maybe I should just take a class at the community college.
I have been complaining a bit lately that I am feeling over scheduled… between dance on Mondays and Wednesdays, fencing on Tuesdays, and the new LARP every other Friday, I am starting to feel a wee bit burned out. It doesn't seem right to complain about being "too busy" with extracurriculars that I took on voluntarily, but there it is.
Since I have been feeling like I need to cut back on something, Photo Club is a natural first on the chopping block.
September 5
[Taken 17 July 2006 | Sunrise over the harbor, as seen from my hotel room | Wellington, NZ]
It is always hard to get back into the swing of work after a three day weekend. You have just enough time for your mind and body to get into the whole "vacation" mode, and then you are yanked back into the "work" mode.
What did I do with my long weekend? John and I painted the living room. One layer of primer and three layers of paint later, and the horrible, moss-green sponge treatment is no more. Now the living room is a nice, bright yellow. The room looks so much bigger then it did before. Bigger, and brighter, and all around better. The next stage of the Living Room Upgrade Project is to yank out the carpet and put in conpressed bamboo flooring, and to install built-in bookshelves around the fireplace.
Since Home Depot was having a special sale on paint this weekend, we also picked out stuff for the pending Kitchen Upgrade Project. This one entails painting the walls orange and the cabinets white.
I want to be the person who picks out the names for the colors on the paint chips. Seriously. Either that, or I want to kill the person who dreams up the color names. Because most of them make no sense whatsoever. For example, "gentle laughter". What kind of color is that? Turns out that is is a kind of light-brown-off-whitish shade in the Behr line of paints. Wouldn't it be easier to just use hex or rgb or cymk codes to designate different colors? It would... but I also suppose that I wouldn't be as "poetic" as the current mish-mash of a naming system. I guess it sounds more posh to say that one painted their room in "roasted butternut" with a "clotted cream" trim then to say that they painted the room in "#EFAE3C" with a "#F1E9DB" trim. Hee hee.
The mystery of the weekend – how did we get primer on the bottom of the frying pan?
I also noticed this afternoon that I still have smears of paint on the bottoms of my feet.