The Third Act

October 29th Pinhole workshop

Well, I had a great group here to Baba Yaga's house for a little Pinhole worshop yesterday.  The weather was awesome and the group was interested and enthusiastic.  I'm still learning my way through the experience of leading a class, directing activity and doing my best at (not always successful) trouble shooting.  Perhaps I need to do such things more often.  It was fun for me, however, and I love being a pinhole evangelist!! It's such an awesome photographic technique and it never fails to inspire and delight me.  I'm hoping that some of my participants get the bug too!

 

 

explaining one of my cyanotype pieces that incorporates a pinhole negative and multiple old family negative strips.

 

demonstrating our "cameras" for the day and how they work!

 

I think I was calling to Avery at this point...who, as it so happened, was for the most part VERY well behaved in the situation.

 

participants scoping out vignettes for their paper negatives.

 

mother/daughter duo working on a picture together (prop courtesy of the household!)

 

 

 

'RoidWeek 2016

Every May and October, there's a group on Flickr that hosts 'RoidWeek, in which all those participating make pictures using their instant cameras, uploading them to the group page.  It used to be that only Polaroid made cameras that used instant film, but in recent years Fuji and Lomo have also come on the scene with Instax and Lomo'Instant.  Any image can be contributed as long as it's been taken with an instant camera.

Perhaps my favorite instant camera is my Spectra.  Polaroid stopped film production several years ago and although The Impossible Project has developed their own product to fit these Polaroid cameras, it's too pricey for my budget (yes, gone are the days of well under $10 a box film).  So, that being the case I don't use my Spectra or 600 instant cameras.  Sad to say, even Fuji has discontinued making pack peel apart (as opposed to integral) film for the Polaroid cameras that use it.  When I got wind of this two or three years ago, I laid in a stock of the 3000b film and typically break it out only at the realization it's 'RoidWeek, or if I have some inspiration for the goops.  Goops are the backs of the print that gets peeled off...the trash that actually contains another image, complete with texture and often solarization.  When using the 3000b film, the my finished image is more often based on the goop rather than the positive print.

This week was no exception and I loaded up my Automatic 100 and have been making images every day to play along.  It's been fun and reminds me of my appreciation for this camera and how I use it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Busy-ness...

For the past ten days or so, I seem to have gotten myself into a socially busy mode.  I'm almost never busy...socially.  I'm not typically someone who has to "check my calendar" and get back to you. But there were some scheduled activities, that coincided with some weather events which pushed me into experimenting with spontaneity and voila, things change.

I had traveled up to DC to see a show the weekend before last.  After spending the night up north and coming home to no power (heavy rains and wind were the culprits for the outage), reaching out with my laments on social media and getting responses that spurred my imagination, I ended up turning around the next day for another road trip.  I packed up a bag quickly (I pretty much never just "throw a change of clothes" together), moved through the process of letting my neighbors know, locking up the house and putting Avery in the car, without engaging my thinking (i.e. negating) mind.  Soon enough we were cruising down highway 64 and heading to Tennessee.

I've never been to Tennessee.  In fact, I've never been to a lot of places within several hundred miles, that I thought I'd get to after moving to Virginia...over two years ago.  It's not that I couldn't have arranged one of many road trips.  It's that I would always throw up obstacles.  I'm an organized person, to a degree that is.  I like order and method, and I suppose there is a certain amount of self imposed responsibility that I tend to carry a bit far.  Add to that an anxious nature and it's easy to say that staying home is what I need to do.  

So...this time, I figured, was the moment to push through my obstacle creating habits.  My roofers had to cancel the work that day and the only other thing on the books was a massage therapy appointment that I could easily reschedule.  In this phase of my life, my schedule is still very flexible.  In many ways, I look forward to the day that that's not so much the case, but right now I have a huge window of opportunity to create new experiences.  I actually grabbed at this for once.

The weather was stunningly clear and mild, which made for a lovely drive.  It was a long haul, but I handled it well (this wasn't the first time for me to drive over four hundred miles alone...well, Avery was with me, but, you know...).  Avery wasn't so thrilled, but she tolerated the travels and seemed unaffected after hopping out of the car.  Now, this isn't to say that any number of times before the halfway mark, I just thought it would be more comfortable to turn around.  There was a significant level of doubt and second guessing and thinking that I really didn't want to be doing what I was doing.  Typically, I like to go towards what feels good, but there are times in my life that moving into and through discomfort can be useful.  I felt that this was one of those cases.  Besides, my friend I was heading to visit in Tennessee and I have known each other through Flickr for over ten years and had been talking about visiting for quite a while.  I knew it was time.

It was a lovely visit and a great experience for me.  Nothing quite like meeting new (in person)  people and expanding experiences.  I'm glad I took the plunge!  After coming home, it was nice to settle in again, especially since I had power.  The next day my wood got delivered and my chimney got gone over and my wood stove can be used with confidence.  To top everything off, just this past weekend on Saturday there was a day long dojo event at one of our members' farm with cider making and weapons practice, although I chose to simply wield my cameras this time.  The next day I volunteered a fund raising event here in town which put me in the midst of many strangers and it was actually quite enjoyable.

Now I'm settled back in and ready to stay home for a while.  The garden is needing more cutting back and cleaning up.  Things are still growing, but with less vigor because of diminishing light.  There are photo encaustics to be create and a workshop to prepare.  I'm also thinking of the holidays and if I need to make more travel arrangements. It's true, though...there's no place like home.

 

 

 

Adventures...

Yes, I've had a few adventures recently.  But I have stuff to do away from the computer today.  Soooo...here are a few pics...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ten years...and counting...

I was perusing a set of photos on my Flickr (well, I guess they're now called albums not sets).  I will admit to reverting to nostalgia when I'm feeling tired or sore or anxious.  Somehow seeing the beauty of the past is a balm...maybe it's a strange mixture of loss and hope.  My intent is to motivate myself to create beauty and value in this moment, but there is always a risk that I'll slip into a  less than constructive mindset.  

This time when I felt myself teetering, I decided to start making current additions to this album.  The fabric of my life didn't completely unravel just because I got divorced and made hard choices in response.  If anything, a new panel was sewn on...attached.  Perhaps I should change the title of this to "the quilt of my life"...or something to that effect.

My mundane use of photography is to document and catalog personal experience.  And while there might be a tendency for some people to erase the past when life is painfully disrupted (granted, there are probably situations in which that would be the wisest choice), it's helpful for me to be able to review and, as I've written before, practice gratitude.  

Ah, but I digress.  Back to my "life review/viewing"...  Because I'm me, I couldn't just start adding current images to this album.  No...I had to go back and take up where I left off!  So...back to 2010 I went and have spent a number of hours of the past few days, building up this collection of images.  It was interesting to note what I chose to add now.  I would say my choices have become much more broad, as to what I felt constituted the overall contributions to what makes my life what it is.  This current effort includes a lot of places that make me feel whole, as opposed to just people and things that I do.

This album starts ten years ago...in 2006.