Mine, all mine

Well, soon. Not this one exactly, either. Taller and red. But you get the idea.

Circus of the network vampires!

This is part of my senior thesis... I'm doing the prints in palladium... this is just a scan, palladium doesn't translate well in the digital world.

Man I need a break.

That is all for now

I was searching for some legal documents

My bike got stolen on Wednesday. Its a double-edged sword, since I had been planning on getting a new one, but I had also been planning on selling the old one to help pay for the new one. Now I'm just getting a new one. Actually, more likely an old one- specifically my dad's old Raleigh. My parents will probably FedEx it up, and I'll replace the few parts it needs replaced to get it rideable, and I'll customize it as time progresses.

Seasons don't fear the reaper

I finally got the Minox working

that my Uncle (the same one whose inheritance afforded me a Samsung GX-10 and an Epson V750) had sent me a few years ago. At the time I was pretty sure it was broken, since the shutter didn't move, and I couldn't tell if that was because it was broken or because the shutter was linked to the light meter (he also sent me a Yashica Electro GSN, which defaulted to 1/500 of a second shutter speed if the light meter wasn't working). I put it on the back burner for a bit, since it wasn't going to help me for the last year or so of photo classes, and now that I'm on co-op, and had some time to do some research, found out that it was most likely in need of a good battery, nothing more. After spending 20 dollars on batteries (the 6 volt type that it used are no longer made, so I had to get 4 1.5 volt coins instead), it worked like a charm.

Here's the first image that I scanned from it. The saturation is insane (and I didn't play with that in photoshop either). The graininess, I'm pretty sure, is a product of the fact that I used expired Kodak 400VC, since the same graininess was apparent in images from the roll shot in full daylight, and that I shot similarly lit images with 800 speed Fuji that has less than half the visible grain.

Its probably the most fun I've had with a camera in a while. I can just be carefree with it, not give a shit in the slightest about technical details, just let it do the work.

Requiem For A Tower

My first day of co-op was pretty cool. Did some repackaging of prints for Store1026, but more importantly, got to start painting a faux-rug on their floor... unfortunately, didn't get to finish it, but here are some pics of the painting and what I would've finished it as if I had the time...



And yes I know, I misspelled Salisbury.

A Taproot Orange

Nix the post three posts ago- The Fuji Instax 200 is available in the Lomography site. It costs as much as the Instax 25, but it looks a bit more user-friendly, and less obtrusive (though I have to admit the goofy orange color would probably make a friendlier street shooter). Plus the resulting image is slightly larger than the 25. I just hope they don't sell out before I get the money.

I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus

There are few things in the world as satisfying as a good artichoke.

Who Knew

I didn't, I assure you. I got an A in Junior Project. From Andrea. I thought she didn't even believe in A's, much less giving them to me. Man, thats a mindtrip and a half. Feels good, though. I'd call mom and dad, but its way too late. or way too early. one of those. either way, my GPA is probably securely above a 3.08 once its all accumulated.

I send pictures through the mail of buried treasure and humpback whales to famous people I do not know

Add this to my camera wish-list:



Its a fuji Instax Mini 25, which is an instant-film type camera, much like polaroid, only polaroid has just discontinued their film production- Fuji hasn't. The images aren't as large as polaroids, but looking around the internet and people's results, they produce great color saturation and clarity. A suitable substitute in my eyes. Plus the film is cheaper.

Iiiits The Muppeeeet Shooooow

Well there's lots of smart ideas in books I've never read

This is part of my final series for Junior Project. 12 palladium and kallitype prints that have been pinned to a board and will be placed in a shadow box. The concept stems from the idea that the onion, as an object, was considered a symbol of protection against the evil eye. So I found other symbols (mostly hand gestures) and juxtaposed them amongst eyes- eeeeeevil eyes.

Lou Pai is in Hawaii with 350 million in the bank

So I've watched "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room" and man, the way they did it astounds me... they booked profits for things that would happen, not that did....

Anyway, I dunno if its guilt over getting a new DSLR and liking it (I believed that digital would be the death of film, and still kinda do...) or because I've finally come to believe like most people that consumerism will make me happy, but I've found a handful of cameras on www.lomography.com that I really want.

The Bulldog field camera: a build-it-yourself field camera, costs a quarter as much as most of the leading brands, which means I can get it sooner... http://shop.lomography.com/bulldog/


The Dalek Supersampler: its the only reason I could conceive of buying 35mm anymore... it shoots 4 consecutive negatives in one frame, which I think has some majorly cool implications. http://shop.lomography.com/dalek/


The Red & Gold Seagull: Well, its a magnificent TLR, and its just plain sexy besides that. http://shop.lomography.com/seagull/


The Diana F+: This is it. The mother of all toy cameras, and its the one I first cut my teeth on in the toy-camera world. Dimes to donuts, a Diana beats a Holga any day. And this one has all kinds of nice features that the original didn't. http://www.lomography.com/diana/diana-f-camera


Yeah, so if you feel like alleviating my guilt over getting a new DSLR or fueling my materialistic inner desires, let me know, 'cuz these things ain't paying for themselves.


Oh yeah, and here's a better version of the image from the last post, coated in wax:

Guess I'm not the fighting kind

So the image is really low quality, my printer is out of ink and its only a low-end HP, but this is an idea I've got bumping around my head for senior thesis. Its a digital print on tracing paper. My idea is about commodity/disposable art.


The project would be highly reliant on digital photo processing because the digital means of photography has drastically changed how we take pictures. Images used to be exclusively film-based, and so each image, whether it was shot with care or not, was a permanent thing. The negative was saved, and a lot of people today have boxes of negatives in their attics or garages that are slowly moldering away in the shadow of digital imagery. So instead of making images that are shot with precision and care and printed with the same level of precision, the project would involve images that are shot entirely off the cuff, snapshots, and would be printed on cheap paper and trinkets, things that people take and then forget or lose, and don't trouble themselves over. Moreover, to carry this idea of disposability to the maximum, all of the images would be simply given away at the end of the anticipated critique.

I Can't Kill

So yeah, its been a while since I updated, I've been busy, and when I'm not busy I've got nothing meaningful to put up here. Hopefully I'll put more up soon. My mom got some inheritance from her uncle, and she's allotted me a decent chunk of it, which I am going to use to buy:


A Samsung GX-10 DSLR

An Epson V750PRO Perfection film scanner

A carrying case for the camera (ok, not as stoked for that, and I couldn't find a bigger picture, but its pretty cool 'cuz its like a messenger bag, but for cameras, and all the cool kids will want one).

Plus some spare change for pizza.