Remembering Last Summer

So I finally took the film I'd used last summer in to be developed, and some of them turned out pretty good.



This is from my department's summer event at the Oregon Zoo, I don't remember what kind of monkey it is but I do remember that it's the habitat close to the naked mole rats & giraffes.



This one is also at the zoo and I think it turned out pretty well too.



This is a storage barn not far from our house that going to seed a bit, but I just love the building.



This is from a photo walk that a couple friend & I took in the rain up at the Portland Rose Test Gardens, the hazy effect was achieved by exhaling on the lens to fog it up and then taking a picture as it started to clear.

As for the rest of the pictures in the batch, well let's just say that I am the Queen of the underexposed & incorrectly focused. It's taken a few rolls for me to start to get what type of shots the Diana & Holga are good for, to remember to change the light & focal setting for each shot, and the different speeds of film.

Due to the fixed lens you really need to either get up close to your subject or photograph really large things. The other thing is that I either need to remember to use the flash when not in direct light or start using more sensitive film to compensate.

Finally developing 120mm is twice as expensive as 35mm, so I've picked up a Mini Diana & Blackbird Fly because it's so much cheaper to develop the film, the Mini Diana can take 24x17 pictures allowing you to double the number of shots you get off a roll, so it's far more cost effective for learning to use film. The Blackbird is one I'd seen and been interested in because it's a twin reflex, and you compose the shot by opening the flaps on the top & looking down into the camera. Here's what they look like...



cute huh?

World Wide Photo Walk Day!

Ok so a few months ago a friend talked me and some others into signing up for the Worldwide Photo Walk. I hadn't ever heard of it before and thought it could be interesting since due to the need to photograph my yarn and finished projects for use on Ravelry, I've been getting into it more. I even took a few hanks & projects to maybe photograph on things, kinda like a "yarn on the town" kind of thing.

I also brought along Diana & Holga, this was their first real trial run and I can't wait to see how the pictures come out, well if any of them really do. After the walk I took the exposed rolls to Blue Moon Camera & Machine, I got the pictures put on CD so I'm not stuck with envelopes of possibly not good pictures, plus it means I don't have to scan them and it's better for storage reasons.



To start the morning off we met up before the walk at the Stumptown in the Ace Hotel for coffee and pastries, then we walked down to the meet up spot in front of the gates into Chinatown for the group picture. I must say though it is a singularly eerie experience to walk around the downtown area in the early morning, because the streets are pretty much empty and there aren't that many cars out either. I'm so used to being down there in the evenings when everything is lit up, traffic is horrible, and there are crowds of people everywhere; to have it be pretty much still and quite was freakish.

It was a pretty big group of people that showed up, and it felt kind of weird because just about eveyone in the walk (save our mini group) had several thousand dollars worth of equipmant hanging from their necks. Here I was with 2 plastic cameras which together cost about $125 and my wonderful Canon Powershot A610 point & shoot, that is about 3 1/2 years ago.

I did have several people ask me the difference between Diana & Holga and since a true answer would have taken longer than I really wanted, I just said that one had black & white film and the other had color. Anyway after the group thing we all headed out, along this route...


View Laurie Excell's Portland Photowalk in a larger map



The first place of interest was the Classical Chinese Gardens, just wandering around the exterior provided a lot of opportunities because of all the detail work on the building. I had quite a bit of fun trying to get good pictures through the lattice work in the windows.



From there we walked down to Union Station also the site of the Night Ride last weekend. I must say that I really like style and detail work of this building. You know, I can appreiciate the cleanness, form, and functionality of modern building design but for me while it's beautiful, it just lacks a sense of warmth, class, and personality.



After wandering around the station for quite a while we started heading up towards the end walk site, I think was were all starting to get a little loopy that this point because we just started taking really random pics of each other rather than the scenery. We did eventually make it up to On Deck were I had a much needed Mojito that was really strong and I ended up pretty buzzed. The fact that I hadn't really eaten anything since morning or probably hydrated enough had nothing to do with it.

All in all it was a pretty fun day, and I'm kinda thinking about asking photographically inclined friends if they'd be interested in doing a photo walk in different parts of town once a month or so.

If you want to check out more of the pictures I posted all the digital ones on Flickr.

My Diana!

My friend J has gotten me interested in lomo photography. She got a Holga a few weeks ago, and it's a inexpensive plastic film camera, that uses 120 film, has a fixed lens, and is pretty much completely manual. She said that since the camera is, for lack of a better term cheaply made images are a little fuzzy and the cameras are prone to vignetting and light leaks, which can create unpredictable and very interesting effects.

This sounded really interesting so I started looking into them, and I picked up the book Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity by Michelle Bates. This book in my opinion is pretty great, it came out before the Diana was re-released so it focuses more on the Holga but it gives you the history of plastic cameras, goes into different models a bit, has a gallery of artist's photos, gives tips & mods, film types and qualities, composition, and film processing. Over all I think it's a pretty good intro to the toy camera world.

Diana cameras came out in the 60's and was one of the first plastic cameras on the market in the West, and was a way for photography students to learn the basics of camera operation and composition without having to sink a whole lot of cash into it. Unfortunately they were discontinued in the 70's, but the Holga filled the empty space when they were released in 1982.

Since I'm lucky enough to be coming into the plastic camera community with brand new Dianas as well as Holgas on the market, I had a pretty tough choice to make. I spent a couple of weeks looking at them and ultimately went with the Diana because it seems to be the more versatile of the two with regards to light settings, focal distance, and available accessories. I'm probably going to end up with one of each though, because of the different quirks and qualities they each have.

Anyway I went with the F+ kit because it had the flash, the kit also included 2 masks for different picture sizes, a pretty wide range of plastic colored filters to put in the flash, lens cap, hot shoe adapter, and a book that's all about the Diana (I haven't started it yet though). There is a Deluxe Kit that has ALL of the Diana accessories that I know of but since I'm just getting started with it I didn't want to spend that much on it.

I also picked up some B & W film and plan on taking my first pictures tomorrow at the WWKIP I'm going to.