A break in the clouds today happily coincided with a half-day off work. My shutter finger has been majorly under-utilised of late so I popped into town and had a walk through the parks – I just needed to be outside, sans-umbrella and using a camera again (before I went totally bat-$h1t crazy)!
All taken with my Canon 5D MkII and 85mm f/1.8 lens
I’m giving you fair warning, this will probably be the least interesting blog post you will read all year, if I don’t write something soon though there’s a real danger of cobwebs forming over these pages! Even the photos are of boring things (although I kinda like photos of boring things).
It’s been raining a lot lately, hasn’t it. Every day this month actually. Every day since they declared a drought and banned us from using hosepipes. Every. Single. Day. Apart from the days when we’ve had hailstones. On the upside though – the clouds have looked amazing.
Big Plan update – there’s good news in that I have lots and lots of notes and ideas and pointers and scribbles and post-it notes and doodles, the bad news is that I’ve realised it’s going to involve a LOT of hard work to pull it all together – this quiet interlude is me retreating for a big run-up. Or maybe I’ll just keep running!
I now have a sort of portfolio on this site! Well, I’ve made a start, anyway – it should work on all browsers (even IE6 – imagine my surprise), all devices and any size screen – I like to be inclusive if nothing else!
I honeslty can’t think of anything else to say. I’m stuck.
I think I need to do this.
All photos taken with Pentax K1000 and Kodak Ektar 100 35mm film
As amazing as it is to experience all the pink, wonderful fluffiness of springtime blossom, the next best thing has got to be seeing all those green leaves take over those bleakly stark wintry branches.
Bringing the greenness into the home is always nice too.
Apparently green is the easiest colour for our eyes to look at – it’s slap-bang in the middle of the colour spectrum so maybe that’s why. I wonder if pigs can see green things?
Incidentally - all these photos were taken with my Pentax K1000. I LOVE this camera so much – I think it might my fave ever film camera – I learnt so much about the technicalities of photography through using it. It makes me wonder why I keep messing around with others all the time. I need to show it some love sometime soon – maybe take it on a trip somewhere nice.
Last night I was “busy” working on my computer, coding some things, writing some things, you know how it is. I wanted something to listen to and remebered Susannah’s mixtape she’d made. You should really spare a bit of time to listen to it, it’s fab – I discovered some great new sounds! I also discovered 8tracks.com which is a bit unfortunate as I ended up not doing much work at all (oops)!
So yes, I am now totally addicted to creating mixtapes. Here’s my first ever one! I hope you like it, I love all these songs so much…
Let me know if you’ve made any mixtapes, I’d love to listen to them!
As the four day weekend that accompanies Easter is now well and truly over I thought I would reminisce a bit more about my magical trip to Cornwall last month.
One of the cameras I took with me was my Fuji Instax Mini 25. It’s the most compact of all the instant cameras I have – almost pocket-sized (I have big pockets).
Look at this sweet little car – typically though, the one time I get the horizon spot on is when I was on a hill so it looks wonky anyway!
I quite like the softness of the images, but the colours and how it deals with depth of field is not quite as magical as my trusty old Polaroid.
Hope you’re having a lovely long weekend, be it Easter-y or otherwise. I had chocolate for breakfast so I’m happy! Did you get an Easter egg?
April showers are definitely the call of the day round these parts and they’re making me miss the freaky heatwave we had March – here’s a couple of Polaroids I found squirreled away from a couple of weeks ago. Each pack of original Polaroid 600 film I use is getting yellower and more ropey looking – there’s not much left either… one day soon I’ll be posting my very last shot. I may cry.
Photos taken with Polaroid SX-70, 600 edge-cut film and ND filter
I don’t have an iPhone so that means, up until a couple of days ago I didn’t have Instagram either. Now though it’s available for Android phones as well – that’s me!
It means I now get to join in with all the photo fun I’ve been witnessing from afar. I’ve tried so many different photo apps for my phone and whilst many of them have been very good, there’s something about the magical filters and fantastic user-interface of instagram that makes me very happy indeed.
Let me know your Instagram name if you’re on there, I’d love to follow you! My user name is angie _lemon.
PS – you see that one of me in a yellow t-shirt? Well here’s a word of advice for you; don’t ever wear a yellow tshirt if you’re visiting Ikea!
This little chap here is an Olympus Trip 500. For 99p it would have been rude not to buy it, don’t you think? A quick dusting off and a couple of new AA batteries and it was ready for it’s first photo session (for a long while, I suspect) on a sunny trip to Cornwall.
Loading the film, whilst not an entirely automatic process, is still very simple – none of that pushing in of buttons or pulling up on spindles; just plop it in, bring the leader bit of film to the opposite side and close the back – then it whirrs into action and is ready to go!
The Olympus Trip 500 is the most basic of this generation of 35mm point and shoot cameras (guessing late 80s/early 90s). It’s made entirely of plastic and very simple to use. It’s got a wide-ish 28mm fixed-focus lens which is a little soft (I don’t necessarily have a problem with the softness – I quite like it). PLEASE NOTE: It’s absolutely nothing like the iconic Olympus Trip 35 which takes amazingly sharp and beautifully exposed photographs.
Like I say, it’s very easy to use – the trickiest thing you have to remember is to open the little lens cover before you take a photo (or it won’t work). There’s a flash that goes off whenever it feels the need and it will even wind the film on to the next frame for you, so it really is trouble-free.
And the results? Well you can see for yourself that the vignetting in these photos is totally CRAZY – I’ve never seen anything like it! They must make the lenses from the same stuff they make front-door spy-holes from.
Normally I quite like a bit of black cornering, but this is much, much more than that – it seems to encroach all the way to the middle and gives the feeling of tunnel vision.
As these are cameras and not my children I guess I’m allowed to say that this isn’t one of my favourites (aren’t I)? Maybe if the photos were of something a bit more urban they would look more in keeping – I’m not sure there’s a scene in life gritty enough to handle this amount of vignette though!
What do you reckon – have I been a bit harsh? should I give it another try?
All photos taken with Olympus Trip 500 and Kodak ColorPlus 200 35mm film
Blogging has taught me something about myself; that I love to write. Little journeys; one tentative word in front of the another, before long I’m walking, running, skipping – I can travel in any direction, stop whenever I choose, or just keep going and going and going. It’s fun! Yes, I’m passionate about photography but the realisation that something as simple as a handful of words can be so powerful, well it leaves me a bit awestruck and dizzy – there’s so much potential in me, in you, in all of us – we just need it a way of recording and sharing. Leave me a comment if you have your own blog – I may not have seen it and I love discovering new people; new worlds.
With writing though there are time when all that white space can be a scary thing. When I feel like this I often find it’s easier to be given an assignment or restricted in some way – do you find that? Give me something to write about, something for the creeping ivy of my words to wrap themselves around, then just watch those words fly!
Hmm, I guess all this has been a round-about way of saying ‘hey, here’s something I’ve written for Lomography Magazine‘, it’s about shooting photos in square-format. Being given a subject to write about really sparks my imagination and this brought lots of memories flooding back!
a lovely (square) Cornish beach – taken with Zenith 80 and 120 film