Film! Black and white! 120mm! New Mexico!

So as the title might imply, this post comes with a lot of joy and exclamation points. A while ago, I was given a medium format Yashica Mat 124g by someone (I think my aunt). Obtaining 120mm film isn't the easiest task anymore, but I decided that the New Mexico trip was definitely a time to break out this camera.

I checked out the camera, cleaned it up a little, but I took a gamble and didn't shoot a test roll. I knew I wouldn't be able to get it developed before I left on my trip, so it wasn't really going to help much anyway. I was also unable to get the battery compartment open, so I was going to have use my DSLR, charts and intuition for exposure. Since the trip, the exposed rolls have been sitting in a bag, waiting to be developed.

This weekend I finally managed to get all the needed pieces together to develop the black and white 120mm film at home! It's been about 8 years since I developed black and white film, but it was something that came back pretty easily. In college I would regularly spend time in the dark room on saturday night while others were partying - it was more fun most of the time, holed up in the little room with music and the chemicals and lack of other distractions making interesting pictures appear on paper.

I hadn't used 120mm film before or the stainless steel film reels, so I did end up with a few half-moon kinks in my film. I was having some problems keeping the paper backing away from the reel while feeding the film until I finally peeled the paper off completely- of course I practiced on a roll 10 times and had it down pat, but it's always different when you can't turn on the lights at all. Overall though, I'm pretty happy with how things turned out and I had a good time developing the film and listening to some somafm. I only developed one roll so far, but plan on doing more this week hopefully. This first roll is completely from the 700+ year old Gila Cliff Dwellings in Gila National Park in New Mexico. My scanner is limited, so I ended up building a little light box substitute thing and taking photos of the negatives with my DSLR and then inverting them to get the positive images (that's why some of the images aren't the best with weird edges and sometimes a little blurry). Hopefully I can make some prints at some point (I still need some enlarger pieces.)

unbored hands, october

Been staying busy with various projects in the spare moments that I have. There's something very necessary about being able to work and finish on projects in my free time.

a necklace made from some of the turquoise I picked up in Gallup, NM, chain and hemp cord

 

 wrist cuff

book safes

 book safe in action, holding handmade bracelets I purchased from a Native American woman in Gallup

..... semi-halloween/fall inspired nails, after cleaning

 I guess I actually made these a little white ago, but they are glow jars of various iterations. The one on the left also has glitter and a solar light.

10 on 10, October 2012

Skipped 10 on 10 last month because, well, 10 on 10's when I'm at work can be super challenging/boring (like #3 below, the carpet as I spun in my chair at my desk.) I pretty much can't take pictures during the day and if I do, they're of my little cubicle world or I'm busy and can't really do anything. So I've realized I can't really do consecutive hours on weekdays, but regardless, I do what I can and next month the 10th is a weekend day!

fall : the internet told me it would rain today! : spinning in my chair : decor at lunch : walking, still no rain : bussing home : walking home : making soup for dinner : eating soup for dinner : trader joe's trip for ingredients for pumpkin pie smoothies 

Road Trip - Picacho Peak

Years in planning, we finally made it out on a road trip to New Mexico a few weeks ago. One of the key components was making sure to go while the bats were at Carlsbad Caverns (May-ish - October-ish each year), which between work and other stuff, had delayed this trip a couple of years. Our first stop, besides the essentials, was to this weird rock formation.

If you've ever driven along I-10/the 10, depending on where you hail from, through Arizona between Tuscon and Phoenix, you've seen this very distinct rock shape. We decided to actually pulled over, driving closer and closer to the rock to explore a little bit. Turns out we eventually reached an Arizona State Park called Picacho Peak . It was $7/a car to get in and the pass lasted for a few days. Unfortunately we only had about an hour, around noon, but we drove around, wandered around and explored a bit. The park had all sorts of hiking trails along the quiet landscape sprinkled with Saguaro cacti, camp sites and some pretty clean bathrooms & cold water fountains if you wanted to take more time to enjoy the iconic southwestern U.S. desert landscape. I'm sure there were snakes, lizards and other critters around, but during the noon Arizona heat (driving through Arizona at night, the temp was still in the 90's!), the only animals we saw were some hawks and ravens flying overhead.

Then there was more driving... off to our next adventures in New Mexico!