I knew I wanted to go someplace special to shoot at least one roll from the Emulsive/PrintFile giveaway, so I held off for a little while since I knew it wasn't happening on expired film day itself. When the stars aligned, we ended up at Las Virgenes Canyon again, and more specificlly during sunset again. I shot the T-Max roll using my Yashica Mat 124-G & a tripod. I attempted to treat it as 64 ISO film since that's the lowest my
Yashica Mat went, but let's also be honest and mentioned again that my
light meter doesn't work... so it's all a bit of a guessing game anyway.
I wanted to wait to see how the previous roll I shot turned out and after some very expired looking results from the color expired film roll, I was somewhat hesitant to develop the roll of 20+ year old T-Max. I kept delaying the development, being productive and developing multipleother rolls of film before sucking it up earlier this week.
As I sat in the dark bathroom fiddling with the film, my heart dropped as I tried to detach the roll of 120 film from the paper backing and the film RIPPED, which has never happened, but I also had never tried to develop 20+ year old film. The film was stiff and resistant to being flattened and kept curling and slipping out from under the clip of the spool. Sigh. Silent struggles in the dark and finally I got everything situated and developed it in 1:1 diluted Kodak D-67. I have to say, I was much happier with my result than I thought I would be. I'm still in the process of scanning, but here's a little taste....
It might be apparent from some recent posts that I've been developing some black and white film recently... although I ultimately have 1 roll I NEED to develop now, I'm doing the "procrastination by filling time with other long time to-do list items" and even manged to develop a roll of film from Burning Man last year! This is one of the ones I shot with my Medium Format Holga that has already made 3 trips to Burning Man! (the 35 mm on the other hand didn't even make it through 1 Burning Man. RIP 35mm Holga. :( Back in those days when Holgas were still made and one could be so reckless...) Unfortunately I was unable to get Burning Man tickets in the sale this year, so I'm trying to keep my options and eyes open to see if I can make it happen this year. I feel like I keep doing more and pushing myself each year that I've gone, even to the point of finally showing my own art there, that I really would like to go back.....
I know I've taken these types of photos before, but I do love shooting these laser cut domey things with the black and white film.... so pretty!
Diana!!!! I go through phases with my camera and recently I revisited the Diana and although it caused some frustrations for me recently, then I shot most of a roll at Huntington Gardens, although I need to sleep, so here's just one photo tonight.This is why I love this camera. So light and simple and yet such nice pictures when it all comes together and cooperates.....
Bridge at the Chinese Garden at Huntington Gardens, San Marino, CA
March, 2016
I don't know what happened this evening, but it seemed to devolve into a mess of flowers... Luckily I had my Instax Neo-Classic on hand to document the colorful mess
magical light and colors. The secret is the mundane location.
Cbviously the camera knew the bougainvillea was more important to keep in focus!
Why of course I ended up at the flower at Michael's! How would you have guessed? And I was drawn to this nice arraignment of colors...
So back in the beginning of March I received some expired film as part of a giveaway held by PrintFile and Emulsive. Both rolls expired in the early 1990's including 1 TMax and Ektachrome. I wasn't able to shoot it on Expired Film day, but I took out the Etkachrome in my Yashica Mat 124 G to the Glendale Forest Lawn Cemetery. I feel like I was setting myself up for this, but I guess between the lack of a working light meter and the expired film and the film being expired, it didn't turn out ideally, but you do what you can. I do kinda like the weird effect combined with the sculptures of people in the cemetery.
On St. Patrick's Day morning I was biking in a residential area on my way to work as usual. On the wide 2 lane street in an area of fairly expensive homes something small & shiny sitting near the right edge of the street caught my eye. There weren't any other cars moving around in the immediate area, so I stopped and backtracked to investigate.
WHAT?
As I got closer I realized it was exactly what I thought it might have been... a tiny, perfect looking hummingbird. I dropped my bike on the side of the street and crouched down to investigate.
I've seen plenty of dead birds on the side of the street and I've even seen injured and once even a baby pigeon sitting on the sidewalk, but never an adult bird that otherwise seemed to appear ok. At this point I was on my stomach on the ground, looking at the bird closely, trying to see if it had any injures or appeared disheveled. Nope. Just a perfect looking hummingbird sleeping quietly on the pavement near the side of the road. I remembered seeing a video a while back of a hummingbird sleeping. It was at that time I learned that hummingbirds going into a super deep sleep/daily hibernation type state called a torpor. Because they have such a high metabolism, this sleep state allows them to get some sleep and slow down enough that they can survive the colder nights without having to constantly eat. It seemed reasonable that this is what was going on with this little guy.
(I shot shot this video partially to prove to myself that the bird was actually breathing!)
As I inspected the bird, a car came driving down the road on the opposite side and slowed down in front of me. "Are you ok?" the driver asked. A perfectly reasonable question, I told him I was looking at a hummingbird that I thought was sleeping. He told me it was dead, I told him I didn't think it was. So he told me to pick it up. I thanked him and he went on his way.
Although it seemed fine sleeping and not obviously hurt, I still didn't feel good about just leaving it in the street considering it was pretty oblivious to any danger in it's current state as I was able to get within inches of it without it reacting. It was a weird spot, just outside of someone's yard and in an area where there were no sidewalks, but people did park on the street. In the last couple of weeks I've wondered if maybe there was a car parked or a trash can right next to the bird when it went to sleep & I just came across it after the car pulled away and before Mr. Hum woke up. Otherwise, it was a really confusing place for the bird considering there are so many homes with large yards, tons of trees and other bushes and plants nearby (although the house it was close to is undergoing some major construction recently, so I wonder if it's previous sleeping spots had been disturbed.) So I decided I needed to try to move it.
I grew up with a bird in the house so I'm not really afraid of them, but it's weird trying to deal with a completely wild animal that's so tiny and delicate and is equipped with a giant dagger on it's face. I gently tried to lift the bird up, but it was firmly grasping the ground. This also wasn't surprising as I've read that some bird feet have a default relaxed state of gripping onto things which helps them while sleeping. I kept gently pulling up and the little bird started squeaking and opening it's beak.
I let it be for a moment to see if it would wake up, but it was still mostly asleep. I tried again and was finally able to pick the bird up. It continued to make little squeaky sounds and stretching it's wings as I held it in my outstretched hand. It was so light it felt like I was holding nothing more than a cottonball, not an entire bird. I spotted a nearby bush with a semi-flat surface and gently placed the hummingbird down. It continued to squeak and stretch and wake up. I had to get to work and so I let it be and went on my way. Later on I went to check up on where I left it and I didn't find any feathers or the bird, so I hope it flew away.
Reading up on it, I feel like I maybe should have continued to let the bird sit in my hand until it fully warmed up and woke up and flew away. If it seemed to be having problems, I possibly even should have tried to offer it a flower immediately or maybe run to a coffee shop to mix up some sugar water for it. I suppose I will know better next time. I've learned so much just by going through this whole thing (including about the zunzuncitos in Cuba!) and really enjoyed the entire experience of seeing a bird like that up close as well as seeing another part of these little animals that I enjoy watching on a normal day. Now when I see hummingbirds in this area, I can't help but to wonder if one of them is this little guy. What a crazy and unique experience!
Although I'm not a big fan of the rain during the week when I have to go to work (although, working from home might change this!!) and it can suck when you have outdoor plans on the weekend, when I have a free weekend + rain, I really enjoy it. A huge part of that has been rain paintings (which has gone to a new level with purchasing Brushos!!! A post with some of those should be coming up), but today I decided to wander outside and play with my instant camera and some of the large puddles that form in the streets near my home... I've always been a fan of playing with shadows and puddles are similar. I enjoy how the puddles can bring bits of the sky to the cement in more than one way and the additional layer of visual interest and texture that comes from the reflections...
(normal converse are too narrow for me, but these rubber ones are actually pretty comfy!)
(evidence of playing with brushos on my hands became apparent after picking up the wet rose petals...)
I'm super behind in getting some of my medium format film developed & scanned, but I'm getting there! I scanned an entire roll tonight! This photo is from a roll of expired (I think 2003?) Kodak Portra 400 film I got in the Emulsive Secret Santa Swap! I loaded it in my Yashica Mat camera for Expired Film Day on March 15, although I didn't get a chance to shoot many photos because of work on that day, blah, blah, I ended up shooting the rest of the roll when we went to Forest Lawn in Glendale the weekend afterward. Secret/not secret? The light meter in my Yashica Mat doesn't work and I just do a best guess on exposure settings. I was pretty happy with how these turned out given the parameters I was working with! This one in particular was a little bit of a challenge to shoot with the TLR for me just due to the angles and how the camera functions.
This past weekend while visiting the Gardens of the World in Thousand Oaks I noticed these weird flowers in the English garden area and was immediately fascinated:
Obviously the elongated parts on the backside were eye catching and screamed "EAT HERE" to hummingbirds. I also thought their double layers of petals and interesting color combinations were so beautiful, unique and looked like some weird hybrid of multiple flowers.
(I LOVE the shadow on the yellow petal on the upper left.)
FINALLY I found a plaque in the garden... Columbines! Turns out I love Columbine flowers!
