Election Propaganda: B.S. 2014

Collages! I haven't made any collages for a while, but this first was sitting un-glued for a while. And so today I sat down to glue it and the other 2 came together pretty soon afterward. All are made from various election mailers from the 2014 elections. I heard a story on the radio earlier this year that mentioned that mailers are still one of the "best" ways for candidates to spend money. Between the cost of things like tv/newspaper/online, etc. ads and how the resulting audiences include so many non-target viewers, including people that aren't even registered to vote, mailers are still most reliable. With all the information about you available for purchase, including whether or not you're registered comes many mailers. Many, many mailers.....

Babby Shriver

 Bibby S River

Booby Shiver

Sidewalking - Holga 35

More from my first roll developed from my Holga. Unfortunately my attempts at trying to get the color rolls I finished developed would be comical if I didn't want to get the film developed so badly. I suppose it's an exercise in proving my determination. Many "neighborhood" spots for film development no longer provide the negatives after the film is developed and my at home scans are much better than what they provide in return. This has lead to more intense searches for more small business type places where getting my negatives back isn't a problem. Unfortunately, with extremely restrictive/weekday only hours and closures for the holidays, I've walked away from a couple spots that seemed promising, but not within the immediate future. Onward I shoot. This set is a result of walking around my neighborhood.

Ciclavia 10/5/14 - Diana cityspots

A continuation of these photos from the Ciclavia on 10/5/14 through the downtown LA area and over to Boyle Heights and a perfect demonstration of why I love Ciclavia: exploring new parts of LA and being able to stop in the middle of the street to shoot photos without getting run over.

I looked at this entire roll and thought ".. and that's why I love the Diana 120 and film."

these are all over small clothing shops in downtown LA and other area and they are creepy/weird to me, but I'm so drawn to them...

Wandering locally, Holga 35

Another batch from the 35mm Holga... mostly wandering around places near where I am all day...

35mm Holga - SC Farmers Market

I have 3 medium format toy cameras at this point & I love medium format, but there are some things about it that are less than ideal about it when compared to 35mm film... difficult to find places develop it, a little more cumbersome in the toy cameras since you pretty much always need light to see the counter window on the back & only 12-16 exposures per a roll & a little bit of a pain to change out... After looking at the 35mm backs for the diana & holgas, I decided a dedicated 35mm would be a better choice. As it is, I sometimes wish I had different speed films in the cameras I have and I knew it would be worse with 35mm film sharing the same camera. Also, the backs were kinda expensive relative to a new camera & didn't necessarily have good reviews.... Based on my love of my 120 Diana, I decided to pick up the 35mm Diana. Well, I only shot 3 photos with it before it started eating film sprockets since the film advancer would become jammed (a common problem, although mine seemed to be an immediate problem vs. at frame 15 as for many others.) I tried contacting lomography with no response on help despite the camera supposedly comes with a warranty. This was extremely disappointing as I had high hopes for the Diana, but the fact the camera didn't work out of the box was beyond unacceptable considering the price.

Luckily my boyfriend was awesome and took me to Freestyle the next day to pick up a 35mm Holga. Of course, not in black, because none of my Holgas are black because the black ones are never on sale at Freestyle (I have very strict criteria!) So for the last 2 weeks, I've been carrying it around, trying out different films. The first couple rolls were color and unfortunately the photo places closest to me only do send out film development, which means you get scan and don't get negatives back. Since I can scan the film myself and pretty much only care about the film developing step, I have to explore some different options, but I'm hoping to develop some of the color film this weekend. Then the 4th roll was in my camera today, almost to the very last frame when I put it on the edge of my desk at work and it fell off and the camera popped right open! ACK! I quickly slammed it shut, but I don't have high hopes for the roll. The third rolls I shot was the only black and white roll so far, which means quick, cheap at home development! Joy!

These first few shots from the roll are from the Studio City Farmers Market last weekend. I'm definitely looking forward to shooting more photos there with color film. I was glad to finally get a chance to see some of the pictures shot with the camera to get a better idea about what's going on. This roll was 400, which was mostly ok with these single exposures, but I did have a few exposures that didn't really turn out from lower light conditions (including outdoors since we had a decent amount of rain recently.) I also always wondered what people were talking about with regard to light leaks on the holga, but this one has pretty obvious light leaks. Between the accident with the back opening and the light leaks, I'm going to try out taping the camera to see if that helps keep things a little cleaner/safe going forward.

Shut up and post time!

Ciclavia 12/7/14 - South LA

Today I spent a lot of time in areas of LA I had never been before. This was because today was the first Ciclavia event in the South LA area. The route ran mostly along Martin Luther King Blvd with a little segment on Central. At only 6 miles, the route was a little short, but was incredibly flat, had relatively few street crossings and you couldn't have really asked for better weather. I was a bit unsure about it since I needed to take the Red Line to the Expo or Blue Line, but decided to take the Expo Line since it seemed relatively empty. Despite all the public transporting of myself around LA I've done, I hadn't been on the Expo Line before, so that was another bit of newness in addition to biking through the USC campus. SO MUCH NEWNESS!

Anyway, I actually had a super awesome day. I arrived fairly early and biked down from the USC area to the Central end where I met up with a friend. The rest of the afternoon was spent casually biking up and down safely closed streets, talking and stopping to look at interesting things along the way. In all, I ended up covering about 20 miles (we went back and forth a couple times.) I don't think nearly as many people showed up to this Ciclavia as some of the past events, but there was something about that that made the event feel more like what I imagine it would be like if we had Ciclavias all the time. In some ways it was less crazy than some of the others and the streets felt more sparse, but there was still enough interesting things to see, new places to visit and a lot of random things happening & people around that it still felt special and fun. We hopped on the Expo line at Crenshaw a little before the event ended (which was it's own adventure due to massive construction) & I didn't run into any problems getting on the trains home.

OK! And of course, the photos!

riding the fairly empty Expo line.... (except this was
really on my way back)

USC

parrots!!!

Christmas attire & decor, like these snow people, was quite popular this time around!

randomly came across this ceremony along Central...

Unicycles!

pine trees planted along MLK

more randomness! This time a carnival parade

elaborate low rider bikes

Jazz Park where we were lured in by the soothing
 music of this group playing Brazilian music

so many types of bikes!

"LOOK" said everyone (best illustrated on the left by the boy)

Thanks for letting us visit South LA! ....until the next Ciclavia!

more south LA Ciclavia Photos

San Francisco 10/14 - II

Some more photos from our trip up to San Francisco at the end of October.....

I love these smooth, rolling, golden hills in California... So soothing and sensual... Every time I'm a passenger in a vehicle and going between LA and SF, I can't help myself, and shoot a ridiculous number of these photos, looking for all the variations in spaces, shapes, shadows, lines, textures. Love, love, love and obviously very inspired by them.

found exactly as photographed.....

 

....as I look at this set of photos, I realize how much Alcatraz was this insane overload of photographic bliss for me, all the textures, light, lines, man vs. nature.....I still haven't even posted some of my favorites yet! If there was a way for me to make a living off of shooting these types of places, I would be one of the happiest people ever.

green brain swirl

Earlier this year I discovered one of my coworkers in my department is into painting and drawing as well. This has been both awesome and horrible. Awesome because I have someone to talk with things about and show things and bounce ideas off of. Awesome because he's always up for going out art supply shopping (one of the few things I actually enjoy shopping for) and we both always have our eyes open for sales... this is especially nice since we no longer work a semi-reasonable-walking-during-lunch distance to Dick Blick. Horrible because, well... I have a built in enabler and someone else reviewing art supplies and giving me suggestions. I really don't need any more encouragement to buy art supplies, pretty much ever. But that is ok - obviously in my very comprehensive list, the good outweigh the bad.

Anyway, this week we were talking about cleaning up and how that can be motivating to work on things since you come across supplies or inspiration and many things are more interesting to do than cleaning, so that's kinda what I did yesterday. And eventually I was staring at my copics thinking about how pretty the colors were and how I wanted to draw with them. I've been in this point of paralysis with drawing for a while because I just couldn't figure out what to draw. I was putting too much pressure on myself to know beforehand and so instead I just started drawing last night, put on some of my new (old, used) GusGus albums and ended up with this.....

 

 

My brain likes to go towards the organic, flowing, smooth shapes, green..... always the same, but different each time....I think I used about 20 different colors for this, all copics on marker paper.