film fridays - grand central station (another take)

wherever you happen to be headed during whatever holidays you celebrate, have a safe trip, be thankful for what you have, and strive to make things better for yourself as well as those around you!

the specs: hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - 5 pointz tracks

i made this image in new york city in the 5 pointz, a graffiti covered block of buildings. this shot didn't showcase the graffiti so much as it did the subway tracks and the barbed wire fence keeping the back lot private. i liked the way the lines came together, and was happy we had some clouds in the sky that day for texture.

the specs: hasselblad xpan II camera and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - the watcher

i made this photo in the 5 pointz in new york city. you can see a little more of the buildings a few posts down in the levitation photo, but the place is literally covered in graffiti. i liked this particular piece of graffiti because it just seemed to watch over you... or glare at you. depends on how you look at it i guess. :)

the specs: hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

NYC apple store holga

i don't have many holga images from my nyc trip this past october as a opted to shoot with the xpan most of the time i was there, but i did make this shot at the apple store in manhattan. i was visiting with my friend rob (the one pictured a few posts back who is levitating!), who is a long time employee of that store. i had never been to that particular apple store before, and it was pretty neat to see how very different it is from the apple stores around dc. i was standing underneath their glass stairs looking up at all the people coming and going... while rob was answering customers' questions about iphones even though he was not technically working that day. :)

film fridays - grand central station

this film friday image is dedicated to all the travelers out there this holiday weekend. i shot this in grand central station up in nyc in october during my visit for the toying with creativity book launch party.

specs: hasselblad xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film... tuesdays? - xpan levitation

i realized that i missed last friday's "film fridays" post. but, i have a good excuse - i was busy developing and printing 5 rolls of xpan II film and 5 rolls of holga film! and what's more, here's one of those images - it's my friend paco (the rest of the world knows him as rob) levitating in the 5 pointz - i took this photo during a visit to new york city last month. i took a similar photo of paco back in the late 90's in front of some graffiti in our college town of kent, ohio, and we thought it would be funny to make another for the new millennium.

the specs: hasselblad xpan II camera and kodak tmax 400 film.

and i'll try to get back to posting these on friday now that i have a lot of new material to share. :)

film fridays - street performers, nyc

this is sort of a fun random image from nyc a while back. friends and i were wandering around and ended up watching these street performers work the crowd while we waited to rendezvous with the rest of our party. two of my friends can be seen just under the jumping performer / over the line of jumpees in the background. :)

the specs: nikon fm3a and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - the guggenheim

this is an image taken at the guggenheim museum in new york city. the lines and architecture are incredible, but i was happy to catch those two people peeking over the edge of the top floor.

specs: nikon fm3a + kodak tmax 400 35mm film.

film fridays - harpers ferry

this panoramic photo was taken a while back during a day trip to harpers ferry in west virginia. specs: made with an xpan II and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - times square

i was in nyc visiting friends a few years back and we were on our way through the city when i made this image. i've seen a lot of photos of times square, but i wanted to take back something that seemed less commercial and more gritty than the current touristy vibe that the area has. the black and white film helped with that, i think.

specs: taken with a nikon fm3a and kodak tmax 400 film.

film fridays - the grand canyon

the grand canyon in black and white. i have a bunch of photos of it, but i like this one because of the shadow from the tree on the cliff where i was perched.

specs: shot on kodak tmax 400 film with a nikon fm3a camera (i think).

film fridays - winged woman

look! it's another color film image! but, like the last one i posted, this was captured on medium format chrome film, and NOT negative. these rich blues and contrast just wouldn't have happened by using film - at least not without the help of photoshop. if you're gonna shoot color film, then SHOOT COLOR and go straight to the chrome. :)

the specs: photographed outside an art gallery in sedona, arizona, with a hasselblad 501CM camera and fuju velvia 120 chrome film.

film fridays - san francisco

this is the famous golden gate bridge in san francisco - i visited there in 2004.  this image was made with a hasselblad xpan II camera and kodak t-max 400 film.  i love the xpan because it's such a wildly different crop than anything else i use, and it forces me to think about my compositions in a different way. i think this photo is a good example of that, utilizing the negative space throughout most of the frame!

film fridays - new york city

i made this image in new york city in 2003 or 2004 (i'd have to look it up) during a visit there. i was standing inside the guggenheim museum, watching people come in the revolving door.  don't worry, i actually looked at the inside of the museum too. :)

the specs: nikon FM3A camera body, and kodak t-max 400 film.

film fridays - arizona

i know you are all confused now.  am i not the one who said i do not shoot color?  yes, i did say that. but, this is different because the image above was made on medium format chrome film and not negative film. slide film is much, MUCH more awesome than negative for a lot of reasons, but mostly because the colors are so much more vibrant and rich. if you're gonna shoot color, i say, SHOOT color, and don't mute it down. but, maybe that's just me.

anyway, the specs: this is my husband andy, during a trip to arizona in the spring of 2002.  the image was made with a hasselblad 501CM and 80mm lens, and i think the film is fuji velvia 100F chrome.

that's all for this week's film friday, so see you next week!

film fridays

yeah, i know what you're thinking... isn't like, every day a film day for you? well, i do shoot digitally on occasion, but yes, the majority of my personal work is indeed captured on film. however, the majority of my film work is shot with a holga camera, and i specifically wanted to showcase some images that i've taken over the years that were NOT made with a holga. i'll note the camera used and if i can remember, the type of film i used as well.

so first up, an image i made in 2004 in san francisco, california. it is photographed using a nikon FM3A camera, and kodak tmax (i think) 400 speed film.

i love the geometry of this photo, and love the FM3A. i lament that i don't get to spend as much time using this camera as i did in the past. i have too many cameras and not enough time! but one of my goals is to shoot more film and get back to the fun-ness of making photos that are single exposure (read: not made with the holga). i don't plan to give up on the holga any time soon, but a little diversity is a good thing, and it keeps the creative juices flowing.

so that's it, and expect another non-holga film image every friday from now until... whenever i feel like doing something else. :)

film fridays - citiwide

taken in new york city during my last visit there.

the specs: hasselblad xpan II camera and kodak tmax 400 film.

Route 66 - Nevada

Well, Nevada isn't technically on Route 66, but we had to go to Las Vegas at the end of the trip since that's where we were flying from to head home. I had never been to that state either, and so it was a good opportunity to check it out. However, it was 119 degrees out, and so we stayed indoors as much as humanly possible before heading to the airport. And that's about when I chopped off all my hair. Had we stayed another day, I probably would have shaved my head bald.
:-)

We did brave the heat to see the Hoover Dam, and my photos below are from there. But otherwise, this is a fairly anticlimactic post. Have no fear, I still have some point and shoot images from the Canon Elph to go through, and will post a gallery once those are together!

Route 66 - California!

Andy and the Pacific!

The final state on the official Route 66 trek is California. Upon crossing the border, we drove through some really, really, hot, as in 114 degrees, heat. We passed through the tiny town of Barstow, which is tucked in the middle of the scariest mountains I have ever driven on since Alaska, where I took this:



And then passed by this old volcano:



That evening, we made it to the very end, in one piece, and lived to tell the tale! We reached the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Pier kind of late, so we saw it quickly just to touch home base, got dinner at a great Indian restaurant a block away, and then sought lodging at the Pacific Sands Motel, which was right across the street from the pier. The decor left something to be desired, and I know for a fact it has been at least since the mid 80's that anything in that room has been replaced. How do I know this? I usually draw something on the bottoms of the drawers of the places where I spend the night to mark that I have been there, and for the first time in over a decade of doing this, I ran into another signature... Jill & Robert from May 2, 1987. Yeah. I had to share my drawer space with them. But that's okay... I wonder where they are now? I drew a picture of Andy's running shoes on my half of the drawer on July 8, 2008.

The next morning we wandered around the pier and I took these:











Then we checked out of the motel and drove up Route 1, where I took these:





We found a place to camp along the beach, which was awesome because we could walk to the ocean and then retreat to our tent.

Amy:



Andy:





Later that evening it got cold, so we lit a campfire and I got to wear my new (used) jeans and lime green pumas that I picked up at a Goodwill store near the pier. We then took lots of photos with our respective cameras. I posted a few at the beginning of my 66 posts of me by the fire, as well as of Josh and Amy. This one of Andy taken with my Holga was also from that same session.



The next morning we woke up and headed for Las Vegas, which will be the next post in this installment: Nevada!

Route 66 - Arizona

Jack Rabbit Trading Post - Joseph City, Arizona

After traveling through New Mexico, we hit Arizona, which was full of some wonderful things. We stayed at the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, which had classic cars parked outside each wigwam. I took some Holga photos of those cars, and two of them are here:





I got a cool vintage bracelet in an antique shop in Williams, which had this skull out front:



Josh, on a pit stop on our journey through the painted desert:



The meteor crater - I got a cool shirt from here, but had to buy the children's size medium. Apparently, they think adults are huge!:



Another image outside the Jack Rabbit Trading Post in Joseph City:



Next up: California, and the end of Route 66!
(but not the end of the trip... we traveled Nevada as well before heading home...)