crazy good

Right now, i couldn't miss if i tried. no seriously, some trippy shit(')s been happening.

yesterday, as i mentioned previously, i went into town furball in order to buy some rye (well i know that rhymes, ooh, that's 3, count'em) folks i ain't even tryin' everything is fuckin' ZEN right now.

back to the rye, i tried to by a 2-6, but it wouldn't scan (it did not exist as far as the computer knew, so i had to buy a micky.) later, i called my grandpa to come pick up the dog at a coffee shop to buy an americano for myself, and to get some water for the dog (after more than a mile's walk, she didn't want it. she's a Shih tzu, stubby little legs and all...) While i wait for him to get there, i photograph an owl on the roof of a building in town, all i can see is a silhouette (it could have been a statue for all i know, but if it wasn't a statue, the dam thing was staring at me for ten minutes). And then, furball goes for two mare walks later in the day!

Heck, yesterday, i woke up at 3am after two hours sleep. i step outside, and there's a deer in back yard. At four later, i went outside, bare foot, in jeans and a leather jacket (so shirt, just the jacket) and sat down, on the grass on a small hill on our property, and sat there with my camera until about seven, with my camera set up on tripod in my back yard. I'm trying to figure out just what's goin' on, when i realise that i can see every leaf, every need, every blade of grass, dancing in the breeze. When i walked the dog about 1pm, a pheasant runs right in front of me through the woods.

I'm not sure what the joke is, exactly. all i know is, is the dog's in on it. it's gonna be gooood, and it's gonna be fuun.

The photo was shot at Karaoke at the GF, about two weeks ago.

gonna take the dog into town, and go and get some rye >;->

don't worry, i'll be back in time for the big event

This day, has fuckin' BIG mother earth signifigance. and all

all

of fucking nature is in on it.

This is the begining of a new age,

i can feel it my bones



and guess what, i think, i just think,

that i'm supposed to be Mother Nature's

personal photographer on this one.

somethin's goin on to night. I don't know what, for sure. But i KNOW my dog is in on the joke.

Went into Penticton today, got a roll of film developed, bought myself an incense burner and some incense at the dollar store, and am currently listening to Peter Frampton, live in Chicago, on KSPS.

This was my fourth attempt at taking a self portrait in that chair. Shot 24 February this year, f5.6 and 35mm for 8 seconds, i screwed up the focus (although this is better than a few of the other attempts). I've also trimmed the beard
since then, and i won't be wearing a sweater again for probably another five or six months (but the chain is year round wear).

I've spent a good part of the past two days in a crawl space, running black pipe. Place, fit, figure, and crawl out to use the power vice to cut, ream, and thread the next piece of pipe. Today wasn't as bad, less time in the hole; and at least that part of the job's done, but still, five hours today and five yesterday.

And then of course, silly me, i went out photographing last night, stopped in at the Winnie about nine, went to Wayne's place afterward and didn't get home until three in the morning. Didn't get to bed until four.

Lost my camera bag shortly after leaving Wayne's, it might have been in his building (i stopped on the way out to take another photo) and if so someone from his building might have spotted it. I'll talk to him about it the next time i see him. If the bag is lost, it's no great great loss, all that was in it was a roll of unexposed film, a lens cloth, a cheap UV filter that i haven't used in over a - year - and - a - half, and an opened pack of Zeiss wet-naps.

Today's photo is the Boundary Museum in Grand Forks, I had wanted to crop out the flare caused by some passing headlights when i took the shot, but after exploring the options, felt that it was less damaging to leave it in than to try to remove it (and certainly less work).

Hay There

Well folks, i only have one roll of film to rescan (actually only about 6-7 images) and only one roll of new film to get developed on Thursday (hopefully, there are still a few unexposed frames, but i'm going out tomorrow night so i should be able to remedy that).

So anyway, with this in mind, i've been sorting through my early early work, finding which store prints go with which negatives (everything before mid 2005 was all jumbled together) and i had to sort this all out because i use the store prints to index what was scanned how. It's all part of my misfiling system. With two more rolls to match up, it looks like i've got about a hundred extra prints. I'm pretty sure that some of the prints will match up with film/print combinations that were found "intact," but somewhere or other i've misplaced about three rolls of film (out of twenty-five or thirty pre-misfiling system rolls). Oh well, i suppose that's not too bad over the course five years, and two major and three to five minor moves (the latter depending on which year at college i got that little 35mm point and shoot).

Enough digression. Today's pic is the other one that got a bit munched in developing (only i know where). It was shot at about quarter to eight pm on 2 February 2007, downtown Grand Forks. Too bad it's a fairly new truck eh, but in ten years the designs will be completely different again and in twenty to thirty...

Kentucky Woman

Life is good. Seriously, the last time i felt this good was two years ago.

Thursday i went to karaoke at the GF, and i totally nailed "Bad Moon Rising" by C.C.R. For next week i'm thinking about maybe some Def Leppard or ACDC (listening to a little Motörhead right now, but i don't think i'll find any of that at karaoke).

Between Thursday and Friday, i also picked up three shots that i'm very interested in seeing. The first was Thursday evening, one of the local Chinese food restaurants lit up with the clouds behind it oranged with the last of the sun. Friday evening, i shot Canpar, it's windows a warm orange, in front of a (i'd guess) cerulean sky with fluffy grey clouds. Finally, as i was leaving my buddy Wayne's place at about 2am, the light in the second story hall his apartment building caught my eye (just trust me on this one).

I'm starting to plan things out for my birthday (three weeks), and i know i'm going to have one helluva night. Not only do i deserve it to begin with, but let's face it, 25 is pretty big deal. That's a quarter century, i've seen some amazing shit: the fall of the Berlin Wall, two invasions of Iraq by the U.S., the destruction of the Twin Towers endlessly looped on CNN, the dismantling of the Canadian welfare state (still in progress), and so much other stuff it would take me week to add it all.

This is one of the shots i was worried about (the neg was a bit munched) but it cleaned up real nicely, with a lot less time and work than i had worried it would take. It's a 2 minute exposure at f8, shot 2 February.

*edit: i've decided to title this photo "Kentucky Woman" for no particular reason (that just what was playing at the time i decided to title this).

Ride On

I almost had a very exciting moment. I had two comments to moderate when i logged on. Both turned out to be spam, in fact, both turned out to be the very same spam message, which is very annoying because there is nothing sadder that repetitive spam, and really, isn't it just a sign poor coding for spambot to hit the same site with the same message twice in 24 hours.

Oh well, here's a shot of the Chevron Cardlock in Grand Forks, shot 22 March this year, at about 730 that night. Got some good pictures that night with the rain (and missed more than one excellent shot because of the rain). The pub behind the cardlock is the Station House: wings on Wednesday, corn relish on the burgers (tasty), and the building used to be a railway station way back when people commonly used trains to travel from place to another.

One more shot from my Easter trip to Alberta. Shot on our way home, as we passed through the Stony Plain Reserve on Highway 1.

I finished scanning that other roll of film (spanning Feb through early April) and there are some great shots. Two are almost ruined by the film having been physically mangled, but i think i can fix things up well enough in Photoshop to save both. More difficult will be a night shot of the Grand Forks Museum that got hit by some bad flare caused by passing car headlights. Everything else about it just feels so perfect too, this is actually the first time i've had a shot that i'm willing to spend hours (as opposed to minutes) trying to save...

I spent a good part of today on yard work. It rained yesterday, and is supposed to rain tomorrow (whether or not it will rain enough to keep me indoors and safe from raking for a day is a question that will answer itself soon enough).

I still haven't scanned that other roll of new film yet, i think i'll go and get a start on that right now. Ciao.

*another angle on Lac des Arcs, AB.

Rocky Mountain high

Happy Friday the 13th.

Went to Penticton yesterday, and got those two rolls of film developed. I was less than pleased with the quality of the Walmart prints (not that i expect much from store print in the first place). Scanned one roll last night, and was even more disappointed: all the negs were very grainy. At first i thought is was me, u know shooting such and such under conditions X, no filter, maybe the film was past expiry
, etc., etc., but now I'm much less sure. Two negs out of the 24 had dirt specs stuck to them (like scratch it off with u'r fingernail because it won't wipe off with a cloth stuck) and one neg was badly spotted too. Don't know what the other roll will show, but i'm not too hopeful. I'd been thinking of using London Drugs for developing anyway, better film selection, a camera department (they seem to be catering to the pro/serious hobbiest set a bit more than anywhere else i know of in Penticton).

Today's photo is Lac des Arcs in the Rockies, with the Trans-Canada Highway pretty much invisible as it snakes around the hill on the left. Shot in Alberta on Easter Sunday as we started to head home from visiting relatives in the Red Deer area (more or less, they're sorta halfway between Red Deer and Edmonton, and a little to the side). That was quite a trip actually, heading out, we had an unbalanced U-Haul on the back of our new-to-us motorhome, driving over rutted and frost-heaved highways with what turned out to only be medium duty shocks. Managed to shake a plate right out of the 'til-then-closed cupboard and onto the floor.

I've been busy and haven't found the time to edit a pic for today, so u'll just have to go without. And i'm tired, i've been doing spring yard work. Mostly raking leaves and dead grass out of the (hilly, rutted, in places moss infested and elsewhere deer shit covered) lawn for the past two-and-a-bit days. I'm somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 done and hope to be finished by the end of next week (if i were in better shape and had nothing else to do, i probably could have been done this Saturday or Sunday, but i'm not and i do, so i can't).

And i'm still not fully caught up on the 40 some odd blogs i regularly read (meaning i've subscribed to their rss feeds), sure some haven't updated in the past week, but some have 10 or more new posts even with the Easter Holiday.

I'm leaving early tomorrow to go to Penticton. I'll get those two rolls of film developed and buy some more, 'cause i'm out. I don't mind going to Penticton (hell, right now i could use the break), but then there's the better part of a day, shot as far as doing anything else goes.

Did i mention i'm tired?

100!

*I had planned to post this Wednesday night, before leaving for Alberta Thursday morning, so naturally we left Wednesday afternoon. It's Monday evening, i'm back in GF, i'm tired, i have two rolls of film to be developed the next time i'm in Penticton (see below), and i'm going to go have a shower now, before i begin to catch up on my blog reading. We now return u to u'r regularly scheduled blog post.*

Here we are, the 100th post on my little corner of the inter-web. And it only took about eight-and-a-half months.

I think i'm going to take the time to just wax poetic on where i am and where i'm going, and anything else that floats across my mind.

For starters, i'm looking forward to the next 150 blog posts (that'll make 250), and sticking around here for a long long time. I'm planning to revamp the links section, especially the blogroll (try to do something categorical) and add a few new links while i'm at it. As for the direction of the blog itself, i'm pretty happy with the way things are, although i'd like to open up a bit more, maybe try a more personal/philosophical approach to entries.

Photographically, i'm in a good place right now. I still have two-and-a-half rolls to rescan, and finally after two-and-a-half months a roll ready to be developed (might be two rolls by the time i get back Penticton way on the 12th). I'm really looking forward to shooting lots this summer and expanding my photographic repertoire. I should be very busy this summer if even half of what's in the plans actually goes down. The chance to be around other camera guys, to learn, to teach, to just share process and evolution has me really hyped. And i still have all those early early rolls of film to scan (but that should go pretty quickly when i get around to it, not too too much in the way of keepers from that time).

And there's plenty else going on. I'm in a spring cleaning mood. And after close to year of only listening to music at bars etc, i'm dusting off my mp3 collection, which means that i'll start adding to it again. And i've got about a thousand books i want to read.

All in all, i'm feeling better right now that i have in almost two years, and this time it's going to last because my hopes and expectations from life are much more reasonable and i don't feel like i need things to turn out a certain way and i'm not worrying about whether or not things come to me in the way that i expected them too or not. I'm much more accepting of the unexpected, much more open to letting good things come into my life on their terms.

*the pic is of Blazed Creek at the Blazed Creek rest area on Highway 3, on the Creston side of the Salmo-Creston pass. This pic was shot last Octobre. There will not be any pics of this location from my most recent trip, primarily because as of this Easter long weekend, the rest area is still under two to three feet of snow.

Yesterday, was a long day. I spent about five hours walking around, mostly in rural GF, and shot about half a roll of film. I did miss some great shots as i was walking home, because i didn't take my tripod with me, but i know that there's no way i could have gone as far as i did if i had taken it with me (four pounds doesn't sound like much, but after two hours with nothing but a makeshift shoulder strap to try and distribute the weight...).

I'm going to Alberta for Easter, to spend time with family that i haven't seen since Thanksgiving (i'm Canadian, so that means since Orctobre [and for some reason i just love using the French 're' spelling of applicable shared words like theatre and metre, call it a Canadianism]). We're leaving Thursday and plan to be back Monday.

*edit: The linguistic assumption of self (over)importance inherent in the tradition of capitalising "i" in every instance is damn difficult to break sometimes (like after twenty years of habit).