Thirsty Thursday: Mystery Rolls

Rambler: Beth Drink at Hand: Naked Grape Pinot Noir (yeah, I bought it because of the name...don't judge me!)

Something a little different this Thursday...not so much about a cool place to go shoot, but rather about an attempt at shooting some film! About a month ago I walked into the local camera shop with 3 rolls of exposed Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film in my hands. I bought this film when we lived in Japan...yep, that's right, purchased 2006 most likely. It was well past the expiration date! I found one roll already exposed when I was organizing some camera stuff when we moved into the new house. The other two rolls I took recently. Actually, that's not even true...I found my film camera with a 1/2 exposed roll in it. So I had a roll and a half of mystery images (I had no idea what that old stuff might be) and a roll and a half that I had shot within the last few weeks. I waited the requisite week to get the processed film back from the lab and then had to wait a few more days for Terry to scan the film with our Nikon CoolScan film scanner before I actually got to see what I had.

It turns out that the old "mystery roll" was pretty old...from 2008! That also means it was exposed, tossed in a box, moved Lousyana, endured the heat of that place, moved back here to California, and finally shown some chemical bath love. Back in '08 a friend was considering buying a digital camera, so I loaned him my digital camera when he went out to shoot with us at Point Pinos one evening, and I shot film with an old Nikon full manual camera. Here are a few from that evening.

I played around with the blur tool in Aperture and made this one look a little bit like a tilt shift. Best I can do since Terry won't let me get an actual tilt-shift lens.

A few months later we went to Yosemite. I guess I took the camera with me to finish that roll from the summer evening at the beach. I don't even remember having it with me. But of course I took a Tunnel View photo in black and white--because no one has ever done that before!

Fast forward to 2011...I decided to try a roll in my Canon Elan 7E on our way north along the coast to Pescadero. I used the Photodiox adapter with the Nikon 50mm manual lens. It was pouring down rain, but I couldn't let this bike go without a quick photo. Terry kept making fun of me because I kept looking at the back of the camera after snapping the shutter--but there's no instant feedback in the form of a LCD screen on the back of a film camera.

To finish off that roll I took the camera along on a quick hike with the dog in Ft Ord and shot a few here at home.

With all the bike riding / racing I'm doing these days, its not easy to get away to shoot for a whole day, much less an entire weekend. But changing up the routine in familiar locations proved fun. I got something different than my normal images and that makes me happy.

Get out and try something new or different this weekend. You might be surprised by the results!

Monday Monday

Mondays always have been and always will be rest days. In college we never had soccer practice on Mondays. When I was in my crazy distance runner phase, Monday was either nothing or, at most, a 2-mile jog. And now that I'm doing this cycling thing, Monday is a day for catching up on homework (yeah, right), going to yoga, and generally putzing around. I didn't even race this weekend, but I still took my Monday rest day. The plan was to go to the local Pacific Grove Farmer's Market and take pics of the fascinating and usually eclectic crowds of a central Cali farmer's market. So I shuffled le ol' Stumpjumper out of the bike pile, put on my Chucks, rolled up my pant legs, and off I went.

Except I forgot that I live in a rather white, upper-middle class enclave of Lexus-driving upper-middle aged women. Pacgrovians don't make for very interesting pictures. But I had my camera and the light was starting to get good, so I decided to pedal around PG and see what I could find. Like trees in the golf course that I ride by every single day but never really notice.

We have a lot of benches in PG. Maybe its because we have so many active old people. They need places to sit every once in awhile. I don't mind though, its nice to watch the waves roll in. Or out. I never really understand what waves are doing.

And the clouds change colors.

And the pelicans fly by.

Then I rolled over to Point Pinos because the sunset looked like it might be nice. Of course I didn't have my tripod, so I had to improvise. I found yet another trusty park bench, leaned the bike against it and some how got the monster long stem and silly old school shifters to perfectly balance my sort of expensive camera (shhh, don't tell Terry). I think it worked out.

Luckily I had my light to get home and only one deer ran in front of me. Oh, and I looove my fabulous new Sheila Moon hat.