June 2017 – I dream of sumac and milkweed (and other wild things)

More Lomo purple

June 28, 2017June 28, 2017 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I spent some time with Lomography Lomochrome Purple film last fall and, well, we had a thing together. I loved the color shifts with the Midwest foliage and golden light. I tried it again this spring with 120 film in the Holga, and my results were decidedly pink (was it the different lab? the camera? who knows). It’s rated from 100-400 ISO, and in 35mm form I mostly shot it at 400 speed, which I thought resulted in some really gorgeous, deep, rich purples.

I decided to try shooting it at 100 speed this time.

LDC_20170624_21430004 — fern in forest, Lomography Lomochrome Purple, Minolta SRT 102

Hmmmm. I don’t know how I feel about it. I mean, I like my results, but I missed the purple.

So much more subtle than my previous runs with this film.

Yellows are a lovely pink, but the greens didn’t get as purple as I expected based on past rolls. The greens just stayed mostly green, really. And things that were not green got a greenish cast, like the wheat field and the wood on this shed and the fence posts.

this, not so purple

but this, from a different angle, mega purple

But still, full of fun surprises. The green frizzy stuff (I don’t have a clue what this is) in Barbara’s garden looked just plain old green when I shot it from one angle in full sun, but from the side–purple explosion. I’ve done no editing to these scans, which were done by the lab, so I don’t know. The light? The lab color corrected? It’ll remain a mystery (I like film mysteries anyway).

And sunset colors are tinged a bit more purple, but plenty of greens and turquoise here as well…

LDC_20170624_21430013 — my kid, his girl, Lomography Lomochrome Purple, Minolta SRT 102

I have one more roll in my stash, but of course I’ll buy more. I’m a little nuts about it. It’s pricey, but so worth it.

Lima, the final installment

June 26, 2017June 26, 2017 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

I shot 8 rolls of film in and not too far outside of Lima, Peru, last month when I spent a week with my daughter there. Last week I sent away the roll of film I managed to muck up several ways to be developed by people who know what to do with mucked up rolls. I mucked this up by:

Forgetting to set the correct ISO on my camera when loading the film.
Completely forgetting what kind of film I had in my camera.
Forgetting that the roll had 24 exposures and not 36.
Thinking that my camera was stuck when it wouldn’t advance past 24, and so rewinding it ~~a bit~~ a ton (what was I thinking?) before I realized I was probably shooting over stuff.
Don’t judge me. I was on vacation. Again, I blame the pisco.

So with all that I wondered what I was going to get. The film is Fuji Superia 400, which I kind of like, but since I shot it at 200 I asked the lab to pull it one stop. The colors on the single-exposed shots are somewhat flat, but I like them. The multiple exposed stuff looks colorful but kind of washed out, too–but, you know, multiple exposures and all. I wish I could say I planned some of these images since I like how they turned out so much, but alas, no such thing. And, these are the lab’s scans. I look forward to scanning them in other ways and putting different frames together. And now I know I want to double-shoot a roll of film. Totally on purpose, though.

This roll was partly from a tour stop at the Hacienda San Jose in Chincha, which was a brief stop on our way to Paracas.

LDC_20170626_53900002 — yard at Hacienda San Jose in Chincha, Peru

LDC_20170626_53900007 — old garden wall, Hacienda San Jose

LDC_20170626_53900011 — flowers and porch arches

LDC_20170626_53900010 — flowers in hacienda yard

LDC_20170626_53900014 — hacienda garden wall in Chincha, plus boats and beach in Paracas

LDC_20170626_53900013 — hacienda chapel stairs and Paracas boat and beach

LDC_20170626_53900015 — hacienda chapel and Paracas boats

LDC_20170626_53900023 — Paracas beach and boats at sunset, town, and hibiscus flower

LDC_20170626_53900022 — Paracas wanderings

LDC_20170626_53900019 — Paracas boats and harbor

LDC_20170626_53900018 — Paracas, evening sunset and morning harbor

I love how some of the multiple exposed shots end up looking like I ran a roll through a half frame camera and then shot it again through a normal SLR (which gives me an idea…).

June filmy weirdness

June 22, 2017June 22, 2017 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Film just continues to amaze and surprise and confound me. Someday I’d like to develop all my film on my own. But until I can commit to the time/effort/hearbreak of that, I’m using two labs to process and scan my color film.

LDC_20170621_66290006 — poppy and collapsing farmhouse, Minolta SRT 102

LDC_20170621_66320006 — poppy sunset, Holga

just poppies from Barb’s garden, Minolta SRT 102

and more poppies, Holga

I haven’t used black and white film since my class ended in early May, but when I do get back to that (and I’ve got some nice films to use up, but summer feels like color to me) I’m planning to get supplies and process that myself now that I feel comfortable with it.

But color film developing feels a little out of my wheelhouse at the moment.

LDC_20170621_66290028 — June rye in detail, Minolta SRT 102

LDC_20170621_66290030 — June rye field, Minolta SRT 102

ox-eye daisies, Minolta SRT 102

chamomile in Barb’s garden, Minolta SRT 102

LDC_20170621_66290026 — early season orchard, Minolta SRT 102

I sent four rolls to one lab and two to another this week. The four rolls got processed and scanned and I uploaded them yesterday, with some oddities and surprises, like that purple yumminess I wrote about yesterday. I know I had one roll of expired film so I expected some odd colors, but a lack of decent focus on almost half from this (only 12 exposure) roll makes me think a) I was drinking and shooting, or b) I really need to see my eye doc, or c) something is wrong with my Minolta X-700 (it did give me a bit of trouble in Peru, so there’s that).

LDC_20170621_66260012 — Lake Michigan, expired film, lousy focus, Minolta X-700

more of the same

LDC_20170621_66260008 — Little Sable Point lighthouse, expired film, Minolta X-700

Aside from that, I noticed an odd dot pattern on some other scans, usually in blue sky or where there was a lack of other pattern in the image. This is in some of the images on both 35mm film and 120 film, from different cameras. The lab can’t account for this oddity. I don’t know what to make of it, but whatever. I mean, I’m horrible with film storage (hot, cold, lugged around in bags left in cars, etc.), so maybe I’ve done something to it. If I wanted perfection, I’ve probably picked up the wrong passion.

Holga, look at these dots!

Holga, patterns in sky

Holga, dog photobombed my beach scene, dots in sky

LDC_20170621_66290010 — Minolta SRT 102, patterned sky

It’s odd that it’s on some images but not others. Who knows? I’m okay with the mystery.

mini lake, sky, Holga

Holga, trees and sky

light leak, lake and sky, Holga

lake reflections, Holga

Otherworldly

June 21, 2017 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

LDC_20170621_66260013

I can’t quite remember what I’ve done here. I do know this image is from an expired roll of film shot with my Minolta X-700. I know I took some digital images of the sunset one evening through a blue, plastic malt jug that got warped from the heat when I ran it through the dishwasher. I don’t remember holding that jug over the lens of any other cameras, but maybe I did? That doesn’t account for the double exposure effect, though–the X-700 can’t even be tricked into doing that.

I know from about half of the other images on this 12-exposure roll that something is not right with that camera. The focus is badly off on these images. Two of them are just terrible, and a few of the other unfocused ones just look, well, unfocused and dreamy (but not terrible, to me anyway). Maybe the film didn’t advance quite right here, among other things.

But I really like this outcome. Sometimes no explanation is just fine.

Contemplating the divide

June 18, 2017 sumacandmilkweed3 Comments

LDC_20170618_IMG_6153

“Did you get any action shots?”–my husband, after I came in from photographing the snail.

I could have watched this snail for hours. Well, maybe not hours… crouching on a wet deck isn’t the most comfortable. But, they’re so fun to watch move! And I couldn’t wait to see what this snail would do when it got to the space between the deck boards. He (she?) made it just fine.

The sky and the lake

June 16, 2017 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

It’s just too amazing here. I think in the city we forget to look at the sky. In the country, the sky demands review. Where I am on a bluff above Lake Michigan, it more than demands… it slaps you upside the head.

It must be the time of year, but the cloud formations right now are just amazing. Storms have been rolling though this week. Some stay out over the lake where you can just hear their low, rolling grumbles and catch a flicker of lightning out of the corner of your eye. Others come ashore, steamrolling, blowing deck chairs around like the weather gods have it out for deck chairs or something.

Two days ago the clouds got all puffy and twisty and rolling-hills-looking out over the water. Rain fell out of holes in the clouds out over the lake. One looked as if a funnel cloud was going to form, but fortunately never did.

And yesterday this front came through. I love when the front of the storm looks like a tendril reaching across the sky, a pointed finger. This, too, dropped a little rain but only for a minute. The wind that came with it pressed the dunegrass nearly flat and whipped the lake into a frenzy, but again these effects were only a few minutes and the calm behind the front belied its intensity.

And then this morning, clouds stretched like rays across the western sky over the lake, lit up from the east by the sunrise.

Sun rays

June 11, 2017June 11, 2017 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

Or, more accurate but less nice sounding, crepuscular rays, which I got to see after the sun set this evening and damn, they were fantastic. And yes, I had to look up the technical name for this phenomena (I hope I’m right… I think I am). I have seen it a few times but never quite as bold as it showed up tonight.

In fact, there were even anti-crepuscular rays going on, which converged right above my neighbor’s house. I’m not a natural phenomenon blogger here, so go look up crepuscular (and anti-crepuscular) rays yourself. But it’s rays. From the sun. And they’re totally awesome.

LDC_20170610_IMG_5965 LDC_20170610_IMG_5972 LDC_20170610_IMG_5982

Who could not be happy?

June 7, 2017June 7, 2017 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

LDC_20170530_IMG_5767 — oh, just another sunset on Lake Michigan

Is it normal to experience a bit of a depression after a vacation? Not like I have experience in this. I’ve only had what I would call a true vacation once, 10 years ago when my best friend and I went to Tuscany to celebrate the year we both turned 40. In the years before and since Italy I’ve had little trips, yes–long weekends, short weekends, a few days off at a time but not a “real vacation” until Peru a few weeks ago.

And even that is starting to feel more like a dream.

It is so refreshing to step away from work. I knew everything would be handled expertly so I didn’t worry. It felt amazing to experience a new place. But there’s a shift after something like that; everyday doesn’t feel quite the same. Like, there’s a little piece missing, a change of some sort, something is not quite right. It’s more than a little unsettling.

I’ve moved to the west side of Michigan for the summer and get to wake up on a bluff above Lake Michigan. I make coffee in the morning, feed the dog, settle in to my workday while she snores away on the couch. I break from work to walk her and see what the weather is doing. Like today, a north wind makes the air a little chill while the sun is warming if you’re out of the wind, like on the south side of the house or in the dips on the road behind the cottages. It’s quiet, peaceful, beautiful. Who wouldn’t be happy here? But this malaise, or post-travel funk, follows me on these walks, taps my elbow as I brush the sand off my feet when I come up from the beach.

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?

I came across that quote yesterday, which is attributed to Oscar Wilde. I have freedom. And books. And oh there are flowers popping up everywhere. The moon is waxing right now and was bright and loud enough to make it hard to go to sleep last night. How could I not be happy? Yeah, it’s a little pitiful to feel sorry for myself here. Cue the violins and all that.

I’m sure I’ll shake off the funk any day now. A new photography project will help.