October 2018 – I dream of sumac and milkweed (and other wild things)

two new cameras

October 18, 2018 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

I have been gifted not one but two medium format cameras. If you’re wondering what I did to deserve such a gracious gift, well, I am, too. A friend’s father, a former professional photographer, offered them to me and I couldn’t say no. I did try to impress upon him that he could sell them, and that I’d be willing to pay, but he insisted that he only wanted them to go to someone who will use them.

I feel beyond lucky, extremely grateful, and quite honored. I don’t know that we open ourselves up to such generosity very often. Giving something of ourselves means being okay with an unexpected outcome. When you give something freely, you’re accepting that your recipient might not behave in the spirit in which you intended your gift. And accepting such a gift means remembering to carry that spirit forward, which is what I will try to do.

In any case, I now have a Mamiya M645 (a model near to my son’s, which I have borrowed and which I pined about here) and a Mamiya C220, my first TLR (twin lens reflex). While the M645 won’t be difficult for me to get used to using, the C220 is a new experience that I am really looking forward to.

I’m busy this week with work and a bit of freelance that I took on to help pay for the trip to Iceland so I don’t think I’ll get out with these until the weekend, but I hope to have some test rolls run though them both and developed and up here soon.

In the meantime, I’m thinking of ways I can be just as generous as the wonderful human who offered two cameras to a stranger with no expectations.

Iceland, final installment in Lomochrome Purple

October 15, 2018 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I know I’ll think about and talk about Iceland until I go back. But it feels a little sad to post the final photos from this trip. I took my Olympus Pen EE3 with me to Iceland, too, and didn’t think twice about using Lomography Lomochrome Purple, a whimsical film in a whimsical camera.

The EE3 is a half-frame camera, a compact little thing with the faintest whisper of a click when you press the button to take a picture. There’s no mirror to flap about. It’s a true point and shoot–you set the film speed (it only goes to 400) and there are only two shutter speeds (the camera chooses). If it’s too dark to get a decent image, a little red flag pops up in the viewfinder and the shutter won’t fire. It shoots on half of a 35mm frame, so you get two images (portrait mode unless you turn the camera sideways), which you can treat as individual images or as groupings, and which means you get 72 (or more) images from a 36 exposure roll of film. Kind of a lot of bang for the buck. I love this camera.

I asked the lab to scan this roll two-up, since I try to shoot with two images per frame in mind. But they forgot, and so I got 72 single images. Which means if I want any diptychs or triptychs, I’m going to have to haul my scanner out and get serious about trying to get a decent scan out of it (I need help).

So, the final installment. I’m no longer walking around all dreamy-eyed, seeing mountains and waterfalls. I’m in my house, working in my office, listening to my dog snore ever-louder in her old age, hearing the train whistle as it goes through my city, looking in my pantry and wondering what to make for dinner, getting the mail, etc. Travel and newness is exciting, but there’s nothing wrong with the mundanity of daily life.

You can see most of the rest of this roll here; read more from my September trip to Iceland in my previous three posts.

more Iceland

October 11, 2018October 11, 2018 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

I’m feeling more here, now. And that’s okay, but I’m also spending a few minutes (at least) each day letting myself feel all dreamy about Iceland and also think about what might come next. Oh have I got ideas. There is so much out there to see.

I got notice that my last five rolls of film were developed, scanned, and uploaded yesterday, and that my film is on its way back to me from the lab in California. I ordered prints–matte with white border–so those are on the way as well (I love to have prints, but I almost never order them).

These are all from the Bronica; two rolls of Fuji Acros (100 ISO), one Ilford FP4+, and the color roll is Fuji Velvia (50 ISO slide film).

I should have mentioned in that previous post, where I was all grateful about the peanut butter, that I’m grateful to my husband for keeping the show going while I was trying to not get blown off a cliff 3,000 miles away. He kept our old dog alive and (relatively) happy. If anything burned down or broke or flooded while I was away, he took care of it and I’m none the wiser. If there were any upheavals or complaints that I might have otherwise have been called upon to contend with, he kept me out of them. He’s a bit of a rock and I don’t think I tell him often enough that I appreciate him. And if he’s intolerant of my need to see the world, he doesn’t show it and for that I am profoundly grateful.

If you want to see more photos, see my last post or the one before that, or just skip all the wordy bits and look at a ramshackle* Flickr album here.

*I say ramshackle because I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing on Flickr.

Iceland’s in my head

October 5, 2018October 18, 2018 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I’m having a hard time coming back down to earth. Work took extra concentration this week. I’m seeing mountains. The landscape seems mismatched here. Where’s the sea, just around that curve? Oh, wait… I’m no longer in Iceland.

I still don’t know how to sum up the trip. The details seem fuzzy already. My friend Jane and I landed in Keflavik on the last Monday of September, traveled first south and then east and then north and west and then back to Reykjavik and left the first Monday of October.

I took only film cameras, and I love the resulting colors I got on these initial rolls.

I can still feel the mist from the waterfalls. I can still see the mountains in the distance. I can conjure up the sulfur-y smell of the thermal pools. The stoic horses, the mighty wind, the pelting rain, the sudden rainbows. Who could stand in sight of these things and not be moved, or fundamentally changed?

There were bumps, like our baggage leaving the airport with someone else (but fortunately coming back before we left the car rental); a punctured tire that fortunately got resolved quickly because we were lucky enough to be in a town with a tire shop; misguided directions from Google maps that put us quite off-course a few times; house spiders that didn’t bother my travel companion, but that tested my spider-tolerating capabilities. The rest of it, though–a tomato-lentil soup with big hunks of crusty farm bread in a cozy coffee shop; the snowy mountain pass; the spectacular sunset one evening; the sea spray and the mossy rocks and just the surprises the landscape offered around every curve–all of this is firmly implanted in my psyche.

Maybe I’m waxing poetic because I’m not so well-traveled, but it all makes me ache for more. I can’t wait for the next adventure. I can’t wait to see the next mountain range or seaside cliff. I can’t wait to feel the air and the wind and the water of the next place. I can’t wait to be changed again. Until then I’ll keep looking at my pictures and remembering how I felt when I was there.

I shot 16 rolls of film. Six 35mm rolls and 10 120mm rolls. I wish I’d shot more, and gone a little more slowly and patiently. But, the wind and the cold were more of a factor than I expected. I wrote and took notes but even those got chaotic, and so now I’m not sure where I was for some of these photos. Whatever. I was madly in love with everything. Not much else matters when you’re swooning, does it?

I’m still waiting for five more rolls, so I’ll write more and share those photos soon. The photos in this post were taken on a Minolta SRT-102 (my favorite camera), a Bronica SQ-A (my other favorite camera), and an FPP Debonair–a $20 plastic camera that I used for the first time on this trip and that I think is actually really terrific. The films reflected in this post are Kodak Portra (160 and 400 ISO), Kodak Ektar (100 ISO), and a Kodak Gold (200 ISO) I soaked in grapefruit-habanero kombucha, which made for some subtle color shifts and some streaks; more subtle than I expected but I still like it.

If you’re interested, you can see more from these 11 rolls on this flickr album.

waking up from the dream that was Iceland

October 3, 2018 sumacandmilkweed9 Comments

LDC_20181003_35800002 — near Selfoss, Minolta SRT-102 and Kodak Portra 160

Oh, Iceland.

I was rendered speechless. I mean, that’s not surprising–it happens to me often as I’m better with writing words than speaking them. But, I said “wow” way too many times. And “stunning,” “beautiful,” “really?,” “oh, come on!,” “holy shit,” “oh my god,” and other noises and nonwords like grunts, gasps, etc. And then after a while I just shut up because, seriously, Iceland.

I don’t regret only bringing film. I brought four cameras and used all four of them. I brought some filters and a tiny tripod and didn’t use those at all. I winged it (I might look up the accuracy of this term later, but for now I’m using it) and took a chance on my Minolta SRT-102 battery holding up because I realized I should have a backup just a little too late and couldn’t get one in time. Sure enough, the minute I loaded that camera the battery was dead. So I had zero cameras with a working light meter and had to rely on a light meter app on my phone. I’d been doing this with pretty damn good success with the Bronica, but I hadn’t used it for 35mm film. All in all, metering in Iceland is no picnic (snow, black sand, mountain shadows, sun and then suddenly no sun, yada yada) but I think it all worked out okay.

Anyway, I dropped 11 rolls of film off at a local lab and had scans in under two hours. Someday I really want to do this part of it myself, but I don’t have the time right now and am grateful to the two labs that do it for me. I sent the three rolls of black and white film, one roll of Lomography purple, and a roll of slide film all off to The Darkroom yesterday, so I won’t see those for a bit longer.

Taking six days off of work means I’ve come back to a pile of things to sort through, but I’m grateful for a supportive team that made it possible for me to leave. I’m grateful to my friend Jane for asking me to go on this trip with her. I’m grateful for the peanut butter we ate in Iceland because it was excellent and saved us from what might have been iffy moments of hangriness.

I’m still trying to process the trip and I’ll write more about it, and share more pictures, when I have a little more time this weekend. But here are a couple for now.