Just a little. This picture accurately defines a lot of my off time while Clay is in grad school.

We went to Orange Beach for a couple of days a while back. Even phones take good pictures on beautiful days.

The boissons tent at a local french festival. Pretty grain. I think I may be regaining my childhood devotion to Fuji for color-when I got given "Nice Film" that's what it was. This one is on Fujicolor Pro 400H.

I am reading some Zola in French, The Belly of Paris. Clay bought me a used copy over amazon from some used bookstore in Rennes for a birthday present. Slow going but very good. It helps to read about food, you get a lot of vocabulary for free. I wonder how many of those fish are extinct.

I plan to write about the crazy hashing program which is now my job to take care of and make better. Soon. I like it. Having a job with an office and a parking sticker has taken some getting used to.

Indonesia's Tall Ship Dewaruci, Thursday April 19, 2012. Evening.

Sometimes the camera gives you a gift. I might have to break out
the enlarger for this one.

I like chasing the sunset along the seawall.

I took Susie to the fly on my last day of freedom, so to speak. For those keeping score at home she's almost completely healed. Such a relief.

Has it been this long?

Happy Anniversary to Clay, and to the assortment of other folks we happen to share the date with.

My dad took this picture of us on Clay's birthday as a result of me handing him the camera with a "You remember how to use a manual camera right? Match needle lines up in the middle" guideline. Came out alright for indoors at night.

Otherwise it will smell like beer all day long. The Nikkormat survived admirably well. This was Mardi Gras in black and white. Manual focus cameras are so incredibly easy to handle.

So, the holy trinity walks into Verti Marte....

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,

Nothing to see here, just the two story high trojan horse in the background.

I did take one roll of color film - I could not get good 35mm color film in a hurry so I got some rather trippy looking stuff out of the Yashica-Mat on 120 with Portra 400. I have some random fujicolor out at the developer right now so maybe I will be less monochrome here soon.

This was Hermes, Krewe d'Etat, Morpheus night, the Friday before Mardi Gras.

Pictures are from the Nikkormat FT with plain 50/2 lens, on Kodak 400Tmax, shot at ISO 800 and I asked the shop to push it one stop. About half the roll was usable, some pictures needed no modifications, but a few were made darker.

Manual focus and hold still. Try to not spill beer on the camera.

This is the yearly post to tell you all to go look at Mardi Gras pictures. Some are from film and will still be on the roll until later in the week. Have fun!

This is the best king cake I have had all season. I made it for Clay's birthday and it took three or four hours but it was soft and fluffy and awesome. Even the purple sugar came out purple instead of black.

I used a version of my mom's recipe that she had cut in half to make it easier to handle and it fit on a half-sheet with room to spare. Next time I'm going to try to get the icing thicker and I might do a two-strand twist. Process is somewhat documented in this set and the beginning is "put everything in a stand mixer and run it until it behaves, then let it rise for an hour or so."

Maybe I'll post the recipe with notes eventually. Until then, parades. Happy Mardi Gras!

This one looks better big. This is a scan from a lab print, but I developed the negatives at home. I'm considering making an 8x10 print next time I break out the enlarger. Chemicals are fun!

The Storyland Mermaid, in City Park at night during Celebration in the Oaks.

Something is brewing, but I am going to continue to tease you all with pictures until later.

Not a soul in sight. Somewhere near Egypt, Mississippi. Not as dark as it looks.

Every time I see this pigeonnier in City Park I think of Walker Percy's Lancelot. File under books where everything goes to hell in a handbasket really quickly. It's a good one.

Maybe this will fix our defense. Sigh.

Sculpture in Besthoff Sculpture Garden in City Park. Film Kentmere 400, camera Nikkormat FT, lens 50mm f/2. Probably f/16 shutter speed 500. I don't make notes on the 35mm stuff so much.

New Orleans is a great city to live in if you like taking pictures of statues. This one's name is "Birth of a Muse" and it sits on Terpsichore Street. It's the first new public work of art the city has commissioned since well, you know.

The muse is an 8x8 darkroom print made in our very own freezing cold antique bathtub. Best effort so far from trying to print 120. The scanner doesn't do it justice. I think I'm gonna put it on the wall.

I've had several people ask why I'm using film, and there's not much of a reason other than the opportunity showed up, and the darkroom stuff is something I've always wanted to know how to do.

It's also something to do while I attempt to distract myself from the search for my own muse. Because they never show up when you're looking.

Happy new year, y'all.

Alferez Oak, City Park Botanical Garden, 12/15/11.

City Park Carousel.

The wishing well in Storyland!

So. December has been rough, but we are almost done with it. Susie was gravely ill earlier this month but she's coming through it. Dog is gonna be on meds for a long time but she's improving.

This is my first set of night film photography. It's plain 400 speed film and me holding as still as possible. I developed the film myself and made a contact sheet but took the negatives to be printed as I was too busy printing christmas presents to print many of these.

Hope you all have a good holiday!

This year I finally got out to the cemeteries on all saints day.
It's been years.

I always have class or too much work or whatever to skip out, but
this year I was going to pass nearby at lunchtime, so I went and
bought a yellow rose to bring to my aunt who died after Katrina.

It was a beautiful day, lots of people out in the cemeteries with
flowers and brooms, some had young children with them to go meet
grandma and stuff like that. Happy cemeteries.

Pictures are from ongoing medium format experiment; I need to stop
down further on a day as sunny as this one was, taking pictures
of white stuff. The first three pictures were overexposed
but nothing simple editing can't fix.