Charlie's Worldmixed bag
Posted on October 30, 2009
The films were an interesting bunch.
The Olympus Trip 35 shots were almost too good. Sharp, clear, well exposed, consistent. So we have a load of pictures that look like good but general snapshots. This was the most arty of them. I’ll scan more this weekend.
The Holga shots were a mixed bag, well, mine were – Jay’s black and whites were brilliant this time. Mine were variable, some were awesome and you’ll get to see them soon I promise. Some were also a bit crap – dark and under exposed due to the film I was using. Velvia 100 really only works in the bright mid-day sun – I have Portra 400VC in it now, which will be perfect for more general conditions.
I also had an old black and white film in the now broken Olympus OM10 and there were a couple of cracking shots in that lot.
more to come this week
fil-ums
Posted on October 30, 2009
Just got a call from the lovely people at Churchill Colour Labs where I get my films developed to tell me that our latest batch are all done.
As luck would have it, I’m in Perth and just around the corner from them today, so I’ll pop over and pick them up.
So, faithful followers, whoever you all are, be prepared for some photos over the next week or so.
I shall drip feed them if I can bear it! Its gorgeously sunny today and I have the Holga again – might be dropping off another film at the same time. I can’t believe I took the one out of my bag from yesterday now! gah!
walking
Posted on October 30, 2009
you know, one foot in front of the other.
when you have time, its such a refreshing thing to do. Walked about 6km yesterday – from Perth station to Oracle and back again, via Kings Park.
It took 30 mins or so in each direction and as I was carrying a laptop and stuff, I have a slightly clunky back this morning, but it was so nice to get so much fresh air.
I had to get the bus this morning (which was a hideous experience) but I’ll be walking home tonight.
Back to Perth tomorrow for some more walking..
compare and contrast..
Posted on October 28, 2009
I just sat back on my home office chair and noticed something – the way I’d laid out my phone and laptop spoke volumes.. so I took a picture to show you…
My work laptop and phone
work
My personal laptop and phone
Home
Interesting, huh?
My work, which is very important in the scheme of things to both me and my company – if I can’t work well, then it costs lots of $$ – gives me the most basic phone I’ve ever seen and a base spec business laptop. Actually, I’m not complaining about the laptop, it might be basic, but it works fine, I just need a bigger harddisk – 50G these days for demos and virtual machines is waaay too small. The phone on the other hand, is embarrassing.
My home setup technically isnt that important (as in I don’t need it to pay the mortgage etc) – however it does keep me in touch with my kids on skype which is pretty important, and I also use it for my photography obsession to process photos and more recently, for writing children’s books. So, this largely non-essential use and I manage to have a hugely better spec machine (and oh so shiny too) than work. My phone is also muuuch better than my work phone and more appropriate (calendar/3G/email sync etc).
I’ve never had particularly good work laptops and I’ve always had to compromise in what I want to do -surely thats an oxymoron!
howdy neighbour
Posted on October 27, 2009
as I was clearing away some of the garden rubbish out the front, the neighbours across the road came out to potter about their front garden before going on an evening stroll, as is their want every night.
They are a retired couple, probably in their early 70s and they have a lovely house and garden. I decided to walk over and say hi.
And they’re lovely, so friendly with a good sense of humour. I can tell the previous owners and tenants of my house have been neglectful of it in the past as their questions are subtly directed at what I’ve done to the house garden so far, what I’m doing now and what I’m going to do.
The garden is in a bit of a flux state right now – my hacking back, pruning, digging and irrigation repairs has probably made the garden look worse than it did a few months ago – especially the front lawn after I had 3 big trees taken out and am in the middle of a serious weed and feed blitz.
The neighbours make no secret they are pleased I’m working on making it look good (it was so neglected when we bought the house) and promise to come over sometime with cuttings of plants from their garden
I feel a little bit more a real part of things here after that..
waiting..
Posted on October 26, 2009
…for my films to come back.
They’ll be another few days and I can’t wait! There’s something magical in this process that digital can’t offer. Loading into Lightroom or Photoshop and processing is a bit sterile. Perhaps if I took more photos and did more creative things with the camera instead of opening a beer and chilling on the patio 🙂
In other news, I’m making progress with the garden – off to buy some kerb stones to mark off the lawns from the flowerbeds tomorrow. Then seed the grass and get some flowers. Hopefully the almost endless summer sunshine we get here will take care of the rest. Even the grapevine is thriving after a really good chop earlier in the year – I’m going to start training it over the patio roof so we can sit under an Italian style canopy.
There’s nothing better than relaxing in a garden you sculpted yourself. Well, in my case, wrestled into submission.
sunday sunday, so good to me..
Posted on October 25, 2009
Ok, its a day earlier than the Mama’s and the Papa’s had it.
Its been a very slumpy day today – I did the weeding and feeding and dressing the bits of the lawn with wetting agent and thats about all I’ve really done so far.
I should get to speak to the kids on Skype in a bit and then probably take my step-daughters to the park once its cooled off a bit. No photos yet, I might go out between the park and dinner time, but as its so warm, I might just buy some cold beers and sit outside with the wafting scent of sandalwood and citronella..
Anwyay, hope all your weekends are going similarly swimmingly 🙂
More later. Possibly.
fixed it, I did
Posted on October 24, 2009
Fixed the irrigation this afternoon.
It just required the fuses to be replaced and the new cable runs that I did the other day to be rejoined with proper cable connecting clips. I also re-wound the tape round a few of the older (but as far as I know, non functioning) cable joins, just to be sure.
Tested the connections with a multimeter to ensure I hadn’t stuffed up and joined the common to the power circuit by mistake (I hadn’t) and then did some test runs.
And blow me down if it doesn’t all work. I replaced a few old and crap sprinklers with new pop-ups and thats it, job done.
Tomorrow, the adventures of the world’s most boring man continues with weed and feed and preparing the ground for grass seed. Go me.
Think I’ll go out and take some photos tomorrow, its been a while.
Holga-tastic
Posted on October 24, 2009
I finally (after weeks of being lazy) posted off the latest batch of Holga and 35mm film to be processed.
Should get it all back next week, thats 9 films (5×120 and 4x35mil) – hopefully one or two shots are decent in that batch! I know there’s going to be a few duff ones as the back came off the Holga twice, so I strongly suspect I’ll get a heap of blown out ruined ones, although I am hoping not too many.
I’ve just started planning my fun for next year with the Holga – I’m going to get together a proper portfolio (if I ever send the fookin’ things off to be developed) and start offering Lomo/Holga wedding photography.
There’s something so nuts in the way those shots come out that I bet I could get a few gigs a year for couples who don’t want the traditional shots.
My plan is to buy 3 or 4 Holga’s and a couple of Diana F’s, a Superheadz Golden Half and perhaps even a Lomo LCF, load them up with all kinds of different films (depending on lighting, time of day, clients wishes etc) and have some fun with it.
Oh, and a Golden Half, by the way, is a 35mm 1/2 frame toy camera (72 shots on a roll) – its teeny and crap and lovely and I want one!
I’ll take the digital too, as I have an awesome Holga simulator in Photoshop if needed.
Its not going to be an easy option, and really, its going to be more expensive to do it this way than digital with the raw materials cost of film and processing (around $15-20 per 12 shots) but I can imagine with the right clients, getting some WICKED shots.
In preparation for this monumental journey into madness, I have created a couple of blogs, eventually, I’ll get a domain and link them together blah blah, but here’s what I was thinking…
http://lomoweddings.wordpress.com/
http://holgaweddings.wordpress.com/
Windows FAIL
Posted on October 23, 2009
Now Jay’s computer has stuffed up.
Every day it fails to go to sleep correctly, fails to wake up, throws random issues with connecting to the wireless router, browsing, Word runs like a dog (whereas the Austin computers $500 cheap and cheerful budget tower I bought for the kids it runs fine) and generally its crap.
Thanks Dell, thats the first and last time I spend money with you. $2000 and it lasted 15 months.
Even Windows 7 doesn’t help – has to be the hardware and drivers not cooperating and updates don’t help.
So, we bought another Mac. A Macbook 13″, the new one, same spec as the old MacBook Pro 13″ but only costs $1500 (with memory upgrade and MS Office). I was dismayed to find the price of my MacBook Pro has fallen $300 since I bought it 4 weeks ago. Bollocks!
So Jay will finally have a computer that just does what it’s asked (as mine does – its fantastic and I love it). I’ll reinstall her Dell with XP when the Mac comes, see if I can get that to work so the girls can use it for a second machine – they often fight over having to do homework at the same time.
So far, Windows 0, Mac, 2. More than just a bloody nose.
Charlie's World 