35 mm of Happiness

I'm experimenting this weekend because I'm sick of waiting to win the lottery (for which I would need to play the lottery), or to find the free time to get me a lucrative enough photo gig that would cover my needs for new digital equipment. Two rolls of Kodak Ektachrome have been sitting in my camera drawer forever so I decided to give them a shot. Both are very expired - we're talking 1981 expired - which is incidentally the year I was born. I don't even care that this particular film is designed specially for controlled indoor/studio lighting. It's 64 ISO but I'm pushing it to 100. 

I have a ready roll of 120 mm film from my Mamiya, and another 35 mm (Portra 400) to finish shooting with the Zenit, so I thought it would also be nice to try out a 50 mm Nikkor lens of - get this - f/1.2 with my Nikon FM2 before I go down to Palo Alto to develop them all. EXCITING STUFF!!!

Of course, this might not work at all, which would suck. But I'm bored, and I want to challenge myself. So let's go.

And the Green Grass Grows All Around

It's been ages, I know.  I was kind of busy making another baby, and I haven't had the time to shoot much professional or personal work.  Plus, I am so at the point of having outgrown my equipment, and I am itching to get a new camera badly.  I guess I could shoot film until that happens...

For now, however, I must be contented with just using my iPhone.  I am also writing again after the hiatus I went on just before the winter holidays last year.  There's a new blog, too!

Here are a few images from the past two months, and again, thanks for visiting.  Enjoy!

P.S. What's with the Spring weather?! We didn't even have a proper Winter here in California, and now poof, Spring.  I wish it would rain....

Happy New Year!

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

~ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I am so glad I am out with the old and in with the new!  There are so many fresh starts awaiting, and I am excited and hopeful and ready to go and be and do.  It's going to be great.  Stick around and share these pieces of life with me, and I promise that you'll have so much fun!

I think the theme in 2014 is still going to be "family & kids" but this time there will be more of it, and better - more kids, more time with family, better camera and more photos of the kids and the time spent with family; more trips and adventures and gigs and challenges, more living, better living, full of more love and then some.  

Johnny, John, my Mom and I went for a walk down at Twin Pines Park on the first day of the new year.  As I watched Johnny play I couldn't help but feel like Holden Caulfield a little bit... :)

P.S. I can't get over Johnny's hilarious new haircut (for which I and only I am guilty responsible), and the way his hat squished his ears and turned him into a real Hobbit.