Seattle

In May I did some traveling and at the time really wanted to write about it. I didn't bring my computer with me, and as fancy as my ipod is these days, I did not want to blog on that thing. So here we are, a month & a half later. The luster of what I was feeling has long since faded, but I'm starting to get back in the writing mood again.

Seattle! A lovely city with a cold industrial undertone, I thoroughly enjoyed walking around here but felt like I surely must be missing something. I did not fall in love with it. We stayed in the downtown area, very close to all the touristy things. We walked everywhere! Everything is pretty easy to get to with the Metro so big plus for that! I love cities where you can hop on the train right out of the airport & a short while later, there are you are in the heart of it. Among our sightseeing adventures were the Spaceneedle, Public Market, Aquarium, a short visit to Bainbridge Island, Snoqualmie Falls & Twede's Cafe (famously known as the setting for Twin Peaks), the original Starbucks, a SciFi/Music Museum and The Fremont Troll.

First things first. We did not take the metro to the Twin Peaks stuff. I can only imagine that might take a thousand hours. Luckily we had a friend living in Seattle who also loves Twin Peaks & geeked out with me a little by bringing us to the falls with "The Great Northern" in the background & to the Twin Peaks diner. There was a pretty awesome wanted poster on a telephone pole outside the diner that I only noticed as we were driving off. Killer Bob wanted by Sheriff Harry S. Truman. Scary!

Walking around Seattle, I had to ask myself... what year is it?

As far as food goes, we ate at a few places besides the Spaceneedle & Twede's - Bang Bang Cafe, Owl 'N Thistle and Streamliner Diner. Eating at the Spaceneedle is pricey, but you get admission to the observation deck included so you might as well go all out if you are going to go there. They were very accommodating to us vegetarians and I ordered way more than I could eat, resulting in a very heavy bill. Yikes! My friend Heather found Bang Bang Cafe online & we decided to check it out. We really liked it & ate there twice, maybe even 3 times in a 3 day period. We also ate at Owl 'N Thistle, an Irish Pub downtown that is pretty cute inside with its library full of law books. The food was okay, nothing to rave about, except we did get beer battered brie, which was pretty awesome. Streamliner Diner, which I keep wanting to call Steamliner since we had to take a ferry to get there, was so good. I had the vegetarian chili which came with a biscuit and it was heavenly.

Seattle has a lot of cute little gems to it. I wish I had one more day to spend there. We took the monorail, which was fun, but basically only goes from the Spaceneedle to Downtown, a one stop ride. We took a ferry to Bainbridge Island b/c it was under $5 round trip, and a boat tour around Seattle cost a ton more than that. We also saw a streetcar driving around, but somehow never managed to get on it. We walked most everywhere, but did take a few buses here & there, which are free in certain areas downtown. Score one for Seattle. From Seattle we took the train down to Portland, which was really comfortable, clean, fast and only $30.

Some more little bits of Seattle:

www.streamlinerdiner.com
www.yelp.com/biz/bang-bang-cafe-seattle
www.owlnthistle.com
www.twedescafe.com

My last day as a 33 year old.

This video is ridiculous, but... yeah.

Midnight in Paris

I really should take the effort to write while the ideas are still fresh in my mind, but oh how time slips away! I went to see Midnight in Paris on Sunday & had all these ideas & thoughts floating around in my head about why I liked it so much & all the little quirks & niches about it that made it so great. Now, I'm not sure if I'll get there, but I'll give it a little try.

I loved this movie. There were so many little moments that make this film great. From the epic shots of Paris & beyond, down to Owen Wilson's watch reading midnight. I spent a couple weeks in Paris a few years ago & just shot after shot in this film brought back feelings of how lovely & beautiful it is & oh I've been there! A true pleasure was seeing a brief scene in my absolute favorite place on Earth - Monet's House & Gardens. It's seriously gorgeous there and had a complete pull on me when I went that it felt like home, so when I saw the little bits of it, my heart skipped a beat. There is a scene at Versailles, and in the background I see this fountain that I adore, Apollon's Fountain. Even though they didn't shoot near it, I saw it there & the thought remains with me how magnificent it is.

I've always really enjoyed the majority of Woody Allen films, but this particularly hits a real point and how it is gone about showing that point to us is pretty creative & fun. People are often nostalgic. People often think the grass is always greener on the other side. Sometimes we need to realize what is worth chasing & what is just a fantasy.

I love the never-ending parade of artists & literary greats. I loved the characters. There are so many funny moments in this film. I found myself wondering about the road Rachel McAdams' character goes down. As she gets closer & closer to the end of the film, I'm left wondering if she was written that way so Owen Wilson's actions are more justified, or if it is only that way to drive home the point about their relationship.

Maybe why I like this one so much is because it takes a page out of The Purple Rose of Cairo, another Allen film I adore. Maybe I too just like escapism.

Tiding me over

I suppose two months of no blogging is pretty bad. I have been a busy girl! The 60 hour work weeks do not help, but I have been out around the country for a bit. More on that later when I'm not so lazy & tired of being on the go. Here's a picture from when I was spending the night at Chicago O'Hare.

Wavering Humanity

On my way home from work I had to stop & get gas. After I was setting up the gas pump, another car pulled into the station. A man got out & very nicely started asking me if I could spare any money b/c his ex wife called him & he has to go get his kid in Long Beach and only has a dollar on him for gas. I have a tendency to never give people money. I'm not really sure why, but I just don't. I've given people food, etc, but rarely ever money. It could be because I'm not sure if some of the people asking really need it, or because I know how quickly it goes. And so my initial reaction to him was, I'm sorry, I just can't. He was a decent looking person. He asked around other people at the gas station. I'm not really sure if he was able to get money or not, but when he went back to his car & started to get gas, I was getting into my car and looked at him. He said, $4.13. Embarrassing. ($4.13 being the cost of gas at this station at this time.) I said to him, it's alright.

As I got into my car, I started thinking why did I say that? It's not alright to him. I don't mind him asking for money, but he must be embarrassed asking for it. Now I feel bad. He may or may not have a kid that he has to go pick up in the middle of the night, but the more I thought about him, the more I believed him. Unfortunately, I had left the gas station. I usually don't feel bad not giving strangers money, but I started thinking about all the hard times we had growing up, not having money & how that $5 I could have given this guy could have been just a blip to me but a lifesaver to him at this moment. After all, of all the times I go to get gas, this one time, at this particular station, this is the moment where someone seemingly needs help and being able to, I don't. Why?

Polly's Photos

I've been listening to the new PJ Harvey album a lot. It has so grown on me. I love the songs & they're going over again in my head throughout the day (currently 'On Battleship Hill' and 'In The Dark Places'). I guess something has to be said for that. She'll be at Coachella this year & I'm so so so annoyed I can't go b/c they don't sell single day passes.

I was just going through my Diana F+ pictures, and with the songs stuck in my head & thinking about photography, I thought of some pictures I saw of her that I really liked. Like this one of her that I found on Maria Mochnacz's website. It was the original cover idea for 'Stories'.

Photo: Maria Mochnacz


A current one taken for the new album/promos, I believe by Seamus Murphy since he's been so involved with the new album:

Photo: Seamus Murphy

There is this whole feather thing going on. I'm guessing the symbolism as the head dress representing culture & war, but I reckon it's just my opinion. Seamus Murphy has also shot 12 videos for each song off her new album. There are many of them out now & can be seen on YouTube. Links for both photographers below.

http://www.mariamochnacz.co.uk/pjharvey/17pjharvey.asp
http://seamusmurphy.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/letenglandshake

Lomoland

I've decided that they named the Diana F+ because there are even more ways to fuck up your film than with your standard Diana camera. First off, I have that giant kit with all the bells & whistles. That includes a 35mm back, which I've already damaged, having it less than a year. I keep my camera in my bag all the time, everywhere I go. I don't have a case for it, b/c I just don't want to cover it up, but that has managed to get me a broken off tiny plastic lever that used to switch between panoramic & normal framing. Oopsy. I've still managed to get it to slide over, but it's a major pain in the ass. I was pretty mad at myself for that one.

Next, I've basically tried out all the lenses that came with the kit, however, I have been extremely bad about writing down what lens I used with what shot, and what settings I had it at, so it's anyone's guess when looking at the pictures. I just recently got 4 rolls of film back from the lab which span from last summer to last month. All are 35mm film, 3 redscale 100 & 1 expired color neg. I'm only now on my very first roll of 120. Thinking back I've never shot on 120 before so this will be interesting. I was very confused by the paper wrapper thing, but hopefully didn't fuck it up too much. I did fuck it up just a tad... Oh by the way, the 120 has no rewind? Agh! Horrible. Also, it advances by itself in my bag. Great. When you only have 16 pictures, you really don't want to loose 2 frames to accidental advancement. Do yourself a favor, don't advance the wheel until you're ready to shoot the next frame!

I've decided I'm not a huge fan of redscale. Half the time I forgot that was what was in my camera, and that the ISO is only 100, so a lot of photos didn't come out too well. I really should study up more on how to use my lenses more effectively & if I ever try redscale again, how to get better pictures out of it. I've seen other people's pictures using redscale & I'm quite jealous. I did manage to get some cool shots at least.

I had all these grand plans of photo shoots but so far, a year later, I'm still just snapping off casual photos. I hope the horrid price of developing w/ sprocket holes will motivate me into being more selective in what I'm shooting. I really like the idea of getting the film scanners Lomography has for 120 & 35mm film, but I don't have a scanner to use them with. It certainly would save me some money in the long run if I keep shooting as much as I do.

I'm not sure how to get a more round picture out of my fisheye lens. I think because I had such a wide back plate on, it prevented that cool circle. Also I must be a moron while using the telephoto lens. I really had no idea how far out & how far cropped it'd be. I took a picture of a building & when I got the film back, I was trying to figure out why on earth I took a picture of the tops of some random buildings. Whoops. I had completely cut out the subject of my photo & didn't even realize it. The close up lens for the 55m wide angle lens is still a strange one to me. First off, when you have the wide lens on, and you adjust the focus range to the shortest distance, then put the close up lens on, it bumps the focus range b/c it'll stay on better when the focus range is far. I'm not even sure what pictures I used it on so testing these lenses out should have been more of a project to me than it was. I should probably buy a cheap roll of film and do an actual lens test, actually write down some info, and perhaps read those manuals.

Anyway... here are some shots I like from rolls #3-6.

Roll #4:

Roll #5:

Roll #6: