Susan got me a Diana+ camera for christmas last year during our road trip. The Diana is a plastic medium-format camera that was originally introduced in the 60s and has seen a recent resurgence among photo geeks (and wannabes like myself). It’s an-all plastic “cheap” film camera with all manner of manufacturing defects that result in photos that are blurry, vignetted (blurring around the edges), and rather low contrast. Basically, dreamy lo-fi photos. It’s a medium-format camera (120 film) so you get rather large negatives (12 5.2 by 5.2 centimeter) which are appropriate for printing large photos. It’s manual in a toy-like way. It has three aperture settings (f11, f13, f19), two shutter speeds (1/60 and bulb), and a focus dial that adjusts from 1meter to inf. Since the viewfinder does not interact with the lens mechanism in anyway — you’re basically looking through a hole — none of these settings can be previewed before a shot. Taking photos with it forces you to consider how your settings are going to affect the outcome, which you should be doing anyway, but with a modern camera you at least have a light meter. So, it has a bit of a steep learning curve, or perhaps “shoot and see” while taking pictures.

I shot two black and white and two color rolls on the trip. The black and whites are still at the lab but I was eager so I picked up the color rolls since they were ready. You can see that in a few of them the film wasn’t advanced the same amount for each picture. I think the lab should have been able to correct for this, but they were probably using a machine.

New Orleans

Red streaks and vignetting. I’m still learning to advance the film to the correct position.

These guys were nice and let me take their picture.

Mississippi

It’s tricky to frame the photos correctly since the viewfinder doesn’t interact with the lens in anyway. I was hanging out of the window while taking this shot, and though the car appears in the frame, I like this one.

Austin

Could be the opening of an exploitation movie. This is present day Austin though, on top of Mount Bonnell looking over Lake Austin.

This would be an annoying exposure on any camera but I decided to try it anyway. We’re inside where it’s rather dark and the outside (brightly lit) is in the center of the frame. In theory I should have exposed longer but there would be a giant glowing bright spot in the center.

Christmas evening with the fam. The mood here is very strange but I dig what’s going on with the lighting.

We may know Diane Neal as tough gal ADA Casey Novak on Law & Order: SVU, but there are plenty of things we don’t know about her real life. What are her hobbies? What kind of ice cream does she like? Does she like her margaritas with or without salt? Does she even like margaritas? We can’t trust imdb for answers to questions like these so we have to resort to other sources. According to wikipedia, http://dianeneal.hostbus.com/ is “the biggest and BEST Diane Neal website on the ‘net!” I bet they can provide us with the vital information we seek - the site is both “Diane Neal Tested” and “Mother (Colleen) Approved! (Hi Diane’s Mom!)”

I just learned that Diane believes Dick Cheney is dead. Did you know that? Neither did I! But here it is on the site, actual emails from Diane herself!

PS Dick Cheney is actually dead. Marcus and I think they’ve been “weekend at Bernieing” him for years. Whenever he’s shown he usually never speaks and is wearing a giant baseball hat and sunglasses. Coincidence? I think not.

First of all, I’m glad most of you agree about Cheney. And yes, I’m suggesting that’s he’s been dead for quite a while now. I think 4 years, Marcus thinks 2. Roughly. The only problem with our theory is the “shooting his friend in the face” episode. Perhaps it was a ruse by the Bush administration to throw off the public from his obvious corpsishness? We can only speculate. But I wouldn’t put it past them.

It all makes so much sense!

The Q&A section is my favorite though, especially this question from Katie. She passionately asks the question that we’ve all been wondering.

I read once that you liked the dog whisperer. That was quite possibly the oddest thing
I’d heard that day, and it stuck in my mind. Whenever do you have time to sit and watch the dog whisperer?! Who HAS TIME to watch the dog whisperer?! Do you MAKE time for the dog whisperer?

I TiVo the dog whisperer. Marcus and I love him AND we just got his book. As I’m typing this RIGHT NOW my dog, Ted, is sitting on my lap and consistently nudging the keyboard for attention. This is one of the many reasons that I NEED Caesar Milan. Also, Annie Potts who was on our show a few time (she’s kick ass, by the way) is good buddies with Caesar and would humor me with crazy stories about him. It makes me feel slightly connected to him. Weird, I know.

Yes, who has the time?! Katie doesn’t! I know I don’t! How can Diane Neal of all people?! Thank goodness for TiVo. And thank you Diane for properly capitalizing TiVo.

Yes, I’ve been watching Law & Order. Writer’s strike be damned, they have “a stockpile of scripts” saved up and ready to go. I hope you’re ready too because it’s either L&O or the new American Gladiators.

• Creepy, desolate, old house.
• Being left alone in said creepy, desolate house.
• Creepy disabled/orphaned children.
• Masks or burlap sacks on said children.
• Creepy old woman.
• Creepy contacting the dead scene.
• It’s never daytime.
• Caves. I hate caves.
• Random loud things falling. Who keeps a collection of pipes in a closet??
• Watching the movie in a theater where one can’t take a breather every 30 minutes.

The Orphanage is full of cliches, yet engrossing at the same time. Lesser movies make me groan when these things happen, but I was in suspense the entire time. It doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, but it’s refreshing to see a horror movie these days that isn’t just torture porn.

This is the part where I throw in a plug for The Devil’s Backbone, that movie does not get enough love.

Random reference to another movie: The Wizard of Gore!

Day 3 of susanz and dolapo head south and things are going awry. Most pressing is that we seem to have forgotten some camera equipment in our hotel room in Durham. Wait. Some?? Okay, a 24-70 f/2.8L, a 10-22 f/3.5-4.5, and a speedlite 430ex. We’re not sure that we’ve forgotten them at this point - 1.5 hours from the hotel - and I’m convinced that it must be in the trunk.

That location, the trunk!, had become my default for anything that we couldn’t find within 2 minutes of looking in the car. It had to be in the trunk right? With my bike taking up a significant amount of space in the back, it was pretty tricky to poke around back there without getting your sleeves (or purse) all greasy. In my defense there were all sorts of curious things in the trunk, including 13 bags of Senegalese dried shrimp I was transporting across the country for my dad. Dried shrimp that had the amazing property of filling any space with that smell. Oh, that smell.

Anyway, at this point the mood is light, spirits are high. We’d just purchased this hat after all! The hat represents everything this trip is about. Taking in the local flavor. Making random decisions along the way. Buying hats! Not to mention that we’d just decided to skip Charlotte, NC all together and spend some extra time in the smoky mountains (A decision that would later lead to a scary, but awesome hike). Something responsible kicks in and I swerve on to the shoulder to double check that the camera bag is actually in the trunk. It isn’t. Shit!

We had been staying at a dodgy roadside inn in Durham and were convinced the cleaning staff would just take the equipment. I usually have a little more faith in people, but there was a drug deal taking place outside our window the previous night. Okay, I can’t actually confirm that it was drugs, but there was a strange man in a car for the better half of 2 hours who was periodically visited by people in other cars. Strange cars. He certainly wasn’t selling puppies — at least I didn’t hear any puppies, but it’s very possible that they were sleeping.

Why didn’t I triple-check the hotel room before leaving? Was I afraid of touching those bed sheets again? Perhaps the feeling of urgency to get on the road to Asheville? I hate forgetting things.

Searching for a solution we do the only sane thing I can think of - find a convenience store and buy some sugar babies. Fueled by 32 grams of sugar we manage to schedule a fedex pickup and delivery to our hotel in Atlanta. We’re at this point feeling relieved and ready to get on with the journey. 20% of the mood change is of course due to the sugar babies. They’re delicious. I can’t stress this enough. The other 80% belong to Candy - the clerk at the convenience store.

Candy was unexplainably sassy for the middle of the morning on a random weekday. Clearly she was hopped up on something. Perhaps something purchased from our dodgy inn buddy from last night? Or maybe just life? In addition to letting us take a lot of pictures with her, she let us in on all the hottest party spots in both Durham and Asheville. I wasn’t really sure what kind of party I was looking for so I couldn’t answer that question, but she dropped some names anyway.

My only regret on this trip* is not getting a chance to check out these parties. Perhaps in the future, with more time.

*Um, only regret other than spending an hour taking “olde time” photos in New Orleans. Bah, who am I kidding, those photos were awesome!

While opening up a new brokerage account:

Part of me wanted to see what would happen if I selected either of these options, but I tend to lose all sense of adventure when money is involved.

Oh wait…

p.s. I still love you twitterrific.

ak++ and aarti++ for hosting.

Random things too tiny, and possibly too stupid, for individual posts

Movies I’ve watched in the past 8 days in 5 words. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - Sexploitation! I really watched that? No Country for Old Men - Amazing, go see it. Now. Eastern Promises - Also awesome, avoid bath houses. Host - Koreans are lovable, tasty people. La Dolce Vita - Seven nights, Hedonism. Poor Rome.

This spinning beach ball of death is funny. It comes from Took my hands off your eyes too soon, at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea. Say what you will about contemporary art, but this gets a thumbs up in my book. It’s not worth a trip to the west side or anything, but if you happen to be in the area.

Snickerdoodles. Shortening or butter? Joy of Cooking is a butter recipe (is this because I have the new edition?) but I suppose I’ll have to try it both ways before declaring a winner.

I’ve been a recluse all weekend — I spent Saturday night listening to Lauryn Hill and making a new wordpress theme for the ol’ blog. It’s based on a recent photo and is supposed to be as minimalist as I can get away. No search, calendar, blogroll, shared items, widgets, etc. It should still feel a little like kubrick anyway.

And lastly, I’m going on a road trip from NYC to Austin mid-December. Are there any must-see attractions in any of PA, VA, MD, TN, AL, AR that I should know about?

So Z and I headed up to Yorktown Heights last weekend for a combined pumpkin + photo adventure. As much as I love this city, getting out is great for new colors and interesting shapes/textures. It was also a good chance to play with her Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. I’ve sort of fallen in love with it so I’m not sure she’s getting it back. Besides being much faster than my 28-135, I love the images this thing produces, and the focus distance is much closer.

And of course there was pumpkin pie and apple cider donuts. Yum. The least pleasant thing about going to small towns is getting food recommendations from the locals. Panera bread? really?

Photos here and here.