Hi

I'm back.

I do not recommend taking a late flight to arrive home at 10pm and then go to the ER for your husband which doesn't allow you to get to bed till 2:30am but really feels like 4:30am because of the jet lag. I'm tired and it's Monday and the day is moving SLOW! My hubs is ok, some inflammation on his colon will keep him bed/couch bound for the next 2 days while he takes high doses of ibprofen and vicodin for the pain. I plan to join him as soon as I can leave work {thankfully, i think i can do this relatively on time even though i wasn't in until 11, i just need a little more sleep}. I think the oddest thing I collect is my husband's ER wrist bands. We go normally once a year for something major {cut, dog bite...}, we've been 3 times so far in '08. I keep meaning to make a little book or box with stories attached. It's not even that they're great stories it just seems like something to document. It's ok you can say it, that's odd.

Sometime in the past 10 days Portland flipped completely over to fall. It's beautiful despite the rain and the cool wind. There is a huge tree outside our apartment that looks like it's on fire with all the reds and oranges of it's leaves. I took video and pictures of it today with plans to show you later.

A few quick good bits:

- My niece is adorable!!!!! She smiles, laughs, reaches for people, keeps eye contact, gets happy when her parents walk in the room and makes raspberries at random. I love her so much more than i thought i ever would. She also makes it 10x as hard to leave Dallas - she changes so fast!

- Antiquing with my sister.in.law was a complete successes. She actually noticed an Argus 40 sitting high on a shelf {i got it for $20, this was not the steal i was hoping for but worth it for actually seeing in person the great looking lenses}. The other great find was wooden block print letters. This jumble of numbers and letters produced enough for my last name, wedding date, and JOY which i plan on using for my Christmas cards.

More to come...

Week In the Life

In the spirit of saying Yes to everything lately I'm taking up Ali's challenge of documenting a week in my life. Flickr group.

To follow the instructions on keeping notes, i'm jotting them here. I'm going to focus on capturing small things during the day and hopefully one thing that inspires me.

Monday Notes:
The wind that comes strongly through the Columbia gorge has started. It's fall. Ah, the lovely sounds of the trees rustling around. Thankfully the wind is still warm but likely not for long.


***
I took my first TtV shot this weekend. I definitely need to build a contraption to block the light and glare. I'll upload it later today, at least that's the plan. The plan worked:

First shot, too close to the viewfinder:


















Second shot, all of the viewfinder but blurry. I took a few more shots with the same bad results. This is when i stopped and decided that i really did need a contraption.

Scavenger & Through the Viewfinder

Two more fun and creative things that are happening in my life...

I have signed up for an exciting collaborative project, The Scavenger Project. It was created by Design For Man Kind in collaboration with Art House in Atlanta. In a week or so i will be getting a little packet in the mail with my list of 24 items/topics to base my art on. I have until Nov. 15th to get this all done and mail it in so i can have 1 piece published in a collaborative book. I'm excited and nervous that i'll have so much to do. I'm really hoping it gets here before i go out of town so i can be on the look out while in Texas.


The other is a the discovery of a photography technique called Through The Viewfinder. With a dualfex type camera {medium format} a picture is taken through it's view finder on top with a digital camera. The results are square format photos with a verity of results - depending on the lens style, cleanliness of lens & or mirror - you can get really clean looking photos or dirty. I highly recommend looking through the flickr group for this style.

How this all started is by me reading Hula Seventy's post about TtV. It occurred to me that we have several old cameras that were obtained through a series of events. On the shelf in M.'s office sat this beautiful Yashica D. I had a Yashica D and i didn't even know it! Turns out, there is a grid on the lens, i'm not sure how i feel about it. I've read in the flickr group that some love the grid and others clean it of with windex. That last part has me concerned about cleaning it at all, even though the viewfinder does have odd smudges on it. There is a small chance that the grid is in the ground glass and won't come off at all or is on the underside of the glass and cleaning the top won't matter. For now, i'm leaving it alone. I haven't even takin' one shot yet for goodness sakes.

That's right i haven't been brave and taken a shot yet. Although, i've done lots of reading and perusing of different types of cameras. I have the bug to buy a different style camera bad! Part of me thinks, i'll leave the Yashica D w/ grid because i'll admit that on some shots it's a nice little something and then i'll have say a Kodax Dualfex II for clean shots and a Starflex for it's great looking warped edges and maybe i can find one that's a little dirty, i like this look too!

This is very typical of my personality - get very excited about something - read up on it - day dream - but this is the tricky part, if i wait too long to get started i'll get bored day dreaming and move on - or if i start but run into a problem i'll move on*. So, the goal here is to take a picture by the end of the week. Who cares if i don't have the perfect light shield contraption, i'll use a dark piece of cloth if i have to, i will take a picture!

*it's not 100% of the time that i'll move on, sometimes i work through a problem and feel a great accomplishment.