Home for my 365 photo challenge, where I attempt to take and post a photo every day for the year.
Click on Photos to see all the photos on one page, or scroll down and look at each post. You can find more pictures and some not-very-good blogging at Cliff538. You can see the Polaroid archive page here.
Curious about my journey back into film shooting, you can find all those posts here. There is also a dedicated page to the journey and resources that I have personally used and can recommend.
I hope these pictures bring a smile and inspire you to go take some pictures.
Not much photography time today, but a good day on the cleaning and organizing side. I was able to cut up all my negatives and get them in plastic sleeves with labels. I can see that if you put this off too long, you’ll end up with a cardboard box of negatives with no idea what camera they came from or how they were developed.
I tried using scissors to cut my negatives into strips of 6 pictures, and that turned out to be not the way. Apparently, I can’t cut a straight line with scissors, and the gap between frames on 35mm is very small. But for $30, I was able to get a negative cutter, and that made all the difference. Negatives are cut into strips and labeled with the date, type of film, camera, and who/how processed.
Off to work tomorrow, so hopefully some good “making pictures” material.
River has been bleeding out of his nose for a few days. He would be sleeping on the tile, and he’d have a small pool of blood by his nose (extremely disturbing). We thought he bonked his nose playing with Daisy or got a cactus spine in it; he chases lizards in the yard, and they run for the safety of a cactus.
After some tests, he has Coccidioidomycosis, commonly known as Valley Fever. If left untreated or unrecognized, it can be deadly in dogs. We have started him on a strong antifungal medicine, and he will have to be on it for months to clear it. Side effects are many, but so far the little trooper is doing well. Just a lot more lethargic.
I feel awful, but so thankful that we found out what it was so soon. If you are a veterinarian out there, thank you. You all are awesome, and I love you. Thank you for your knowledge, years of training, and expertise.
I love this dog. It’s my job to protect him, and I will at all costs.
O.K, let’s move on before I tear up.
Another Polaroid today, this one in black & white. Pretty streaky and low quality. I’m not sure if it’s my film, the camera, or just good luck, LOL. But I love it anyway.
I hope you have had a great day. Tell someone that you love them. Hug someone. Tell another that you’re thinking of them. And, as always, thank you for stopping by.
Take some time for yourself today if you haven’t already. Read a good book, play a game, do what the heck you want for a while. I think you deserve it.
The amount of time it takes to come up with a title varies so much it makes me laugh. Some days, I look at the picture, and it pops into my head, almost like the photo is telling me. Others, I struggle, keep looking at it, let it roll around in my head, and still can’t come up with something I like. I like today’s; it was the third one I came up with.
Don’t work too hard out there. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. I appreciate you stopping by.
I couldn’t decide between the two variants, so I’m posting the B&W down in Stray Pixels. I’ve started a new thing with my little pixel icons; they will show how many pictures are in Stray Pixels. Let’s see if it sticks.
Busy, busy day. Errands, chores, and clean up. The monsoon storms are rolling through fast and furious. Lots of rain today. Our back deck is completely flooded, which I’ve never seen before. Not sure if that’s going to cause any issues…
Spent a crazy amount of time today working on three blogs. I very much enjoy the work and learning(so much to learn), but man, can it take a long time. On Cliff538, I have always had a single-column layout when I post a set of pictures, and it has been driving me nuts. My blog is very narrow, and a single column of pictures just looks awful. Today, I got it figured out how to post 2 across. Looks so much better. (This is what draws me to a WordPress website: all the great photo layout options.) You can see an example here and here of the new layout. I now also have lazy loading and reduced sizes to improve loading speed.
Apple has this thing where you can turn a website into an icon on your home screen, so it looks like an app. Really handy for when you frequent a website often, faster than opening a browser and typing in the address. It’s called an apple-touch-icon, and what shows up isn’t automatic; you have to create it and add its address in the head of your webpage. So, that took a crazy amount of time to figure out and make the 4 PNGs. But now, at least if someone were to make an app out of a blog, they’d get a nice little icon. ( I know, no one will do that, but I will, and I want a nice icon on my screen.)
It’s all this little stuff that really doesn’t matter, but all those small touches really add up to a nice website. You need someone to obsess over those little details. I used Rob’s website checker, Lens, to check all the little bits. I have all green checkmarks on the two main blogs, and a little more work on the other two.
Off to work tomorrow; it’s a 4-day trip. If you have read this far, I really appreciate you. Thank you for stopping by; I know your time is precious, and I’m honored that you spent a little bit of it with me.
Cheers.
Click for Stray Pixels👾
I couldn’t decide between the two, so I’m posting both.
Manufacturing code 5D944480758, born April 9, 1979. 47 years young.
She’s old, and her sonar autofocus is fer-shite, but she still takes a good picture. Thank goodness it has an autofocus override switch because just doing it manually is way easier, LOL. It may just be my camera, but it works about 1 out of 10 tries. I may have to find a shop that does CLAs on them. (Clean, Lube, Adjust)
iPhone shot and processed. It’s a lazy picture today. I spent all day digging through old boxes, finding my old negatives and Polaroids and scanning them. You can see 25 of them, along with a short story about my early days as a mechanic here.
Not super happy with today’s photo… but let’s not focus on it, shall we?
Got a fresh roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 loaded into the Snapic and put back into the flight bag. The Nikon F3 still has about 10 shots left on the Ilford Vintage Tone. Rollei has 5 shots left on the Ilford Delta 400. Which all tells me I need to get out shooting, but it’s just so bloody hot. During the summer, I do better when I’m on the road; most places are not quite as hot.
I’m looking forward to vacation. A big road trip with camping and exploring is coming in September. Looking forward to lots of shooting photography. My wife hates the expression, “shooting” for obvious reasons, but it sounds better than “taking pictures” to me. I just try not to use it around her. You know, the whole give-and-take thing.
A big thunderstorm rolled through last night with 80mph winds. We didn’t have any damage, but our trees have been heavily trimmed back, which they tell me helps. Driving to the gym and back, there are a crazy number of trees down. We had the power fluctuate a few times, and my office computer went on battery backup, so I just shut everything down. Went outside under cover and watched it roll through. There is just something about watching Mother Nature’s power. Makes you feel pretty small.
Two more work trips then vacation time…
I hope it was a good Monday for you, and a sincere thank you for stopping by. If you have a blog or photo site, please send me a link, and I’ll follow you. Cheers.
My first two polaroid shots since I have no idea when. I remember having several Polaroid cameras; I have several Polaroid shots saved from high school in a drawer, so my last use was sometime in the 80s.
I picked up a used SX-70 off of eBay and so far, so good. Sure brings back good memories. When my wife heard the click-and-eject of the Polaroid, she almost fell off her chair. The dogs too; you can see Daisy’s cocked head as the film came out. Such a classic sound. Thank you to the last remaining factory in the Netherlands still producing this film. You can watch a great YouTube video about it: Life at the Last Polaroid Factory in the World. Long Live Film!
the leaves rustle in the
breeze
the lone wolf creeping around
the brush
an innocent rabbit in its
unknowing last moments
a half dead mother salmon
making her way upstream
she will not know her
children, but they will
follow at her speed
a bear & her cubs find her
spawn, leaving no room for
empathy, for the fish are not
mad at the creature, & the
bear does not know hell
the circle of life knows no
bounds, life keeps going round
~ risa serenity
Arrived in Seattle early this afternoon, and while walking around, I came across a group of four kids offering to write you a poem on any topic, and if you like it, you can pay any amount you want.
I picked Risa to do mine and told her the title was Wilderness. She took about 12 minutes to type out my poem. I think it’s pretty cool. She pulled it off the typewriter, read it to me, and said this was the first Wilderness poem she had done.
Thank you, Risa. I think you’re a good poet.
Behind the kids was a bookstore where I found this card, and I just loved the creatures on it. I call them creatures because that’s the name of the card, “Creatures”. And I think they are pretty cool as well.
I love Seattle. Quirky, different, dirty, clean, unique, diverse, imperfect, and the smell of great coffee everywhere.
Today’s picture was shot a few days ago. The day has run away from me, and I’m feeling like it’s starting to hold my head underwater! Packing for work, ticking off to-dos, chores, and backyard work. We lost half of our backyard tree in the last windstorm, and we’re still cleaning up the mess.
I’ve finally jumped on something I’ve wanted for a long time. Found a “working” (we shall see) Polaroid SX-70 for a reasonable price. Film is on order. To properly highlight those on the blog, I’ve started working on a fun way to show them, inspired by Dan’s Polaroids. I have a working version one. I still need to wait until I get some film so I can scan the real front and back to use. I couldn’t find anything online, and it’s just better to make your own. You can check out version one if you’d like. I left it up so I can look at it over the next few days and see what changes I need to make.
I hope it was a beautiful day, and thank you for stopping by.
Finally sitting down to work on the Cliff538 blog. Updated the Film Journey & Resource Page and posted some new pages. Figured I’d put all my film scans for each film type on their own page, so if folks want to see what different film types look like before using them, they have this resource available. More will be added as I shoot different film.
Another three day trip in the books. Always good to be back home, even if it’s 110°F. The greeting/love you get from two dogs swells your heart and makes you smile. 😊
Another nice 20-hour layover in BOI. Extremely smoky skies and brutally hot. Got in a 4.5-mile walk, and I was able to get today’s picture. Many similar shots from previous overnights, but I’m always trying to improve the ones I really like.
