Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

HERE & THERE

Monday, September 19th, 2011

Not that I’m one to get all frothy over Target collabos, but perhaps the Missoni for Target stuff turned out to be kind of a meh? It seemed to be a lot of plastic and polyester and poor construction, but the black and white stuff was the best? Fo’ sho.

Giant shocker, Hemet isn’t a bustling hub of fashionistas and design fans. I know?! How is that possible with such a large retirement population and two super WalMarts? So, when I stopped by Target at a leisurely 2pm on launch day to pick up food for the dogs and garbage bags, ’cause shizz be glamorous around here, I took a gander at the Missoni pieces.

Pretty much ended up with a case of the underwhelmed mehs.

I did like this blanket thing – even though it was only sold online and sold out immediately – and did end up grabbing a few of the small black and white travel bags, since my luggage arsenal desperately needs actual bags to hold all the many fancy lady creams and powders I require.

The end.

Otherwise, on launch day the UPS guy wandered into the backyard to drop off a vintage Minolta Maxxum 35-70mm macro lens I recently won on the ebay for $30. Such a crazy day! TWO things happening? How do I keep it all together? Really. It’s a miracle.

So, these are some meh pics wrought from quickly testing the new lens out. I think I’m feeling a bit of an underwhelmed meh over this lens as well.

My middle name is meh.

I don’t feel so meh about a couple recent Craigslist acquisitions. In fact, I’m feeling pretty YEAH.

Headed out to Palm Springs in the late afternoon to pick up a few vintage bits off the ‘ol CL and took advantage of the twilight lighting to push this new/old lens through a few more hoops.

And yup. Still meh.

But did I hear someone say Russel Wright for Conant Ball dining set? Mmmm-hmmmm. Grrrrrrl.

From the few pics shot around our dusty as all neglect house, I found that the macro function wasn’t thrilling me. Also, the low light capabilities at F4 weren’t fulfilling all those wild fantasies and unreasonable expectations I had built up inside my heart. Over this $30 lens? That would change my life? Madness.

It’s a fine lens – not mind blowing – but maybe I need to put this thing through it’s paces. Or maybe I’ll keep buying more and more and more vintage lenses until that deep black hole inside of me is filled up with glittering glass.

I bet the CL guy – who I got the Wright dining set from – didn’t think I was a creepy insane person when I pulled out the giant SLR and wandered around the street to shoot pictures of the darkening sky…you know…instead of pulling out of his driveway and going home.

Because it’s never terrifying when a stranger from CL wanders around in front of your house with a big camera snapping a bunch of pictures after that always awkward transaction had supposedly ended.

No one would be freaked out by that. Come on.

Oh. I’m a creep.

Great.

CACTI

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

My cacti are all screwed up.

I hate plants.

How is it possible to constantly kill every living thing that comes into this house? Finally got a fiddle leaf fig tree – immediately dead. My terrariums? Mostly dead. My sansevieria? Dead. You see – everything living is dead.

Well, except for these two.

They’re OK.

But seriously, screw you cacti. Please stop suddenly drooping and turning brown and being all temperamental.

What’s wrong with you? Depressed? Thirsty? Bored? You got fungus? I neglected you like the instructions said to. We live in the damn desert – this is your home! YOU COME FROM HERE. You should be loving this.

I give up on cacti and plants and greenery in general (even though I’ve always dreamt that the house would be filled up with sculptural plants). They just keep committing suicide…or I’m murdering them. It’s a 50/50 chance.

DAMMIT.

In my plant fantasy, I imagine my cacti reaching the sort of grand heights and mythic health that Maurizio Zucchi’s have. This is ‘effing plant pornography. These pictures are mocking me and my stupid plant failure. Also, that entire interior? You know, pretty much PERFECTION on every single level. Dammit.

(you’ve probably seen these images from Ideat Magazine-June 2011 via iiiinspired).

Mocking me.

Bastards.

AROUND THE HOUSE

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Been toying with the nutty notion of taking my interior documentation slightly more seriously by curbing the usual “phoning it in” style of camera work and post production editing that my blog laziness prefers. In a tiny step towards that end, I picked up a basic vintage Minolta 50mm f1.7 lens for under a hundred bucks and then went all nerdtown around the house, shooting updated vignettes and detail images in an experimental fit of fixed focal lengths, big ‘ol apertures and shallow depth of field.

It’s an unending roller coaster of crazy excitement around here.

After shooting a ridiculous amount of images and putting the f/stops through their paces, I ended up attempting to explain bokeh to my exhausted dogs, who clearly couldn’t give two craps.

Come on. It’s not like those two could really grasp the concept with their teeny brains and total lack of interest.

After years spent in art school shooting film with vintage SLR’s and medium format cameras, I have a fondness for those 1970’s Japanese lenses that got shelved with digital. The allure of going Sony for a camera body was the lens mount compatibility with vintage Minoltas – meaning – I can stick old film lenses on my digital camera.

This vintage 50mm turned out to be both fantastic and stupid affordable. Of course, to feed my weird lens obsession, I keep an eye out for old camera gear bags at estate sales or while thrifting, because have you seen the prices on new lenses? It’s madness.