?This is part of my NYC Tet Travelogue.

See part one here, part two here, and part three here.

Unlike the previous entries, this one was written a week after the events, but it covers events from 14 Feb 2010.

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This is part of my NYC Tet Travelogue.

See part one here.

See part two here.

?this was originally written on 14 Feb 2010

Life sure is strange.  This morning I was sure I’d be buying a Holga today.  After talking to Danielle, it even seemed that SHE would get one too.  She wanted to have one loaded with color film and one loaded with black and white film.  Then she asked a few questions.  I can’t remember the exact words, but it got me thinking.  Do I REALLY want a Holga?  I mean, the biggest attraction for me was the ability to medium format film.  As I mentioned on 12 Feb, it’s a connection with the past and a chance to shoot with better film than I ever did.  But the more I looked at other photographers’ Lomo results, the more I wondered if this was how I wanted to re-experience film.  What put me off the most is the fact that the results are so random.  I don’t understand how people go on vacations to places as far away as Asia with a Lomo as their sole means of capturing their experiences.  They could be getting completely blown out photos the whole time and come back without any photo memories.

Part of my NYC Tet Travelogue.  See part one here.

this entry was originally written on ?13 Feb 2010

I went to the Lomography store yesterday and it was a very interesting experience.  The store matches the aesthetic of the Lomography movement.  It has a very casual feel to it.  It definitely belongs in Greenwich Village.  The wall is a huge collage of Lomo prints; most appeared to be of or taken in New York City.  There was a lot of repetition and it had the feel or working well as a larger work of art.  It’s worth visiting the store just to see the wall.  But the layout was also great - all the cameras are sitting on a table in the middle and you can touch them and handle them and get a feel for the camera.  I have a feeling they would have probably let me load some film in and take some shots for them to keep.  (And I might have if I hadn’t been there with others)  The table has an outline of each camera beneath it with the price of the camera listed.  The staff (well, the one woman there at that time) was very knowledgeable and helpful.  Definitely a good hire.  There were also tons of books and magazines wholly consisting of Lomographic images.

After reading Dan’s great Japan travelogue, Super Ichiban Travel Blog, and another source where someone had his children always keep a journal when they travel, I decided I wanted to do this as well.  To practice for when I go to some place that’s foreign to me, I decided to start keeping a journal when I travel to places I’ve already been.   Here’s the first entry from last weekend’s trip.

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I know I’m a day late, but I was busy celebrating the new year.  It’s now the year of the tiger!

If you read anywhere on the web, you’ll see people talking about how Photoshop (and digital photo manipulation) is ruining the purity of photography.  People argue endlessly about this as if they could get everyone on their side.  Guess what?  This controversy is older than radio.  Recently I’ve been reading the great photography history, How To Read a Photograph.  It turns out that as early as 1898,  people were purposely publishing their photographs straight as they happened to develop.  In the 1920s there emerged a division between photographers over whether it was more proper for photographers to alter their negatives (and therefore become an interpretive art form like painting) or if they had to be developed as is.  People had already been experimenting throughout the 1900s with the usage of different chemicals to affect their prints in different ways.  Photographers even used different films from different manufacturers because they were known to give darker greens or more saturated colors or better grain.  Digital photography is no different - it’s just that dark rooms took years to master while anyone can get the basics of the Canon RAW (or Lightroom RAW) editor.  But, having seen that this division has existed within photography for the past 100 years, I don’t think it will be going away any time soon.

Dan over some cupcakes that Danielle made for him.

It was busy at the bird feeders with all the new birds. This little guy was unable to find a spot to land. I don’t know what he didn’t like about the bottom peg.

This is one of our neighbors clearing the snow out in his yard. Not sure what he was making a path to. Perhaps for his dog to be able to get to where he goes to relieve himself?

In case you’ve been under a rock lately, Maryland, DC, and Virginia got rocked by a huge El Niño system over the weekend. It dumped over three feet of snow in my neighborhood and nearly three feet everywhere else. The birds weathered it pretty well. Well, it helps that I felt bad for them and kept refilling the bird feeders. They were especially aggressive on the feeders this weekend for two reasons. 1) It was cold and they needed food to heat themselves by moving and 2) We had a bunch of new, large birds join the crowds in my backyard. The new birds included Red-Winged Blackbirds, Common Grackles, and European Starlings. Neither of these birds like Sunflower seeds, so they all kept going after the bird feed mix feeders. When I ran out of bird feed mix (a few days later) and was unable to buy any because of the snow conditions, I filled the feeders with sunflower seeds and they remained untouched for most of the day until the birds figured out that’s all they were going to get. Then they finished that off. I’ll be interested to see if they stick around after conditions improve.