Wedding: Sammi and Paul

Sammi and Paul were married on August 22nd, an exceptionally hot and steamy day in this part of the world. I had been asked to shoot with the Holgas that day, and came home with 21 rolls of film. That translates into 252 potential images. I have lots of processing, scanning, and editing to do, but I bet I will end up with about 150 edits. It will take weeks...this post is just 5 that quickly caught my eye from the color rolls that are currently on my light table begging to be scanned.

I think the cigar smoking and hanging out outside interested me the most. Girls with cigars! Who knew?

Back to the house posts again

I have turned the corner and am making progress on the 4th side. A nice realization, but one that is tempered with frustration. This is the north side...so even though the paint is thick and looks really bad, it's much harder to get OFF. I spent 6 hours on this side yesterday...and a good third or so of what you see done had been done a week or so ago. It takes a damn long time! The third side looks great. I got some trim painting done yesterday, and was able to put the dog fencing back and dismantle the ladders that made my scaffolding. Now I don't have to worry about the dogs getting out...we had a couple of quick escapes last week, and with Edgar being the bad dog that he is, that could have been disastrous. In fact, since I am intruding on their space so much, I rearranged the fencing so that they now have the whole yard back again. Elliot gets weird when things change about his "bathroom" space, and we had a few incidents of inappropriate use of house space if you know what I mean. SO this should make him feel better about going outdoors. Besides, the whole damn yard is crabgrass now so what the heck.

The gardens were happy this year. I do need to move more things around, though. It's amazing how tall some things get!!! I have to assume that's their normal height, I mean, why should my flowers be any bigger than usual? The bee balm is out of control, and spreads like mad. The perennial mix was great, but when it comes time to break down the gardens for the fall, how am I going to know what is what? There are annuals mixed in with the perennials...it's a huge messy mix.

The veggie garden was a good experiment. A few things that went wrong that will need to be corrected: One, the aisles between the rows are about 2 inches shy of letting my mower thru. Grrrrr. Two, things get bigger and taller than you think they will. PLAN BETTER next time. Three, plant less and plant only what you will really eat. Out of the gazillion radishes, I ate ONE. Lettuce? One salad benefited from it. Broccoli? I was away when it peaked and then it flowered. Four, plant more peas at a variety of time intervals and make their fencing taller. Five, consider taking more branches off of the surrounding trees. Not quite as much sun hits it as I anticipated would.

The flower beds at the front edge of the house will need to be completely cleaned up for fall from all the weeds. Pick thru it to find the perennials, and move them. Then sift out all the paint chips and plant them next year. It will be too much prep work to get anything into them this year, I have got to finish the house first.
I added in this photo afterwards, it's the same shot as the one above it but AFTER I spent many hours cleaning out the weeds, moving the perennials, and sifting out the paint chips.

The front garden bed was thick with weeds. I made a start at cleaning it up yesterday.

Wedding: Tony and Nicole

August has been a busy month for Holga (toy camera) weddings. By the time the month is done, I will have shot 3 full weddings this way...that's a lot. Each wedding probably yields 12 to 15 rolls of film (12 exposures per roll) and the scanning for such a project is phenomenal. And then later on (someday) I need to clean the dust off of the scans, which takes about 20 minutes per image. For the past several days, my life is like this: for about 6 or 7 hours a day, I work on my house (scraping, sanding, painting). A few breaks for food, maybe a walk with the dogs, errands, maybe a run for me. Seriously, my life is bizarre right now. I haven't even been to the grocery store for weeks. Every day I run out of some key food item and then end up being very creative the next day because I can't tear myself away long enough to go shopping. At about 8pm, when it gets dark, I head upstairs to the computer and scan negatives until 12 or 1 in the morning. I head to bed and repeat the same thing the next day. The house is a big deal because I have to go back to my full time job...which means that M-F from 8 until 4, I can't do any work at home. And the 3rd holga wedding is Aug 22, so the negs from the last one have to be done before I dive into the next one. Whew. And I just put myself back on Match.com...will I even have time to date? Hmmmm.

This shot was taken with a tripod...you can see the motion blur of the people at the tables. I love that I can rig up the Holgas with a cable release and it has a bulb setting. It is like finally having control over these cameras! (Normally the shutter and aperture are set, you can't vary them at all. Bulb setting means that I have control over the length of time that the shutter is open, vastly improving negative exposure.)

I do gravitate towards the more bizarre moments at weddings when I have these cameras. :)

It's not perfect, but I love the guy holding shoes, a beer, and a baby. YES!!

Aaaah! I started playing with multiple exposures on the negatives, and not advancing the frame fully. (Does that make sense?) Each time I take a photo, the flash on a cable goes off, illuminating my subject. But on a darkened dance floor, that one thing is all that gets exposed- the rest of the negative space is still "useable". SO, I repeat another exposure in a different section of the frame. And then again. Then I advance it almost all the way and repeat the process, and end up with a continuous strip of multiple exposures that hopefully work well together.

I have photographed almost 130 weddings now. These dresses were probably the most beautiful color I have EVER seen.

Tony and Nicole were really great to photograph. They are obviously very much in love, and I am so happy for the two of them!

House

Didn't really make much progress on the house today..I got distracted in a BIG way by my holga negs from the wedding Saturday. But I did manage to finish sanding this section and then started in on the primer. (Blue, below.) I have learned a valuable lesson...never leave your 5 gallon container of paint in a place that is reached by RAIN. As secure as you think it is, it ISN'T. I opened the primer and had to scoop 3 inches of water from the top. I am grateful that oil and water make such a definitive separation from each other. :) And at $175 per 5 gallons, you really want to use all of your inventory, ya know? **Note added Aug 9th: there was a hole in the top of the container. THAT certainly accounts for the water getting in. **

Wedding Aug 1

Andy brought me to a family wedding yesterday...I brought along the Holgas and had a ball. I think I shot 15 rolls? Seeing as it was a daytime wedding there was plenty of light for exposures, and I used the flash for fill. It's making me nuts that today is Sunday and I can't have LB Wheatons process the film until tomorrow. The wedding was very nice- all held at the brides parents house, outdoors, with a tent for dinner. No DJ- just an ipod hooked up to speakers. No photographer, really, as the girl there was only hired to shoot for about 2 and a half hours. I have her card, am wondering if I will get to see the photos. When I do get mine developed and scanned, I will make another post about them.