'tis the season

Every year at the Arkansas State Capitol there is a Christmas parade, lighting, and fireworks. It's pretty awesome. This was the first year for me to go. I don't like cold weather at all. I've never been one to intentionally be in the cold - until photography! I do a lot of things for photography. Anyway, I'd never shot fireworks before this. This was actually the first shot I took for the night! I have some other good ones, but I loved the first one. Beginners luck?

pipe dreams

I took a trip to Keo, Arkansas to shot with the Holga. That area of the state is really great for the Holga. There's tons of old buildings full of detail that fit with the old style feel of the Holga. Also it's less than an hour from my house, which is always a great thing.

getting low

I took my first trip to Falling Water Creek a week or so ago. One of the waterfalls along is creek is the aptly named Falling Water Falls. I love this area of the state. There really is something magical about being around a waterfall. I really hope it's a feeling that never gets old for me. Waterfalls no matter how big or small are relaxing. I love finding them, seeing them, and hearing them.

letters from the first lady

This is just down the road from Cunningham Falls (see previous entry). I was very confused by Brian's directions to Cunningham Falls. It's difficult to give directions to somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Finally he said it's near the Hillary Clinton mailbox. I knew right away I would need to take the Holga along!

This is scanned straight from the negative and not edited at all. There really is a mailbox near Bun Hur, Arkansas full of bullet holes with hand-painted letters saying Hillary Clinton. Does it get any better than that!?

water with a kick

Above is Cunningham Falls. It's named after an FC Dallas player - Jeff Cunningham. He is the 2009 MVP for FC Dallas, and narrowly lost the MLS MVP award.

It's located in rural Searcy County between two pretty popular waterfalls - Falling Water Falls and Six Finger Falls. They are all on the same road, which provides some awesome views of Falling Water Creek.

You can see this waterfall from the road, but to take pictures of it you have to slowly make you way alongside a very steep hill that's covered in years of leaves. When I was first told about this waterfall I almost completely refused to visit it. Then I got there, and it didn't look so bad. I did manage to slide a few times though. Usually I was close enough to a fallen tree that I could grab on and stop my slide.

At one point I started sliding without having anything near me to grab onto. Now the hill isn't steep enough that I would have broken anything on the landing, but I probably would have been scraped up and completely soaking wet from the rocks and water below. I thought fast (for once in my life) and stabbed the legs of my tripod into the ground to stop my slide. It's probably the closest I'll ever been in my life to being an Indiana Jones type.

the wheels on the bus go round and round

I do a lot of random experiments with my cameras. I've grown to love film more than digital, because it's easy to stretch the boundaries. I know almost anything I do with film can be faked with photoshop. The thing is, I like the mystery and challenge. I like having to figure out how to fed film in a certain way or whatever else idea I've thought up. Will it work? Will it turn out how I planned?

Above is the latest experiment. This is redscaled film. I didn't buy redscale film. I did the homemade version. Basically you put the film in flipped over. (Instead of having flat side down. You have to have it facing up.) The part of the film that reacts to red light is usually the last layer. It's the most sensitive and needs less light. Flipping the film puts these layer first and it gets a lot more light. The effect is everything that has red in it has a stronger red color.

Most people make redscale film by feeding film into an empty canister upside down. I had no interest in doing this, mostly because I didn't want to sit in the dark and wind film in. Plus you have to tape it in the canister and stuff. It just seemed like a mess. I decided to just take an unmodify role of film and put it in a Holga 120N upside down. Since this camera is designed for 120 film there's a lot more room to allow the film to be in upside down. I used foam as spacers to keep the canister in place and help keep the film wound tight.

let's play connect the dots

I took pictures of my mom's new puppy a few months ago, just so I could practice using my new 50mm lens. Everyone loves puppies, because the two shots I posted from that day are my most two interesting pictures on flickr.

This little puppy is evil but awesome. The only person she seemed to like is me. She gets so excited when I visit my parents' house. She follows me around and makes an excited yelp the whole time. It's so loud and constant; it sounds like she's hurt. I don't understand why the dog has decided I'm it's best friend. I guess she's a mean girl just like me... Who knows.