echodrift

Film thoughts and dogwoods

For some reason I have really been wanting to try shooting with a film camera. The only time I’ve ever done so was in high school (I don’t want to think about how many years ago that was) and I didn’t know how to do anything, really, except push the shutter button. The problem with film is cost. I don’t think picking up a film camera body on eBay or another used site would be a problem (so long as I can figure out what or what not to buy).

The kickers are buying and developing film. I honestly have no idea how much it would cost to take and develop even one roll. I’d hate to feel like I was wasting money every time I take a shot. That’s one of the major appeals of digital photography. With an 8GB card I usually don’t have to worry about running out of exposures. If I take a bad shot I can just try again. (At least, that’s true in most cases; some shots are a one time only deal.) Of course, there are probably plenty of people who are against digital photography for that one reason. It’s easy to not really pay attention to the shot you’re taking if you always think you can just take another if the first doesn’t turn out.

For now I’ll just keep shooting digital. I do have my eye on some stuff but (almost) all fellow photographers can commiserate: everything is expensive! I’ll leave off with some pictures of dogwood flowers. I think the first is my favorite.

Sometimes it’s the simple things

Adventures in painting

One of my sisters and her husband came to visit today. After sitting around chatting some we went to Arby’s for lunch and talked some more. I really wish we could visit more with them because I had a great time. Once we got back from lunch my cousin came over to play with my sister’s paints. She had brought oil and watercolors. I was supposed to have found my acrylics but they were no where to be found. I looked through every closet twice before I found them in a box of scrap booking supplies. I’m highly organized like that.

They both began working on a painting of a picture of a hollyhock I took last year. I had to search for about 15 minutes to find out where it was on my hard drive so they would have a reference. (Another sign of my highly organized system.) During that time I finally found my acrylics and decided to start painting… something. I only got as far as covering the entire canvas with a background color. See, I haven’t used the acrylics since my sister gave them to me, oh, over a year ago. Everything kept glooping together and made mixing the color I wanted a little difficult. It often turned into a vomit green color and I had to start over. But that’s all part of the fun, right? Also part of the fun was deciding that yes, we are all crazy and that just makes life more fun. I was also able to document some of their painting process. More photos after the cut.

Continue reading…

Fountain at night

I had a hard time choosing a photo for my 365 on Tuesday so I decided to go ahead and post several here. Part of the reason being my free flickr account is filling up and I don’t want to spam it with too many similar things. The first is actually posted on my flickr but I added the borders to match the others. These were taken around 8PM. The fountain is near where I work. I think I’ll be going back for more photos.

Continue reading…

Upgrades

echodrift is finally running on WordPress 2.7. I know, I know. I meant to do this a long time ago but then one thing led to another which led to procrastination. What can I say? I have a few plugins left to upgrade but I don’t want to do that yet because I don’t want to screw some of my formatting up. If you spot anything that’s still off be sure to let me know.

I do have a post planned to talk about the strangely large list of TV shows I’m currently watching. Instead of working on it, though, I watched some of said shows. Oops. Instead, have a picture from today:

It definitely looks better on black. Speaking of photos, my 365 project is going OK so far. I’m up to Day 52. I still have decided what to do with my photoblog. I’m about to decide that I want to just find a way to include them here. Wonder if I can work that into the current layout…