H is for Hamburger & Harbour

So apparently I am a little behind on my Film26 project submissions. For those of you following along, this should come as no surprise since I seem to fall behind on my photography homework a lot! The weeks just seem to pass so quickly, and before I know it, the next letter is up!

Here are my (late) submissions for the letter H.

H is for Hamburger

 Photo taken with Olympus Pen F & Fuji Color Superia Film.

H is for Harbour

Taken with Olympus Pen F, Kodak Portra Film.

Because I was late submitting, and because the group has now limited submissions to 2 per week (I never submitted more than 3 anyway), I had to choose a little more stringently. Here are a few 'H' photos that didn't make the cut.

H is for Hamburger - can you spot my Dad in the background?? hehehe

H is for Handsome - North Vancouver

H is for Hogs & Hefers - Las Vegas

H is for Horse - Las Vegas

Fascinating Faces

I have mentioned before my fascination with taking photos of public art, and actually, the fact that some of my favourite photos come from art installations has made me pay more attention to public art. It's like art inspiring art.(There was a lot of "art" in those two sentences, I know).
A few of my other posts with public art are found here, here, here & here.
The first 3 photos here were taken in North Vancouver in a newly restored and developed area called "The Shipyards". I couldn't find very much info about the art or artist who created this wall mural and installation of a larger-than-life filing cabinet drawer holding hundreds of shipyard workers' timecards, but they definitely caught my eye.

I walked by this art installation in downtown Vancouver during our second macaron crawl and just had to stop and snap a few photos. In researching the piece I learned that, the artist (Kota Ezawa) in fact made the wooden tableau from a photograph of a town hall meeting. And that her work is a "comment on the role of photography in shaping our perception of reality."
The fact that I felt the need to photograph the tableau seems ironic or cyclical in someway - especially since in the second photo, I was trying to capture how the tableau had a great layered, 3D quality from the front, but from the side, the illusion of it was sort of broken because the people were rendered "flat" again.

All photos taken with my Olympus Pen F and Kodak Portra 400 film.

Film26 Project - F & G

The last few weeks have been rough for me as I deal with the loss of my grandfather (who gave me several of his film cameras a little while back - my Pentax K1000 included, which is now one of my favourites), as well as some uncertainty and upheaval in our housing situation and the on-going frustrations with contract negotiations...
At any rate, I was due for some good news. And when I logged into my flickr account today, I got some!
One of the photos which I submitted for the letter "G" to the Film26 project was not only chosen as a feature photo, but was also chosen as the winner for the group pool submissions! I was absolutely over the moon when I read the post!! My grandfather, the amature photographer that he was, would have been so proud!
Then, I quickly realized that, in the craziness of the last few weeks, I hadn't even posted my photos for the letter F, let alone the letter G on the blog.
So, without further ado, photos from letter F & G.

F is for Flowers

F is for Fountains

G is for Gastown (glittering!)

G is for Gears

G is for Glitter Gulch - The Winning Photo!! :)

All photos taken with my Olympus Pen F & fuji colorsuperia film and Kodak Portra film

Twigs & Berries

I can not remember for the life of me where I first heard "twigs & berries" as a euphemism for men's private bits, but it has stuck with me. I know that Freud would have a hay day with this euphemism and my fascination with taking photos of well... twigs and berries. But let's be clear... there is no room for psycho-analysis in this blog; only for photos and random ramblings (much like this one).
Happy spring everyone! May it be filled with twigs & berries... if you are into that sort of thing that is.

All photos taken with my Olympus Pen F, and Kodak Portra film.

Wooly Bully

Several weeks back, when we ventured out on the Great Macaron Crawl - Part 2, my fellow dessert companions dragged me along to a local yarn store (apparently called an LYS - for those in the "in-crowd"). They are both knitters and make the most amazing things that leave me in absolute awe. And though I have tried knitting and can do the basic stitches, I don't think that I will ever have the patience to pull off the types of projects they do. So instead, I will just content myself with taking photos of the yarn.
I was particularily excited to take these photos because my camera was loaded with the Kodak Portra film that I discussed here. The colours turned out as beautifully as I had hoped, even though the light was not ideal. And the pattern of the wound yarn, gives great texture to the photos.
So in the end, we all ended up "ooh-ing" and "ahh-ing" over the yarn... just for slightly different reasons. ;)

p.s. I sincerley apologize if you now have the song "Wooly Bully" stuck in your head for the rest of the day. ;)

All photos taken with my Olympus Pen F and Kodak Portra 400 film.

"Portra of North Vancouver"

Up to this point I have not paid too much attention to the type of film that I was using in my camera. I know this seems ridiculous, but honestly I just haven't known enough about different films or developing processes to really understand the differences. I did discover awhile back that I prefer a basic fuji film to kodak - I just found the colour and contrast to be better, but other than that, I'll pop just about anything into my camera and try it out.
On the various photoblogs that I read, I have heard the Kodak Portra name thrown around quite a bit, so when I came across some, I thought I would give it a whirl. I decided to try it in my Olympus Pen F for two reasons - firstly I am very comfortable with the camera and so I felt like I could judge the film better without the variables of using a more unfamiliar camera ; secondly it is a half-frame camera and so out of the 36-frame roll, I could get 72 pictures which would give me more photos to compare (and also get more bang for my buck!).
The results were really interesting. In a lot of pictures the colour seemed to be on par with a regular 400-speed film, but in other pictures the colours were very vibrant or were skewed on the colour scale (more of an overall blue hue for example). These pictures that I took while on an outing in North Vancouver are the most colour skewed and vibrant ones of the roll. I don't know if it was the lighting that day, or just the section of the roll that I was at, or what - but the results are really interesting and almost retro looking.
Over all, I really like the film and might splurge again one day on another roll... maybe for a special vacation or photo op.

All photos taken with my Olympus Pen F and Kodak Portra 400 film.