A morning of polaroids

I recently got a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II on eBay after playing around with one at Cindy's. The large square Polaroids you can achieve with the Polaroid back was the main draw for me, plus it's really quite the workhorse (and an excellent arm/wrist workout). I shot through a pack of Fuji FP-3000B film and a few of the color 100C as well. Here's just a sampling from this morning. Avedon is quite the poser.

Shootin' flats

I love a good excuse to get a pair of comfortable flats and with the looming wedding season ahead, I decided my beat up Sperrys that I wore to death last year should have a little break. In comes the classic Bloch ballet flat. I've already walked miles in these babies this week to test out their endurance. A little blister on the first day, but it looks like they'll do the job quite well.


(Oh yes, it's the Fuji 3000b again.)

They come in a ton of fun colors, but I stuck with "Atoms" which is a nice nude gray color. I'm quite tempted to get the hot coral though... We'll see how they do tomorrow, for my first wedding of the season. Let the season begin!

A happy windowsill

I decked out one of our windowsills with these little succulents this past week. They were too cute to resist. I started with three on Wednesday, wasn't satisfied enough, so proceeded to add four more to the collection yesterday. All but one came from the Union Square Greenmarket.

These photos were taken on the Contax and polaroid back with Fuji FP-3000b film (and what a fun film this is!).

Sleeping space

It's been a slow week on the blogosphere it seems. I've been waiting on film scans to come back and with each day, keep hoping it will so I will have nice blog fodder. Unfortunately, this has made me slack in creating new stuff. And it's not that I haven't tried! Today, I walked around Central Park for a good fifteen minutes as my fingers numbed by the second. I gave up on any shooting there.

I did, however, pull out the polaroid back for the Contax and actually got around to scanning the result.


This duvet cover was a huge sale score at West Elm. :)

Sleepy kitteh

Still no Internet and it appears alicegao.com is down at the moment too. GAH. So sucky.

Avedon has found his new favorite spot on the windowsill. His fur is so soft it is UNREAL. He's kinda been keeping us awake throughout the night by playing with his jingly mouse toys - I thought cats were supposed to sleep like all the time?? He also has a funny habit of not drinking from his water bowl but always drinks from our human water glasses, sticking his whole face in the cup to reach the water. Doh.

Contax 645 | Polaroid back

Good old instant gratification

I don't really use the polaroid back for the Contax all that much because the focus is a bit off on mine, but as I have a bunch of rolls of film to send off, I was impatient to see something NOW. I love the dreamy quality it produces.

Happy Friday all! I'm working most of the weekend but should have something très exciting to share with you all later on Sunday. Not photo related and I can hardly wait. :D

Another gloomy one

This Friday's weather is not much better than the last. Gray and bleh. I snapped this polaroid earlier and am enjoying how the colors came out. Very earthy and feels somewhat like a distant memory.

Well, happy friday and happy birthday to my dad! I'm looking forward to some sun (hopefully) this weekend.

Trials and travails with the sinar 4x5

No wonder 4x5 photographers often refer to taking pictures as "making pictures." It's a hell of a lot of work! We were only trying it out with a polaroid insert, and I don't think we'll be shooting sheet film until we can properly wield this crazy beast. Her nickname is Cindy or Sinnie, and she is an attention whore. While I was at the nail salon, Jimmy took her out onto the streets of the East Village (with a crazy focusing cloth). Apparently more people took pictures OF him taking pictures than he managed to take. Hah.

With the lens at f5.6 at the fast end and the polaroid film at ISO 100, there's not a great range of conditions we can really use the camera in. We did what we could on a tripod in the backyard for these first shots. The polaroids came out awfully blue/green, and we suspect we may need a UV filter for it. Here's how the first one came out:

And the second, which I tried (and mostly failed) to get a tilt-shift effect on.

This camera would be ideal if I had a well set-up studio with very nice streaming window light. It may very well be the opposite of portable. Even though it folds up pretty small, the monorail it sits on makes it quite large still. Oh, and it's effing heavy.

Aha, looks like I'll have to start a "large format" tag. :)

Van leeuwen in the east village

I was thrilled to see that Van Leeuwen opened up shop a wee hop skip away from me (my waistline ain't so thrilled), because there isn't really a great ice cream place quite that close. They serve decent coffee too, so it'll be a nice alternative on Mondays when Abraço is closed.

The colorful balloons for their grand opening should be enough to entice anyone inside. I am a fan of the yellow barstools too, but you could probably paint anything yellow these days and I'd love it. There is some great natural light inside and I will have to return with some film. For now, here are iPhone snaps and a polaroid. If you follow me on twitter, you might have read about my iPhone camera incident - as you can see, it's working just fine now thanks to those silica desiccant packets! :P

Nom.

And of course, leftover coffee cups.

No set plans for the last day of the weekend tomorrow, and I'm more than ok with that.

Turning one!

Hey, lingered upon, happy birthday! I can hardly believe it's been a year since my first post. The last time I maintained a "blog" for this long was probably my xanga from high school, chockfull of dramatic and cryptic posts about how my life sucked. (Come on, we've all been there at some point. :P) Apparently it was my foray into film that led me to start this blog in the first place. The food stuff just happened as an afterthought - can you believe it?? As you know by now, I'm completely hooked (on film) and there's no turning back.

So what's to come in year two of blogging? Hopefully better content, better pictures, more experimenting with lighting, more travel, more his and her posts (been sadly slacking on these), even more eating adventures, and more written content that you'll find useful. Some of your comments have inspired some gear turning in my head for what else I could put on here, besides the flowers, the food, the coffee, the wooden tables... but I hope you'll forgive me if those still find their way on here more often than not!

I did want to do the cliché bit and host a little giveaway, but I am still working out some minor kinks in the uh, logistics, so I will be doing it a little belated in the coming week or so. Hope you'll stay tuned.

Many, many thanks to the small handful of you for sticking with me from the very beginning, and of course, HUGE thanks to all of you who've joined me somewhere along the way. Although this blog is still just a little personal space for all the pictures that never make it to flickr, somehow I don't think I'd be neeearly as motivated to spend some 4-5 hours putting together those big posts if I didn't have a supportive audience. I mean, after all, I could be watching trashy reality TV like "Say Yes to the Dress" (erm, new guilty pleasure). So really, thanks for giving me less time to indulge in useless shit like that. :D

Today's instant gratifications

I was super excited to find peonies this weekend, as they are my favorites after ranunculus season dies down. The lovely Sunny's Florist had a stock of them from France and Sunny ensured us these were the "most beautiful blooms" she had seen. Well, these beauties were literally golf-sized buds when we took them home on Saturday afternoon and I was a tad worried if they'd even bloom at all under my not-so-green thumb (especially at $9 a stem!). Barely an hour later, I noticed one of them opening up and I could have sworn it was speedily blooming as I watched it. It was almost frightening.

And this is what all three of them looked like by this morning -

Stunning, aren't they? Even with this long-ago expired polaroid film.

These petals are just perfection. I'm sure I'll get around to posting some digital shots so you can see just how pretty the shade of dark pink they are.

Now, for some tales of a real photobooth. Jimmy and I were relaxing at the Ace Hotel lobby after picking up Stumptown beans when I noticed a good ol' photobooth in there. I couldn't not check it out. The booth barely fit the two of us and we had no idea what we were supposed to do. Suddenly the flash started going off and we were complete deer caught in headlights. The three other shots that ensued were no better. After the flashes died down, we waited outside the booth for what seemed like an eternity before it ejected a little strip of four pictures. Here's the first one below... (also, J's face revealed hah.)

Could we look any more confused?

We'll be better prepared next time we hit the photobooth. :)

They are too cute for words

My friends, that is. I would shoot them all the time if they let me and if I got to see them more often! Love these girls so much and a reunion this past weekend was exactly what I needed after a rough week.

Silly, smiley, stylish.

I shot them with the last fuji-roid exposure in the Contax (M, we missed you!) but I realized my polaroid back has some major focusing issues. A few other shots confirmed this. Boo, what is it with me and cameras with focusing problems?!

Well, they're still cute, out of focus and all. I'm looking forward to the next reunion already.

Ranuncu-what?!

I can't say enough good things about my favorite flower, the ranunculus. Everyone pokes fun at the name, but eh, they are so damn beautiful and I think, more striking than roses. I was beyond thrilled to see them in February at a florist this past weekend (at $3 a stem though!) . I probably should wait for them to bloom a bit more, but I couldn't help but take a few early budding shots. I think I squealed like a silly little schoolgirl every time I looked at them. Thanks, JJ. :D

These were digital, and the below shot was taken on the Contax with a Polaroid back on Fuji FP-100C. I am also completely smitten with the Polaroid back. The tones! The film peeling! The instant print! Ah! This level of excitement is probably not normal. I don't even get this way about my real Polaroid SLR...

Looking at these definitely helps cure some Monday blues.

Is it spring yet?

Now that yesterday and today were a "blistering 43 degrees" or so, I can only hope for warmer weather. Except that the damn weather report says Thursday's got a high of 26. I think ideally, it'd go up one degree every two days or so from today and then hover at 70 for a loooong time. Can we make that happen? Thnx.

I dug up this polaroid from the flickr archives because it felt fitting for what I'm looking forward to - neutral-colored, just a bit sheer, oversized button-ups. This one in particular, I have since turned an unfortunate shade of pink/purple after haphazardly tossing it in the same wash load as a bright coral skirt. Call me undomestic. (Not to mention that shirt should have been dry cleaned in the first place!)

Also, this is my 200th post! Woot. :D

Stone barns, polaroid edition

I meant to post these a while ago (ugh I'm slacking pretty badly recently) - polaroids taken during the weekend trip to Stone Barns. I used a pack of the Edge Cut 600 film, which I bought when the Impossible Project was selling a limited batch. It was a bit chilly that day for ideal polaroid developing temperature so I tried to stick them under my armpits (heh) to get them out of the cold. Most of them came out all right, but as you can see, something weird happened in the last shot. I was pretty upset because I loved the way the light was shining through the trees and on that leaf, and by the time I realized the photo messed up I had moved far from that tree and might not have been able to set up the shot exactly again. You can still sort of tell that it would have been a cool shot. :P

The chickens were funny. They followed us around completely unfazed, and one of them undid JJ's shoelaces hah.

Various eye-candy

Recently, I haven't taken as many Polaroids as I would like to, but I did want to share these shots taken at the Union Square Greenmarket (possibly one of the most photogenic and Polaroid-able places in the city) and of course, Emma, Cindy and her beautiful Hasselblad!

I will hopefully return with a more substantial post - many good dinners recently :).

And for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea

I think it's more than crystal clear I am big on coffee and well-made espresso drinks, but I love the other half of caffeinated hot drinks almost just as much. Tea is as comforting as it is invigorating. I will have 5-6 cups of tea a day but I can't do the same with coffee. My top picks are jasmine (almost always go with this after a giant dinner), genmaicha (for pretty much any time of the day after morning), and earl grey (I especially like this with my sweets), but I enjoy some mint or roobois every now and then. I am, however, convinced everything tastes good when you drink it from a delicate little double-walled glass tea cup like this one.

Pinkies up, everyone!

The little pink blouse that could

Do you ever keep an item of clothing simply because it is photogenic? That's how I feel about this thrifted sheer pink blouse I've kept around but rarely ever wear. It all began with this shot and then this. Oh yeah, made an appearance here (worn solely for the purposes of the shot). And in a weird meta way, again over here. Ok, did not intend this post to be a shameless link self-promotion! It's a little too frilly and pink for my clothing tastes (I'd live in grey, black, navy and white if I could), but I won't be getting rid of it anytime soon. It just begged to be photographed with my Polaroid. ;)

Sadly, one pack from my last film purchase on eBay was completely ruined and unusable. I suppose that's the kind of chance you need to be willing to take. This pack (Polaroid 779 film expired in 2005) looked to be stored improperly as well, but it's kind of fun that you won't know what to expect with each pack.

I'll leave this post appropriately with this romantic image from the portfolio of Adam Bartos. Love the mood evoked here.

Happy weekend! I'll be off to a wedding in PA. I'm excited to finally attend one as a guest (though I have a feeling my hands won't be idle...).

Sugar rush

A while ago, a friend informed me of the amazing macarons at Bouchon Bakery, as she is a bit of a macaron fiend (hi, Joyce :)). I've been meaning to go there ever since but have failed to catch their open hours every time I'm in the Time Warner Center. Word on the street is that they are opening a Bouchon in Rockefeller Center but not until March or April of next year.

The obligatory polaroid-macaron shots. Although I love the faded vintagey colors of this pack of film, I do wish it showed the colors of the macarons better. Strawberry, pistachio, vanilla, chocolate, and coffee. Devoured all of them on the steps of Columbus Circle (I had help, ok?). I used to crave chocolate chip cookies...now it's all about the macarons.