Vintage Camera Fun

I have been collecting vintage camera for a few years now and with some exceptions they have lived happily upon my shelf collecting dust and making me smile when I pass by. Recently I have started dusting them off, loading them up, and clicking away. While most of the picture taking world has made the leap to digital, I was pleased to discover there is still a vibrant interest in film and alternative photo processes.
   A friend sent me a link to a technique called Through the Viewfinder or Ttv. This is a combo of low & high tech using a vintage camera with a top viewfinder, a tube of cardboard, and a digital camera.
   I found some great instructions here for making my own “contraption” and set to work.

My Kodak Duaflex lets call her K.D.

I think the purpose of the contraption is to give the digital camera a fixed point to focus on while keeping excess light from spoiling the view inside the vintage viewfinder.

                                                                                                    Camera dressed in her contraption

The view inside contraption

The final cropped shot

Don’t you just love the dust and stains that are a part of the internal age of a vintage camera?I have loaded up this little gem with re-spooled 120 expired b&w film so I will have a film shot to compare with the Ttv. I’ll have to post the results when I get them developed.In the meantime K.D. and her contraption dress are packed for the annual YaYa trip to Moclips on the beach.

Slept In a Wigwam Lately?

A line in a song by the Judds tells us, “There’s a blacktop road, faded center line. It can take you back to the place but it can’t take you back in time.” Most roads and most days I would have to agree. But there is one road, the “Mother Road” that could be the exception to the rule. Driving along this ribbon of asphalt the imaginative eye can peer beyond the ravages of time. For an evening I’m a child again, giddy with the possibility of sleeping in a giant concrete tee pee.

$57.75 buys us a night in #3 complete with a key that’s not a card.

Inside we are greeted by furnishings of wood, branch and formica. The tiny bath is tiled in red and white.

Even the view from the diamond window seems to look backward in time.

As I watch the new day dawn, I almost believe It is 1966. Here I stand a wide eyed five year old, ripe with excitement for what lies around the next bend of Route 66.

Wigwam Village #6 Holbrook Arizona

November 2009

A Line In The Sand

I have been thinking a lot this month about endings. It’s something that comes natural this time of year. We look back at the rows of days on the calendar and think of that arbitrary mark that is the beginning of another year. Like Anne Shirley we look toward that “fresh tomorrow with no mistakes in it.” We pack up the memories of the day past, and line up our dreams for the one that is about to dawn. 
   Today I decided to make more than a mental exercise of this time honored tradition.  So Michael and I trekked off to Westport to draw a literal line in the sand.

 

 
Dear hubby indulged me in this makeshift ceremony, and stepped across with me into 2010.

Then it was off to catch a picture of the Grey's Harbor Lighthouse

And have a bowl of amazing seafood chowder at The One Eyed Crab

Thank you Michael for a lovely start to 2010.
Thank you Lord for another year stretched out before us... new and ripe with possibility.