Reports are that General Houston’s Texian Army has once again routed Santa Anna’s Mexicans at San Jacinto. The series currently stands at 19-0.
Late night, working with a colleague at a 24-hour shop…
Colleague of mine told me last night that the local community college was putting on an International Festival today, so we trundled down for the fun. Fun it was. For some reason, as always, I wound up with pictures of mariachis and folklorico dancers. (I’ve been known to find performing mariachis in the most unexpected places, and I just about always get pictures of them.)
So. From the International Festival:
This is Justino Barrera of Mariachi Internacional de Houston providing vocals and Javiera Paz of HCC providing motion.
Alejandro Say, whose family hails from Guatemala, provided a bit of traditional color as well.
There were people there from pretty much everywhere there are people, and I’d have loved to have had more time to spend with them, talking and photographing, but they had classes, the colleague had deadlines, and I needed coffee. So…
It’s now a thoroughly beautiful day. I’m going back out; there are still more pictures… somewhere.
Couple of additional treatments:
Basically the same shot as before, worked with a slight color tone. Going for that “aged” look.
And the Tea House in the Garden. This is the building at the right above, and the other side looks out on the pond. Very serene place. It’s quite pretty inside as well, but it’s closed most of the time….
Then there are the trees.
They tend to be tallish.
As I mentioned the new film holders for the scanner are on order; they’ll arrive, all else equal, toward the end of next week or early the next. It’ll be a week or so after that to get them dialed all the way in, then I’ll be rescanning these. It’ll be interesting to see how much difference it makes.
Wound up with a somewhat early shoot in the Medical Center the other morning, and since there was nothing on the schedule immediately afterwards, I took the Zen Camera out for a walk in, inevitably, the Japanese Gardens at Hermann Park.
The “Zen Camera” is my name for one of my favorite experimental devices, a 6×12 pinhole camera from ZeroImage. It’s a very pretty camera to look at, beautiful teak and brass, and it positively glows in the light. It’s been an interesting experience to work with it, because unlike every other camera I’ve ever used, it doesn’t actually DO anything. The shutter is that little bit of wood on the front. Slide it open to start the exposure, slide it closed to end it. Film advance involves turning a knob. Viewfinder? Eh. It’s aimed kinda sorta about out there somewheres. I can usually get a reasonably decent take on where the center of the image is, plus or minus about ten degrees. The edges? Not my department.
With slow film in low light, it’s a meditative experience… you open the shutter, and then you and the camera take in the scene together. At some point, you reach up and close the shutter again, advance the film, and either shoot more or move on. But there are no cues at all from the camera that it has in fact recorded an image on film. I ran several rolls before my subconscious became willing to admit that yes, this IS a camera and yes, it DOES make photographs.
The downside is that my scanner doesn’t really handle 120 film very well as it is, especially since I’m working with some very old stock given to me by a colleague who was getting out of 120 entirely. It’s got a tendency to curl and pop, which makes the scans not very sharp. I’m ordering a new film carrier for it, which should help immensely, but it’ll be a few days or weeks before that’s up and running. So for now… it’s Art. It’ll be photography sometime soon.
Scanning more tonight or tomorrow.
It’s more than just a slogan.
Or words to that effect.
The kids were cute, the dances were gorgeous, and the critters were friendly.
There were Butterflies:
A Peacock:
Lions:
Tigers:
But no bares. (Family celebrations, you know…)
And there are more pictures coming.
Went to the Health Museum yesterday to shoot their newest exhibit for my friendly Chron editors… but I think I went through the wrong door, because I found myself in the middle of an Irwin Allen-esque nightmare…
And, like a true hero… I stood around and shot pictures.
(The unfortunate victim-to-be there is Jenny, The Bloggess. Or maybe the victim-to-be is a giant Mexican Red-Knee Tarantula. I wasn’t sticking around to find out.)
I think it came out all right; I caught up with her later, trying to feed her erstwhile blogging partner/rival/companion in crime, Ms. Prunella Farquar, to a giant Atlas Beetle.
Of course, turnabout being fair play, Ms. Farquar was trying to feed Jenny to another giant Atlas Beetle as well…
I kinda figured that whoever won, I’d be better off elsewhere. Besides, BOTH the beetles looked hungry and I wasn’t interested in being the next thing on the menu….
Shooting a small school party.
Up walks a young girl… 4, I think, maybe 5, that age where absolutely solemn is trademarked.
“You should take a picture of me.”
So, without even looking, I tilt the camera on its strap and push the button.
“Thank you,” she says, totally deadpan, and runs away to play with friends.
!!!!!!
Sometimes, if you just get out of the way, the photographs will walk up and climb right into your camera for you.
