pickledtoast asked: How many cameras do you and your husband own, and what are they? Bonus question: Which is your favorite?
Okay, so here’s the full list of our current cameras. I don’t know if you expected me to get this detailed, BUT I DID. ;) Right now we have:
♥ Canon 5D | example! | I use this for 90% of my professional photography life.
♥ Canon FtB | example! | This was my dad’s camera from the 70s; I will never get rid of it.
♥ Canon A1 | example! | This has THE BEST LIGHT METER of all 35mm cameras I’ve shot.
♥ Canon AE1 Program | This is Mike’s 35mm camera.
♥ Bronica GS-1 | example! | This camera is a big, hulking, gigantic piece of metal and it makes THE MOST BEAUTIFUL negatives.
♥ Polaroid 600 | example! | The film for this is expensive and I’ve mostly abandoned it for my Instax.
♥ Polaroid TimeZero One Step
♥ Polaroid Land Camera Pronto!
♥ Polaroid Land Camera 250 | This has a busted battery compartment but it’s still in good shape, and I’m waiting for the day I can afford to send it in to these guys for some love and elbow grease to get it working again.
♥ Primera LX400 | example!
♥ Fuji Instax | example! | I love this camera, and the film is wayyyyyy more predictable than anything for Polaroid.
♥ Nikon FM10 | example! | This camera is busted now, but it was my first “real” camera. My dad bought it for me in high school when I started taking black & white photography, and I shot who-knows-how-many thousands of pictures on it. Just like my dad’s old camera, I will probably keep this forever.
♥ Lomography Action Sampler | This is a fun point-and-shoot.
♥ Lomography Spinner 360 | example! | This is my favorite camera to photograph Echo with right now.
♥ generic 35mm point-and-shoot | I hardly ever use this, but once in a while it’s fun to not be a “photographer” and to just carry this along for snapshots.
Some of these we bought, but a lot of them were gifts or hand-me-downs from friends cleaning “junk” from their houses. My absolute favorite changes depending on my mood, but it probably ends in a tie between the Instax and the Bronica. The Instax is light, hilarious looking, a good conversation starter, and takes beautiful pictures easily — in short, it’s fun, and photography should be fun. That said, the Bronica hands down takes THE MOST GORGEOUS photos of any camera that I own.
Thanks for that question! That was fun. :)
In which I open the camera while it’s still loaded because oops.
Steve & Nichole’s goodbye barbeque.
I hope you’re all having a wonderful Mother’s Day. ♥ This photo of me and Echo when she’s wee and brand new is by Mike.
Last year, I photographed two South Bay women with Lou Gehrig’s Disease as they JUMPED OUT OF AIRPLANES with their friends and families to raise awareness and funds to defeat the disease. (You can see a full edit of last year’s and this year’s jumps on my website.) Friends of my father and then friends of mine, we met Gloria and Juri through an ALS support group. Photographing their skydive last year was an awesome experience, and when Gloria said she was going to do it again this year, I jumped at the chance to go back.
I’ve been sitting on these images for a couple weeks, trying to decide exactly what I want to say about them. Last year when I photographed the skydive, my father was a patient with ALS; this year, he is gone. ALS took him. And since I’m still having trouble putting my feelings into words, I’m just going to fumble through it anyway, hit publish, and let this be out there. It’s okay if I don’t phrase it exactly the right way.
There are…not a lot of hopeful things about a disease like ALS. Whether you have it or love someone who has it, it is a hard, painful, resource-draining, relationship-straining, dignity-stealing, terrible, awful disease. Which is why Gloria’s skydive is so inspiring to me; her joy is obvious; her hopefulness shows in her face and in the huge turnout of her family to support her each year. And it seems like a quality that she has not because of ALS or even in spite of ALS, it just seems like who she is. When I look at these photographs, I don’t see ALS and its horrible circumstances, I see hope and love. I see hope and love in a place where it would be very, very easy to find anger and bitterness, and it inspires me a lot.
Since I’m sick and haven’t left my house in days, I started cleaning out my desk. I have a bunch of prints and stickers that I’d love to send into the world. Message me your address! I’ll send the first five people who respond a package with some prints and stickers. ♥
Oh, hello, my entire life is on pause because this week I ended up in the emergency room with the world’s most dramatic food poisoning.
If my pregnancy hadn’t ended, right about now I would have been due. I would be at home with my husband, my daughter, and a brand new human being. But that is not reality; reality is that this week I have puked, ridden in an ambulance, fever sweated like I didn’t know possible, taken all of my fluids by IV, and thrown out my shoulder (probably while puking.)
I look like I feel, and I feel awful.
I know rationally that I am sick because I ate something bad or because some nasty bacterial something crawled its way into my guts and made havoc there. I know that. But I can’t help feeling that there is also an obvious, glaring red arrow pointing from my emotional health to the TOTAL PHYSICAL MELTDOWN I am currently having. I am sad, and I have no doubt that it threw my immune system down, and Mike and I have discussed that in circles this week. But we have also discussed this:
All I want right now in the whole wide world is for things to be simple, and simple for me is my family; enough work to support us; music; sunshine; travel; a camera; fresh film; our friends. I want to travel with my daughter, my husband, and the people that we love. I want very lightly packed baggage. And right now, everything that doesn’t contribute to that I just say “no” to — I just flat out decline.
Things will get better.
