178/365

to do, in preparation for summer:

hand wash the favorite blouse
stash scissors in glove box for roadside cuttings

make room in the tiny freezer for flav-o-ice and the inevitable overabundance of berries

scan the thrifts for jeans to cut up

make the summer reading list

make the summer playlist

hang the straw hat right by the front door

134/365

record stores I have loved:

criminal records (atlanta)
wax-n-facts (atlanta)
mississippi records (portland)
jackpot (portland)
everybody's records (cincinnati)
peaches records (new orleans)
wuxtry (athens)
wuxtry (atlanta)

(spent some time at wuxtry today)
(happy record store day, y'all)

mood

it's true

all I really want to do is read books and ride bikes and listen to records so I am basically just my fourth grade self, all over again.

hello, nablopomo

the hardest part is the starting. the saying you're going to write something every day. the putting it out there, even though you're not sure people even read anymore. once you get past that part, it's gravy. 

well, gravy those first five or six days and then holy crap you're in it and you said you'd show up here every day, whaaaaat. every day. you know for a fact you are not a show up every day girl, you are more ebb than flow, you are squarely, solidly an ebb girl with just a little bit of flow. 

also, no one reads blogs anymore. or so they tell me.

but with november comes many things: banana bread. new tights. the wearing of the boots, the mourning of the loss of light. increased amounts of soup. changing leaves. and, nablopomo.

unbelievably, this is my twelfth year. 

so, here we go. 

everywhere instant

polaroids look and feel like stills from old home movies that play out in my head. I suppose that's why I love them so much.

(selections from polaroid week twenty-seventeen)

(more over at everywhere instant)

roll on, roll on

(one)


(two)

(one): taken with the holga (while riding a bike!) in new orleans, september 2014. saw that cloud of white hair, that blue polka-dotted dress, pointed that plastic camera and said a prayer. so many of my photographs are prayers. both before I hit the shutter and after. 

(two): taken with the holga (while standing on a concrete table) in panama city beach, florida, november 2015. I said a prayer while I shot this one too. though mostly because that concrete table I was standing on boasted a sizable, ominous crack. 

both were submissions to roll film week back in july over on flickr. flickr, ye olde harbinger of ubiquitous internet photograph sharing. I hold onto it as tightly (and unapologetically) as I do blogspot and goodreads.

reprise

new york, may 2016. I keep coming back to this one. never really noticed those little birds before. or the way that man's hands are so precisely folded. or all those shapes. how am I just now noticing these things? how?

the truth is we manage hundreds of photographs now, at any given moment. we deal in volume. which means sometimes details get lost, sometimes entire photographs go missing. I don't know what the answer to this is. we are all already so overwhelmed with everything.

you know what? perfectly fine with pretending certain photographs stay hidden until they are ready to be revealed. totally okay with this. maybe you are too.

new york on film

every time, I think I'll come back with nothing. but every time, she proves me wrong. I'm talking about the camera, not new york. I'm talking about the beautiful tank that is the canon FTb, an old film camera I lucked onto at the thrifts several years ago. every time, I think I'll get nothing. that maybe I'll read the light meter wrong, set the camera wrong, load the film wrong. make no mistake, I have done every single one of these things, several times over. but every time (I mean it, every time), I'm thrilled with what I manage to come away with. an embarrassment of 35mm film riches.

on the other hand, there are no questions with new york.  she is remarkably thankfully beautifully predictably unpredictable, somehow akin to the insides of a game show cash machine, the clear plastic ones with all the cash flying around inside. sixty seconds to grab as many of the dollar bills as you can, go! take what you can, while you can, be happy with it, walk away. that's what new york is like. an over-before-you-know-it, extraordinary whirlwind of riches.

week of the polaroid

above: a few of my contributions to the beautiful pool that is/was spring 'roid week 2016. tenth anniversary of the flickr group! tenth! so, I'm not going to get into a whole thing about time here but, time. is a crazy thing.

should you need to see more, all my polaroids from last week are here, my favorites from the week (from fellow instant photogs) are here and the whole pool of instant goodness is here. long live 'roid week, y'all. long live instant film.

not one thing

hello internet, on this monday afternoon I present you drop-in-the-bucket evidence of a well-loved film--the now discontinued fuji FP 100C.

no matter what happens to the film, at least I have these. and others. and the last two packs sitting in the fridge. and doc's vaguely hopeful travelogue updates over at savepackfilm.net.

and, the experience of holding that beastly polaroid automatic 100 in my hands, the 250 too. of anne teaching me how to load it with film, how to shoot it. the 1, 2, 3 muscle memory pack film cameras require: press the shutter, click the lever, pull. and then the dance that follows: cross your fingers, hold and count. wait for the right moment then slowly peel that gooey, chemical magic apart for the big reveal. the photograph.

there's nothing like it, not one thing in the world like it.

keep your eyes open

some links:

in the real world (a terrific documentary on william eggleston on the youtubes)

women in photography (a righteous new blog)

new york subways (rare, full color photographs from 1966)

seeing through photographs (a free (yup, free) online MOMA course I'm currently taking)

saving fuji FP-100c (a petition you must please sign to save the last of the instant peel-apart pack film) (that little photograph up there of jen lee is an example of fuji FP-100c, folks) (there is no other film like it and I'm pretty sad about losing it)

advice from robert frank (the last line, it's the very last line)

atlanta + amsterdam: cityscape

atlanta, left:

the view of my fair city from the jackson street bridge. and she's not a perfect city, atlanta, but I love her all the same.

amsterdam, right:

just exactly what I imagine the streets of amsterdam to be like. and I hope for some wandering in the near future, perhaps with my friend and co-collaborator, joyce. I hope to experience the differences and similarities between our two fine cities in real life one of these days. fingers crossed, fingers tightly crossed.

and so concludes our little project, atlanta + amsterdam. thank you, joyce, for sharing bits and pieces of your city through the lens of your SX-70 and thanks to all who followed along. here's to projects and collaborations, to differences and similarities, to beloved polaroid SX-70 cameras and quirky, unpredictably lovely impossible project film.

and here's to cities everywhere! but especially to atlanta and amsterdam.

(more from my co-collaborator over in amsterdam, joyce, aka on a hazy morning//more about our twelve-week project here)

any minute now

I have not put up the first christmas decoration. not one. wait, I take that back-- last monday, I hung a wreath on the front door, the one my mom gave me nearly a decade ago, the one that reminds of the one she used to hang on her front door every single year. from the outside, we look pretty merry. on the inside, we are not. well, not yet.

it's not for lack of desire. the truth is I've been buried with work, which is not necessarily something to complain about when you're freelance. happy to have the work, begging for the work (always) but it's the middle of december and there's no tree in this here house. no sap to pinch off the ends of branches, no tangles of string lights. the christmas records haven't even been brought out, the little forest does not yet live on the mantle. in fact, the closest we've come to christmas spirit around here happened sunday night, when we finally told ezra the buzz lightyear story. I couldn't believe, he'd never heard it. and for the first time (maybe ever), I read something aloud from my blog to him-- a story I'd written about him. friends, it was a good moment, one I'll always remember. the way he smiled as I read it to him, the questions he asked afterwards, the way we laughed and laughed. frankly, I wonder what my kids will think about the things I've written about them here. I wonder what our conversations will sound like once they go digging through the archives, especially during those early years, when they were littles, when they were my entire world and I was theirs, when raising them absolutely consumed me. and it still does, but it's different now.

the shift is coming, I can feel it. the spirit is about to hit this house hard. the christmas records are calling, all the way from their musty corner in the garage, the little trees are crying for the mantle. our tree is out there somewhere, waiting for us to bring it home.

today. today is the day.

atlanta + amsterdam: home

atlanta, left:

every time I see my bright red door, I smile. and now every time I see that wreath hanging there, I want to sing a little christmas song. this is home.

amsterdam, right:

that little corner, that's what makes joyce smile. the table where they eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, where they sit down for coffee and look out through the bay window at their quiet little amsterdam street. this is home.

(more from my co-collaborator over in amsterdam, joyce, aka on a hazy morning//more about our twelve-week project here)