Starlight, Starmite... (insert witty finish here)

Thanks to my cousin and fellow photography nut, Randy Kruzan, I have a 'new' camera. I will be playing around with this "toy camera" and just enjoying shooting; not worrying about the rules and technical aspects of things. Plus, it gives me another excuse to shoot with film.

This will be the first time using 127 film. It is not that special, but it makes me grin a bit. I need to get some AG-1 flash bulbs, but they should be easy enough to get.

Anyway, onto the new camera:






I was cleaning the camera and pulled the back panel to clean the battery compartment, and I found these lovely things, made in or before 1986. When was the last time you saw an Eveready battery with a "Union Carbide" label?

Side thought: I wonder if India is still upset with them, after the whole Bohpal deal?

Elemental

From my ever expanding collection of elements, these are samples of Lead (Pb) and Tin (Sn). These were sold by the National Bureau Of Standards, back in 1943, to laboratories that needed samples of high purity elements (think 99.993% pure).

Click:

I was bored and decided to pull out some of my "vintage" cameras for a small shoot.

The next two are beat to hell, but I still think they have a certain character.

Only Two

The many hours spent learning my trade:



Just a text book (science) from 1958. The juxtaposition of then and now, is just funny to me. All my text books, growing up, had photos instead of "art."

The Dictators

These are the three main specification handbooks that dictate how I design anything at work. There are about three more state specific and a few other federal code books that I follow, but for the most part, I just use what I have named:

Mussolini

Hitler

Stalin

Words I

While reading my Great Grandmother's journals, I was struck with a bit of inspiration for a new photo project: Words.

When I read the passage when my Great Grandfather Died, something clicked. To see the woman's pain over the loss with one simple phrase, "So much has happened. I can't write it." gave me a new understanding of just how much words shape us. Out of respect, I will not take any pictures of the things that hurt her. I will however post up some of the more interesting tid-bits containing history.

Wrought on this page is when president Kennedy was shot:


Without using her diaries as a sole source, I wanted to use many examples of how words change things, and while I was at it, I played with different styles.

This is from an old physics book that is describing the 2nd law of motion:


Simple words, offer up a simple moment of relaxation for me here:

Camera Autopsy I

With the abundance of old, un-used, or otherwise broken cameras that I have laying around, I decided to give one a teardown to see the insides.

This camera was the first SLR that I had ever bought; at the time, it was awesome to me. Anyway, it decided to stop powering up, and with it being old and was only $250 or so brand new, I decided this had to be the "ONE".

Here it is all together:

This is the lens after it is taken apart. I had no use for it as I will NEVER buy a Minolta again, so why not...

And the camera stripped of its skin and lens mount.

From My Personal Collection

These are some medals & badges that I photographed a while ago, but never posted up. These are original, and were issued during the war.

A trip to "Banner Marsh".

Bokeh

My little trip today, along the back roads of central Illinois, taught me two things:

1.) The back roads in Illinois suck too
2.) Farmers attempt to run you off the road. Or, maybe they don't pay attention?

As far as I'm concerned... This is the greatest sign known to man.