100 happy days :: day 61

i'll admit, 40 days of happy still stretch ahead of me and that seems like a lot. like really a lot. but then, tucked away in a box, when i was looking for something else, i ran across the film from my film swap with the lovely shokoofeh. so i put it on the scanner and scanned at higher dpi rate (that takes a long time, by the way) so that i could have this photo printed in a larger format for our upcoming spring exhibition. our theme is reflections and although this is an alternative interpretation of that, i think the double exposure of denmark layered on iran is beautiful and deep and ponderable. the light, the objects, the dreamy quality, all give pause for reflection. and for a moment of happiness.

save the drama for your mama

i realized something tonight, once and for all. it's pretty much over for me with pretend, made-up drama. i don't want it in my life anymore. whether it's of the corporate variety or of the local. i love a dramatically-told story, don't get me wrong, but i'm thinking of the kind of drama where people get all worked up over something that's really not important and which doesn't actually exist except in their own head (usually because they're not listening). i'm done with that kind. this evening, i had occasion to observe some drama of that sort and i found myself physically backing away from it. slowly, but surely moving my chair back to physically remove myself from the scene. it was uncomfortable for everyone concerned - participants and observers. and totally unnecessary. pettiness and condescension with overtones of sexism and a bit of martyrdom thrown in. it makes me shudder now, just thinking about it. life is simply too short.

*  *  *

so onto more positive things:

like these thoughts on my film swap with shokoofeh

and pressing our first cider.

and sweet bobbaloos with mushrooms from minnesota.

and the fact that monday is almost over.

intersections 5: weaving meaning

a few more shots from the film swap with shokoofeh. see the others i've shared here.

i'm still finding magic in these shots, i think they're probably some of the most amazing photography i've ever done. and to think of how unintentional the magic is feels profound. i feel there's something so deep about them, so deep that it defies words, but definitely doesn't defy meaning. and meaning without words is an interesting thing to consider...

intersections 4: magic on film

you may have noticed that i am quite an immediate sort of person. the photos i use here are usually taken on the day i post them (tho' my clarity birds from a couple of days ago were taken last summer).  i have a bad habit of not really looking back, even in my iPhoto. which means that i completely forgot that i hadn't shared all of the wonderful photos from the second roll of the film swap with shokoofeh. so here are some more for you here on the cusp of the weekend.

i think i'll just let them speak for themselves.

happy weekend, one and all.

film swap - learning as we go

now, with a big whopping two developed films under my belt, i feel that i can draw some conclusions about this film swap thing and how to make it work. i'm a quick learner, you see. (heehee.)

the film: the first film that shokoofeh developed was a fujichome sensia 400. it was slide film, and so we added another layer to the fun in cross-processing it in C41 chemicals for regular negative film (at least i think we did - shokoofeh had some trouble finding a lab willing to do that). the film shokoofeh sent to me and which my photo lab man lost for nearly a month was a regular fuji 200 negative film. it was developed normally (aside from the losing it). and i think that worked out better.

the ISO:  the film swap people (aka that film swap flickr group) recommend that the person taking the first round on the roll doubles the ISO setting on the camera - so if you have a 400 film, you should tell your camera it's an 800. after these two rolls, my opinion is that that doesn't really work. we're going to try a roll where we've set the ISO to the correct setting and see how that goes.

the light: the shots that worked best seemed to be when they were taken in light conditions that were a bit too dark for the ISO settings. for example, this shot, where the light was good and moreover correct for the settings, shokoofeh's shot is pretty much obscured. then, there were these shots, where the light of the second picture, while obscuring somehow the first one, also brought it out at one and the same time.

half frames: i don't have any theories yet as to what makes one set lined up and one set off alignment, so that the second shots are all half frames on the first ones. one of these ended up with some half frames and some not - it must have something to do with how the films advanced along the way.


the camera: i used a canon AE-1 program to take my shots. and shokoofeh used an olympus OM-1. i don't think the camera matters, tho' perhaps the frames are more reliably lined up if you use the same kind of camera, due to differences in how they advance the film. my sister and i are going to do a film swap and we'll both be using the canon AE-1s, so i'll have more data after that.

the magic: we had a couple of shots on both rolls, where it seemed to be a triple exposure. i don't know if this is because one or the other of us failed to advance a frame or if something else happened, but it was rather magical. other than that, i think the magic is in the serendipitous and completely unpredictable layering of the shots. the magic is just there and you don't have much control of it.

the serendipity: sometimes, the two shots have a similar subject matter, tho' neither photographer could know it at the moment of taking the photo. and it's those times when it seems like the image is as close as you can get to two souls touching.

* * *

ulrika blogged about our photos..please check it out! and thank you, ulrika!

intersections 3: everyday life and light

scenes of everyday life in two countries. cultures separated by miles and climate and even religion (tho' religion is absent here, unless it's a general worship of light). but the photos are full of serendipities and in their everyday subject matter seem to layer a sense of quiet peacefulness on one another. one wishes the geopolitical scene would learn from this...

these are from the second roll of film swap photos that shokoofeh and i took in the late summer and autumn. my camera shop nearly lost this film forever, as it got separated from the rest of my order. the tears pooling in my eyes made the disorganized owner look through his drawer an extra time. he finally found it, labeled with the wrong name, after i mentioned that it was double exposures. i will not be going back to vefa foto on kirkegade in vejle, i can tell you that. both because of that and because he charged me 30 kroner extra per film in comparison to what was written on the packet. i guess that was my special "tax" for speaking danish with a foreign accent.

but back to these photos...they were worth the wait, the extra money and the almost tears. i think this roll is even better than the first one. more on shokoofeh's photostream and her blog. and as shokoofeh mentioned there, if you blog about these photos on your own blog (which is fine with us), do let us know, as there just might be something special in it for you.  thus far, the ones we know about:

eating a tangerine

wayside violet

do let us know if you've blogged it too!

intersections 2: denmark meets iran

more of the shots from the film swap with shokoofeh. i'm still finding it difficult to put words to how amazing and profound i think these layered photos turned out, so i think i'll let them speak for themselves...

intersections 1: copenhagen meets tehran

since shokoofeh shared the album of our film swap pictures with me on picasa, i have poured over it again and again. on first viewing, i felt that only a few of the shots had turned out. some are aligned and some split frames. the one i was most hopeful would turn out - a shot of a bus in copenhagen where it was spelled cOPENhagen was a split frame and not as good as i had hoped. i was initially fixated on the technicalities - should i really have doubled my ISO to 800 when i took the intial shots here in denmark? what could we have done to align? should we have left well enough alone on the cross-processing? but then, i looked again, and the technicalities melted away and suddenly the magic jumped out at me.

~ a parted curtain in tehran opening onto a copenhagen street.

~ a chocolate cupcake on the ghost of a bicycle

~ another ghost of a bicycle viewed through a magical white curtain

~ a peaceful afternoon coffee scene on a graffiti-covered window

~ a cup of colorful pens and pencils juxtaposed on that copenhagen bus. 

the magic was there. all of my hopes and expectations were there after all. all of the layers of meaning. the surprises. the beauty. quietly profound. calm and zenlike.

for more, please visit shokoofeh.  i will be sharing more as well in the days to come.

coming soon: an intersection between denmark and iran

coffee on møllebjergvej

remember that film swap i told you about lo so many months ago?  well, it took us awhile but the lovely shokoofeh has her films back from developing and mine should be back very soon. we'll be sharing our results and what we think about them both here and on shokoofeh's beautiful blog and in the film swap group on flickr.

i'm still pondering how to express how profound i think this project is, but in the meantime, have a cup of coffee with shokoofeh and me on my street....

expressing

how do you step outside of who you are? your perspective. your worldview. your culture. yourself. how do you express what you want to express without seeming to be all of those things...your culture, your perspective, your view. how do you get to your real self? and how can you possibly capture the words she would truly like to speak?

there is no cloud,

there is no wind,

i sit beside the pond,

the swimming fishes, light, i, flower, water.

the pureness of the cluster of life;

my mother reaps the sweet basil,

bread, sweet basil, cheese, a cloudless sky,

wet garden petunia.

salvation is at hand: within the garden flowers.

--sohrab sepehri

one of shokoofeh's favorite poets

thank you, my dear.

and we're back

new york city burning

after a long summer hiatus, kristina and i are back on across ø/öresund, sharing creativity across the sound separating denmark and sweden. we'll be posting highlights from the first roll from our summer film swap. i exposed a roll of expired slide film (oops, those pretenses again) in south dakota (or should i say sabin took most of the photos one evening when we had a bonfire) and then sent the roll to kristina in new york city. then kristina got it cross processed and here is the first of the results.

while of course the entire roll doesn't turn out as well as you might hope, there are some very cool and unexpected effects. kristina's camera rolled the film differently, so not only are they double exposures, but also half frames on top of my originals. i think it's especially effective on this shot of city streets.

be sure to stop by across ø/öresund in the next few days to see more. and do check out the interviews we did of one another. kristina's interview of me and mine of her.

we've got more fun planned over there, so keep checking it out. we'll definitely be getting up to photo fun at blog camp berlin in 10 days.