how i spent kristihimmelfart

kristihimmelfart has something to do with easter. it's ascension (ascention?) day. or whatever. i don't really know what it means. i wasn't really paying attention that time i got sent to bible school for a week when i was 4. i think it's a funny name but that's because i'm kinda simple when it comes to it and it involves the word fart. i wasn't around anyone named kristi today, so i don't know about the farts, but i do know about frogs. because i spent quite a long time trying to photograph frogs. they were singing like crazy before i went down with the camera. do you think they would continue when i got there? of course they wouldn't, so i never did catch them with their little cheeks all puffed out. and i had a little staring contest with one (which i lost, undoubtedly because i don't think they can blink). but it was green and glorious and wonderful to be outside. i'll be able to sit down to work tomorrow, totally refreshed and renewed because i was able to spend most of this glorious day outside.

i also found out something about husband today. he actually has a blog. he created it, but has never written anything on it. and to think i thought he thought we were all completely mad. 5 ants are more than 4 elephants. he's super clever, don't you love that title?  husband is such a keeper. i'm not sure he's really going to blog, but i followed him, just in case. i think i've already been following him for rather a long time, but now it's official.

ready for the weekend

husband comes home today! we're ready to see him and hang out with him again, for sure! i've volunteered to pick him up at the airport (and no, it's not ONLY because i want a starbucks grande venti latte).  i really can't wait to hear his stories of places with names like belo horizonte. doesn't a place with a name like that sound just wonderful? (more wonderful than clayton, NC, in any case, which is also where he was.)

i'm also looking forward to seeing the D60 and what pictures he managed to take with it. i don't really know what it thought of being sent out into the world without me and i'm a little sad that it's been to brazil and i have not, but i know it was safe in husband's capable hands. i told him he had to take a few hotel mirror self-portraits, but i'm not sure he did that (for some strange reason, he doesn't always do what i say). it's just that the D60 will expect it.

* * *

husband said the other day that we should go to the states sometime this year. 

my response, "oh yeah, i just got a sale email from KLM and there are super cheap tix to joburg, like under 4000DKK or something like that." 

husband said, "that's not the states."

oops.

* * *

watching all of the leaders arrive at the G20 summit in london it struck me that they're there to talk stimulating the world economy and about the environment and such, but they all pulled up in giant, bulky, beefed up armored gas guzzling big-ass cars and vans and SUVs.  is that really any better than the message sent by those assholes from the carmakers who showed up for their first meetings in their private jets? i also thought that instead of "growth" in the subtitle of the G20 conference, it maybe should have said "sustainability." because we can't sustain the kind of growth we saw. we've only got the one planet, you see.

* * *

this is a screenshot of my flicker view stats. check out the spike when my kitchen was on apartment therapy! i normally have a rather steady amount of  views (between 200-400), but that day it shot clear up to 1854. it helped that the moo people tweeted another of my photos that day. i guess i don't really care about any of this one way or another, but i thought it was pretty funny visually.

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this is the weekend where we attend the wedding party for husband's sister. i'm so excited to see what they thinks of their atelierBB goodies. the party will be at the wonderful gamla kassen in landskrona.  these shots are from another party we attended there early last summer.

* * *

note, i've been on a roll of late and put up a bunch of single entries over on balderdash, be sure to go check them out. they're autobiographical, but there's a couple of pretty funny ones.

* * *

they promise sunshine and up to 15 degrees this weekend, so you won't see much of me here. i hope the weather is fine where you are and your weekend is filled with laughter!

last but not least

i finally got the last of my interview questions off and my interviewees have now all posted their answers. so please go read artistic mari's arty answers to all of my obsessive questions about inspiration and the muses.

if you're in the mood for the entire spectrum from fabulous chair design to burgeoning southern african democracy, go and check out molly's wonderful answers to my questions at ohfortheloveofblog.

these interviews were great fun! a big thank you to all of you who wanted to be interviewed and to all who read the interviews. don't you love the blogosphere?

* * *

and just a few more days of mad dashing around before my sister heads home on sunday. but in the meantime, it's all scenes like this:

there will be many stories to tell next week...but first, we have to survive a treasure hunt birthday party with 20 second graders. but husband has a plan involving fish...

4th picture meme

i was tagged a few days ago (before the whirlwind trip to the west coast) by lynne of wheatlands news for a picture meme and so i'm getting to it now. here's what it's all about...you take the 4th picture in the 4th folder on your computer and post it and explain it. no editing, no selecting another picture.

naturally, being me, i immediately broke the rule, but only because the 4th folder had only 2 pictures in it, so i'll admit i decided not to count it, so this is technically the 4th picture from the 5th folder, but i didn't edit it, that much i promise!

the folder is called "christmas 2002" and the picture is of a ruffle-butt feetie pajama-clad sabin and our black persian cat, fitch (we also had a himalayan called abercrombie) near the christmas tree. i believe that's a hair band around sabin's wrist and fitchie is trying to play with it.

what's fun for me about the picture, other than remembering sabin so little (she was closing in on 2 then and now she's going to be 8 in a few days), is seeing the rug we found in morocco, which is still on the floor in our big kitchen/living room. the low leather kaare klint safari chair in the background is out in the studio space these days. we've painted the stairs white and there is a new oak floor instead of the pine floor seen here. and where the tree is standing is today where our refrigerator, kitchen sink and dishwasher are. it makes me smile to think of how far we've come. on the other hand, some things don't change...we still have that same color of yellow on the walls.

i'd love to see the 4th picture in your 4th folder and hear your story, so if you'd like to share, consider yourself tagged.

parallel worlds in the mirror

what if, when we look in the mirror, we leave an imprint of ourselves there in the glass? a version of us that remains behind after we walk away. think of the infinite number of times you've looked in a mirror. the multitude of selves left behind. what are they doing? do we leave one behind every time we use the mirror, so the mirrors in my home, for example, are filled with hundreds of me. versions of me, one from every day, sometimes several times a day. do they have an entire existence over there in the mirror?

do my mirror self-portraits with the camera have a sort of doubling effect? think of the multiplicity of images. in the early days of photography, it was feared by some to capture the soul. i personally think the soul is more elusive than that. but, do mirrors and photos (which are a mirror of sorts) capture some fragment? something that remains. i don't have the sense of being less for losing those fragments of self, but i do wonder if they carry on parallel life over there in the mirror. a reality that, while different from the one i have here in the world that is not in the mirror, is a reality nonetheless.

how do those mirror selves fill their time? do they have entire lives going on beyond the glass? can they move beyond the confines of the mirror's frame? or do they wait there for you to return? i have this feeling that it's a bit like i think it is with my dream world--another life or lives going on over there entirely. because once you've left the fragment behind, you lose control of it. it separates and goes on to its own existence. you and yet not you.

is time the same over there in that mirror? or does it stand still--for example, the fragment of self you leave in a hotel room mirror, where you won't return to, do you age, or do you remain the age you left in that reflection? in your home mirrors, time must move at more or less the same speed as it does in this space, because there are so many new versions of you that you leave in those mirrors.

do you suppose it would be possible, if one were wearing the right lenses or was in the right frame of mind, to catch a glimpse of all of the people who have ever looked in that mirror? so the antique mirror we have in the hall would contain all of the people who looked in it before us and we would be shocked at how many people were there if we could just get our focus right and see them. i would really love to be able to do that, if only to see what they were wearing.

can you tell i'm reading murakami again? this time it's after dark.

found: a real treasure

i indulged my hankering for poking around a flea market today. there's one every weekend over across the fjord and although it's horribly smoky in there from all of the smokers, i braved it today. and i'm happy i did, because i found this beauty:

the lens says "Jos. Schneider & Co. Kreuznach No. 275350 Xenar :4,5 F-19,5cm"

the body says "Hüttig A.G. Dresden, Modell 1907."

i don't know anything about it.

i just thought it was beautiful.

i am going to try to take pix through the viewfinder with my D60 and macro lens

if any of you know more about these cameras than i do, please share!!

i should be asleep

..but i drank too much coffee and have been away from all my favorite blogs for almost a week! so, i'm up late, catching up. and i found the most amazing pictures of luxor, taken by my one blog friend who actually lives in the same country as me! :-) she's got a holga and a nikon as well (at least i think she has a nikon--anyway, a good SLR) and her pictures of her recent trip to egypt are totally awesome!!  go, look at them now. let me sleep.

getting on my nerves

i was just ordered by the doctor not to type anything with my left hand for 3-4 weeks! apparently, i have a nerve in my left hand/arm that is a tad ticked off at my fabulous new, very flat, paper-thin, gorgeous, awesome iMac keyboard. so the coming weeks will be more pictures and less words. starting with these strawberries from my very own garden. yummy.

fisheye love

my very helpful friend lee taught me how to reverse those negative fisheye shots in photoshop (easy peasy--[ctrl I]), so here they are:

gumball machine

shoe shop

beautiful swan

and my fave mailbox shot

all were taken with expired fuji sensia 100
cross-processed in C41 chemicals

i just completely love the purpley pinks that came out on this set. it must be the magic of the expired film with the cross-processing. i love, love, love it!!! must go outside and take more.

lomovisions from dawn 'til dusk

for any of you who might have your interest piqued in lomography, i wanted to link to this article from last sunday's inquirer magazine in the philippines. it's a feature story on the lomography exhibit that i saw when i was in manila earlier this month (which i wrote about here).

my friend lee, who has been helping me out as i find my way with my fun lomo cameras, was one of the photographers whose pictures are part of the exhibit. it was such an expiring exhibition that it got me into a totally new hobby! i love when something like that happens! and i can't wait 'til i have enough pix for my own lomowall!

lovin' the lomo thang!!

i've been having a ball with my lomo cameras. not everything has turned out on the initial rolls, but it's SOOooo much fun. even the waiting for films to be developed is way fun!

here are some samples:

expired fuji sensia 100 slide film cross-processed in C41 chemicals.

that's what gives it that cool red tint.

ducks using the octomat

my very first shot with the octomat

expired fuji sensia 100 film, cross-processed

expired fuji sensia 100 cross-processed.

taken by sabin with her penguin-shaped toy camera that came with some candy.

bicycle store in frederikssund

ordinary 120 film, taken using the diana+

ordinary 35mm film in the fisheye 2

expired fuji sensia 100 cross-processed in C41
i think my camera store messed up this processing, but i love the effect

expired fuji sensia 100 cross-processed in C41
i think my camera store messed up this processing, but i love the effect

this lomography thing is way cool. i can highly recommend it. it's just so much fun to see what the simple mechanics of the camera can do. if you want to learn more, check out www.lomography.com and you'll see pix way better than these first ones of mine. the blurry pic of the bookshelf that i posted a few days ago was a lomo photo as well, taken with my diana+ camera.

(time) zoning out

whoa! it's been 3 days since i posted!! that's pretty strange for me! i made it home safely and immediately jumped into social and building activities, as well as jetlagging and taking massive amounts of pictures with my new camera(s). since my brain is still on manila time (which is 3 a.m. as of this moment...) a real posting will have to wait 'til tomorrow. in the meantime, some pictures....