People curious about the big Pacemaker Speed Graphic I was lugging around on Saturday and Sunday at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival sometimes stopped and asked me about the images that battered old box put out and said that it must put out something beautiful. I agree but I also said that it depended on the photographer who is still very new at 4x5. Currently, with the very low number of 4x5 sheets that I expose I think I'm about 25% hit ratio which I think is the same for any format I am shooting, only I take an extremely low amount of shots in the same time that I would with digital or 35mm.

Just one Polaroid from yesterday evening. I shot a bunch of film but no time to get it developed today as I'm off after I sort out my breakfast. Lovely day today.

As for the music:

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba - this African band were excellent. Very dance-able.

This is as close to minimalism as I get. For a reason only known to my fancy I just like splitting the horizon like this. Stuff on top, stuff on the bottom, and a line separating the frame. I just like it.

This shot came out a bit grainier than I thought a 160 ISO film should be. I didn't try to denoise it. It's okay and I'll just leave it.

I've been wandering the nearby beach as much as I can while I live only a handful of blocks from it. It's a nice walk and I get a good one or maybe two hours of wandering while the light is okay. This being Vancouver, the sun could be gone for a week (like right now), so there is no excuse not being outside when the weather is nice.

This weekend I noticed my Speed Graphic was feeling a bit underused. These days I display all my cameras in the open on a shelf so that they can look at me with lonely lenses begging to be picked up. That Sunday it was the Speed Graphic. I had the choice of going to a potentially mediocre movie or heading out to the local beach - easy choice.

See large version here.

This is 80% coming from one of my favourite collaborators, Rheannon, and her endless closet of wonderful costumes. On the spur of a moment, she swept by my apartment looking like this and really how can you not get up for that?