Fin is getting way bigger. Pupdate!

I got an email from CF Salicath telling me of his LEGO creation made in the wake of the Legotron. Holy shit, you guys. This thing is a) awesome, b) huge, and c) fucking awesome. This dude made a LEGO Twin-lens reflex camera! MY HEAD IS EXPLODING!

A shot from the Legoflex B1!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check out his build blog!

All images in this point ©CF Salicath.

Last Halloween there was a skate comp at the now-defunct Shoe Factory skate spot hosted by Peter Karvonen, pictured above. I'm just now getting good scans of some of those shots (the black and white ones anyway) and thought I'd post them, even if I'm too lazy to spot them and stuff right now.

Below is a dude's super gnarly scar and fake Tony Hawk.

Quick update on the pup! Fin has really done an amazing job with everything—crate training, living in a new place, being more or less responsive despite not being trained, and he has cuddling locked DOWN.

It's cute explosions all the time over here.

fin.

The real Dr House. This one makes a killer lasagna.

Fin on his way home!

Today we added a new member to our family. Stephanie and I adopted a wiener dog (mix?) from the Chilton County Humane Society and, like probably every pet owner, we clearly have the cutest dog of all of time. He's pretty stinky, too.

Arriving at home

Exploring his crate

First walk!

First jump up a step!

In the freaking kitchen! OH MY GOD

TOY!

Butt!

This blog post will serve as the home to new photos of Fin, too. I'll update this post here and there with new photos, so if you're interested in him growing up (I'm looking at you, Nicole), bookmark this URL.

Branden on the Legotron, shot on Kodak Portra 160

In an attempt to stay positive about Kodak, I thought maybe today was a decent day to post one of the images I've shot in color on the Legotron. Kodak sent over a few sheets for me to test out a while back and I'm just now getting around to really do anything with the stuff I've shot so far.

This first shot is Branden. I took some sheets on my normal field camera also to be able to compare color and all that stuff, but I'm still working on getting super clean scans for color 4x5. Black & white and color film stocks are different and despite being able to get great scans now out of BW, color is still eluding me—damn Newton rings.

I've got to say though, I absolutely ADORE the weird color shifts that come from light leaks and colored blocks. A bunch of people who have seen the camera have told me that I should rather have black blocks inside the camera, or spray it flat black. But perfection is the absolute last thing I'm after with this camera! All these weird lines and blotches. Love it!

somewhere in Uganda.

Winslow and one of his dogs, Hazel (who I'm pretty sure is mostly dire wolf).

Mom watching old home movies during our first christmas without granddad (pictured on the tv, orating to the crowd at some 1980s family reunion).

Rob threw a New Year's Eve party at the studio.

I had the pleasure of working with Jason Horn and Morgan Johnston at the end of summer for a story on local forager Chris Bennett. I'm just getting around to posting about the November story as I've been a bit overwhelmed since then, but I'm still just as excited about the images we got.

We poked around Bennett's family farm—which was more of sprawling wild acreage than proper farm—for a few hours, during which he pulled stuff out of the ground I'd never have noticed, much less known anything about. Really fascinating to watch an expert work. He was half magician to me.

Jason is way better and writing all about our experience, so instead of blathering, I'm just going to post the images and link to the story. Read up, enjoy!

While I was on the road I posted a portrait of a dude I met at Lwala, which was our first stop on the DIG trip I took in December. I took several other portraits of people from the participating groups and thought I'd take a second to post a couple of them. I shot 4x5 as well but still haven't gotten around to processing that mess. One day soon (he says hopefully)!

and Aluice again for good measure

This is pretty much what christmas looked like for us.

The first world problem of media consumption based social isolation hit our family this year during the holidays. This is what our christmastime looked like a good bit of the time, and sure it was fun, it's hard to ignore how different a family gathering is in 2011 compared to, say, 1985. This was made especially obvious since my mom gave me and my sister DVDs of old VHS tapes, several of which were past christmases, including 1985.

(Incidentally, 1985 was what I remember as Voltron Christmas. I was surprised to see a liberal amount of Masters of the Universe / He-man based gifts, all of which have been swept under the rug in my memory vault. I suppose we really do remember whatever we want to.)

Oh, and that giant fish is an Air Swimmer my cousin's daughter was given. The adults (okay, me and my sister) played with it almost as much as they did.

I've been trying different methods of getting good 4x5 scans for ages with results that were never fully satisfactory. I finally decided to pull the trigger on a big piece of Anti-Newton Ring glass for sandwiching my negatives and I'm pleased to find that this will very likely work perfectly, at least for my black and white negatives. I haven't gotten color negs to show up without Newton Rings yet, and that may end up being remedied by yet another piece of ANR glass, but then I'll have to figure out precise heights for shims so I can get proper focus from our scanner. I have a bit of color to scan so I wish I had this sorted now (I'm trying hard to get this Kodak 160 scanned so I can review it for them, shot on the Legotron and a normal field camera) but for now I can at least knock out black and white in a way that pleases me. IF YOU KNOW A GREAT WAY OF SCANNING 4x5 COLOR NEGATIVES ON A FLATBED, PLEASE TELL ME.

Enough nerdery. This shot was from a Halloween skate comp at the now-defunct Shoe Factory spot here in Birmingham. The skate was actually to raise money to move the ramps to a new location (which is important, because the ramps actually got thrown away before being salvaged for the Shoe Factory spot). It was put on by Faith Skate Supply, who is also currently pimping out a very worthy cause—A.Skate. In short, A.Skate has an opportunity to build an Autism-friendly, handicap accessible skate park, but they need your votes to help win the Pepsi contest. Hit that link to see the (EASY!) ways to vote!

And seriously, if you've got color 4x5 scanning tips, I'm all ears.

Last weekend in Monroe, Louisiana, Stephanie's father, William, graduated from college. We were all quite proud and attempted to show him this by gathering friends at the family home and gorging ourselves on food and drink. Lots of drink. Lots of food.

His graduation was exciting and inspiring but pales in comparison* to his now-over-two-year-old beast of a beard. He started it in November of 2009 at the outset of what would become the last Whiskerino and he's been growing it ever since, despite occasional protestation from his wife. I've done my best to chronicle this, his first ever beard, on my blog and you can see his journey if you search for beard (and you'll get bonus beard-related shots in the mix too).

I took some 4x5s of him in the robe and hat and what not, but in terms of raw beard-power, I couldn't help but post this one now.

*At least to me, it does. But I'm beard-biased.

Lady walking Great Rift Valley (Kenya) as seen from our passing car.

©Jens Werlein

I'm back home and while trying to catch up on my communications, to my delight, I found a comment from Jens Werlein (whom I posted about previously) telling me about the completion of his LEGO 4x5! Lovely shots and excellent execution of the camera. I'm so excited by this creation.

Check it out at his blog!

Here's another of his shots...his kids and the camera with the scan-back.

©Jens Werlein

Aerosmith

I've had a blast here in Kenya and up in Uganda, and I was most pleased to have the opportunity to return. So many photos I'm proud of from this trip. I look forward to finding a way to present it publicly in the future, though I'm never sure quite how to do that.

For now though, I'm super ready to get home.

Bye, Africa!