Metaphor

After you put up with the rain, you do sometimes get rainbows...  Even if there are dark skies.

New old cameras

Since it isn't like I have work to distract me from anything, I have been goofing around with cameras.  The square photos were taken with a Seagull 4b camera from China that I think was made in the early 1960s.  It is hard to tell the age of a cameras from China because those made for the domestic market were sometimes a little dated in their technology.  It works, and is has decent if not not great lens. 

The other photos are from a Leica M2, a recent auction find.  That was fun.  Usually you find folding Kodaks, not Leicas, so I kind of jumped on it when it came along.  Alas, I will have to sell it, but I actually bought it for that purpose--I might even make a few dollars.

None of these are great photos nor are they of anything at all, points I will stress.  Sometimes, though, you just have to put yourself through the motions of taking photos in the hope that something will break free.  I have figured out that you will never take or make a good photo if you aren't out there with a camera.  And I do believe that taking photos is like fishing:  Even a bad day taking photos is sometimes better than almost any other thing.  Be patient.  I will get better, someday.

Friday

It is finally Friday.  It seems like it was a long week, but I have little to complain about.  My schedule is a settling into a routine.  I get up and head to the coffee shop to "work" for a few hours, usually until noon or until I have had so much coffee that I can't type any more.  Trust me, it has happened.    Then I make sure I can feed myself for the rest of the day and do stuff at home.  Rinse and repeat for the next day.

I am not really working but working at things so I might or can work.  A good on-line application, with all the redundant spots to fill in and boxes to check,  can take two or three hours to complete and much longer if my cover letter needs to be radically adjusted.  Of course all that work comes after actually finding the job to apply to and after doing some basic research.  Yeah, I know.  It is tough being me.  Hardly.  It is all just part of the process, a process that I hope will be productive soon, as I am getting a teensy bit bored.

I have a short walk to coffee nirvana, but I try and go a different way each day. (I was going to say I try and walk a different way each day, but isn't that a Monty Python joke?)  I found these photos on my walk today.  I am not sold on the vines/wall photo but the location.scene has potential.  Wrong camera and wrong lens, I think, but interesting.  Sometimes it feels like I am scouting for locations for senior pictures--I will have to train the ivy into a number 17 for this year's crop of seniors.

I did find a place nearby that processes film in-house and quickly, a surprisingly difficult thing to find.  After moving from the woods where you had travel 45 miles to even try and buy a roll of film, much less get it processed, I thought that the big city would be filled with photo resources.  Not so much beyond a pretty good camera store.  Processing seemed elusive unless you send it to the coast, so I was pretty glad to find this place.  I get my first roll back today, so maybe more photos later.

Fair time

I am a fan of fairs.  I like small obscure fairs and great big huge fairs, and I was able to go one of the biggest of fairs yesterday, the Minnesota State Fair.  This fair regularly attracts 175,000 other fans each day, and on big days, more than 215,000 people attend.  No matter how you look at that number you have to acknowledge that it translates into a lot of corn dogs.  Or some thing(s) on a stick, or whatever your fair food fancy might be.

I hit a perfect day to go--usually it is 90 degrees and 100% humidity, but it was in the 70s and sunny, truly a magnificent Minnesota day.  I was hardly the only one there, but it wasn't too crazy, and any lines could easily be avoided--it isn't like there is only one place to buy a corn dog.  Long lines gave me an (another) excuse to skip the Spam Sushi and bacon doughnut sliders. 

And without a doubt, it was the absolute best place ever to people watch.  I told a friend that to fit in at the fair that she would need to make a few changes.  First, everyone needs tattoos.  Several of them, in fact, and piercings are good, too.  To fit in at the fair, you need to demonstrate clear and convincing evidence that you have had several meals of deep fried cheese curds with a Snickers on a stick chaser per day.  Many, many people carry many too many pounds.  Then, you have to wear clothes that are way too small to show the pounds and the tattoos.  There.  The recipe for fitting in at the fair in an easy to swallow bite or 60. Bring a napkin or two.

While fairs are good for adults, they are even better for kids.  Who wouldn't love kids who have had a few pounds of cotton candy, a pop (sorry soda fans, I am now in Minnesota) and who are tired and crabby?  I LOVE kids!!!  I found the teenagers the funniest.  First there are the young women, all wearing clothes that are obviously not mom approved and who were pumping out clouds of pheromones to attract young men.  And it worked!  Billy, from Beltrami County (the hinterlands of Minnesota) who was at the fair to show Frank, his steer whom he had raised from a pup, was caught up in the cloud and simply followed his and her hormones around the fair.  Since she was from Edina and he had a half inch of Frank's poop on his boots, I am not sure that it all worked out, but that is life at the fair.

I had a good time.  I ate just a little bit as I was mindful of fitting in too well at the fair.  I took photos on one of the great days to take photos.  I am dating myself, but it was a Kodachrome day and colors just popped.  Sorry, that was a technical term to indicate that the blues were really really blue and the reds just about glowed.  You can see this from the photos.  I think that they are pretty self-explanatory if you have ever been to a fair, but ask if you have questions.  I even shot a roll of film--I will post a few more once I get those processed.  Remember, click on any of the photos to make them larger.