Sunny days

Maidstone is remarkably warm today so I celebrated with a lovely, long walk in Mote Park.

I hate winter as much as I love spring.

I swear if human beings were able to hibernate I would. 

Mote Park in the sun makes Maidstone seem less like a trashy place to live.

One of my favourite places to go in the park is the miniature railway, because, duh, it's a tiny train track, with a tiny train, and a tiny station. How could anyone not adore that?

Most of the year people seem to forget it exists so you can sit around taking weird photos and no one will bother you. My friends and I tend to have a lot of evening picnics around here because it's so quiet.

I need to use this location for an actual photo shoot sometime soon.

I'm still doing a 365 but I've felt like I haven't really made much of an effort with my photos for a while. 

Today was a nice way of getting back into everything :)

Katy

Valentine's Day

I don't do Valentine's Day.
I have nothing against people who do celebrate it, but personally it just isn't for me. My thinking is that if I'm crazy about someone I'm not going to tell them using a cheap card with hearts all over it. However, at the same time I'm not one of those people who spends every February 14th complaining about how perpetually single they are. As it turned out, despite the fact that I was single this Valentine's Day I ended up having the best day ever.

A few weeks ago ago I blogged about a photoshoot I did with my friends Optional Rubber Duck. On Tuesday they played the 229 in Great Portland Street for Surface Festival which helps promote unsigned bands throughout the UK and Europe. The four bands with the most votes got to go through to the second round. The boys put on one hell of a show and came second overall so they'll be playing in Camden sometime soon. I am very proud.

There's an album of photos over at the band facebook page but I thought I'd upload some of my favourites on here.

I'm insisting we make this a Valentine's Day tradition.

We spent the last train home being serenaded by a wonderful old man. He bought two ORD CDs and offered them a gig. I'm so happy my friend recorded the experience because  it was just so surreal I'm beginning to doubt the whole thing actually happened.

Here is my name on a CD case. This will never not be cool.

Katy

Fisheye

I got this little beauty early last year; it was a late Christmas present from my friend Steven. Definitely one of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever had!

I’d been interested in using a fisheye lens for a long time but had no idea where to start so I ended up looking at a few discussion forums for any helpful tips and suggestions.

I’d heard such mixed reactions online about the Lomography Fisheye One that I wasn’t expecting an amazing first roll of film. But, hey, it’s a learning curve, and you never know what you’re going to end up with unless you experiment.

Lounge on the Farm Festival 2011, Canterbury, Kent.

When I got the first roll back I was stunned. Considering I’d used the first half of the film on a wintry, rainy, overcast and miserable day in London, I was expecting everything to look incredibly drab, dreary and underexposed, but no. I got stuff like this:

The last half of the film was used in my garden when spring sprung (sorry…) and on a beautifully sunny day when I went to visit my little sister in Kingston-Upon-Thames. They looked pretty sweet too:

Needless to say I ignored all the criticism I’d read about the fisheye. I’ve only had a couple of minor hiccups with it and I’ve used it the most out of all my film cameras. This baby has been everywhere with me.

Eventually I’d like to get a Fisheye Two as well (purely so I can do double exposures and use a proper flash) but until then, I’m happy to have this baby as my weapon of choice.

Katy

Cold

The biggest problem I'm having with my 365 is working out what the heck I'm going to take a photo of each day. Fortunately, the snow made that decision an easy one this morning. 

In unrelated news we have no heating or hot water in our house until Friday due to the boiler breaking rather unexpectedly a couple of days ago. There's nothing we can really do apart from deal with it. 

I would hibernate but I've got too much to do next week.

 I'm a bit in love with the person who invented electric heaters.

Katy

Diana Mini

Diana Mini

Sadly my film cameras have had to go in to hibernation because I can't really afford to use them all at the moment. I figured in the mean time I'd do a post on each of them so I don't forget how wonderful they all are.

This is the Diana Mini and I think it is one of the prettiest cameras I have ever laid eyes on.

I got mine in 2010 while on holiday in New York and although the first roll of film was a little temperamental I fell head over heels in love with the results.

Here's one of the first photos I took with this camera. To this day I have no idea what happened here. I remember the camera refusing to wind on and the film getting ridiculously jammed up, but hey. Accidental double exposures are awesome!

The ace thing about the Diana Mini is that you have a choice of which format you want to take photos in. You can choose the square format: 

Or you can choose half-frame, which looks like this:

Because you get 2 photos on a single print you, technically, get twice as many photos. I like using half-frame because sometimes you can tell a little bit of a story with your prints.

People seem to think I planned this one. I think they give me a bit too much credit, most of the time I'm making this up as I go along:

I still haven't figured out the focus ring. I don't expect any of my film cameras to be particularly sharp, as if I want a perfectly focused, sharp image I'll use my digital camera, but whichever way I turn the focus ring it seems to make no difference to the image.

I don't mind though. I like the soft focus, it makes everything look slightly dreamy.

And sometimes it's quite nice when things go spectacularly wrong.

This one is my absolute favourite.

 The image on the left is the carousel in Bryant Park in New York and the image on the right is the sun rising over London 10 hours later. 

I guess the moral of the story is that making it up as you go along is perfectly okay.

Katy