does this mean my photos will be all award-winning picture perfect? hardly. it just means i don’t have to mooch off JT’s yummy lens (which has spoilt me for life) and i can also now peek into my neighbour’s house from the comfort of my room.
p/s nothing interesting has happened so far.
was stuffing my face today, more than a little distraught after some heated erm discussion with ma. then my loveliest gives me this:
he warned me that it isn’t a terribly expensive lens. like, who’s care, hon? it’s a lovely present. i love it, and i love you. <3
nikkor 70-300mm AF G. i just took a few photos of the moon tonight. i like.
tomorrow, 62mm filter!
photos from an impromptu session.
they look like stills from some chinese horror movie. i like very much.
the first part of the long leave commenced with a road trip to malacca. yes, we all roll our eyes at the little town that spawned, since the last count, 2,134,518 lomo photos and even more artsy fartsy DSLR shots. post-worked and posted to death. which is why the posse road trip was sorely missing one mr music and one miss rabbit (who scurried off to the less-travelled pulau ketam instead).
so malacca is, in the loosest sense, a home town of sorts. sketchy family history about supposed baba nyonya heritage, teochew wanderers touching points along the west coast, and the annual ching bing (qing ming to you) trip which i’ve never participated in, all tie me back to the state. plus i am head-over-heels for the lard-soaked chicken rice balls. probably the strongest proof of my heritage, methinks.
closed my eyes and picked two cameras to accompany me on the trip: the beloved LC-A+ and the paradoxically under- and over-rated golden half.
expired centuria dnp lends a rather strong purple haze to all photos (tested in a few trial rolls) which i’m not particularly fond of. i guess despite my occasionally pink hair, i’m a conventional girl at heart.
the weather was blazing, which just screamed for a fixed-speed toy cam and a tribe toyota brolley.
how obliging.
overpriced baubles and the throngs of KLites aside, the town has also fascinated me with that delicious creepiness old abandoned buildings have. as you peek through a crack in a mildewed door, you start pondering the “whys” “hows” and especially the “whos” of this dilapidated shell of a house, even expecting to be greeted by an unblinking otherwordly eye (because that’s what always happens in the movies, ok).
these place are supposedly unclean but with my starbucks-numbed senses i couldn’t and haven’t felt a thing. maybe just a little imagined loss and despair which in all probability stems from me trying to inject some romanticism into my yuppie life.
still, annual pilgrimages to the place has made me a little sick (though we could pin that on the horrid horrid satay celup).
chicken rice balls. check. st paul’s church. check. techni trishaws. double and triple checked. eye on malaysia. maybe not. baba house. hmm. cendol. check. geographer. limau limau. jonker after 8pm. it’s as if time elbowed its way forward just to stand still.
a sparkling, gleaming white tomb of a 500-years dead and gone and forgotten malay warrior. i dare you to make sense of that.
but then again, i’m merely rambling, waiting for my hair to set. which it just has. i wish i were a peranakan princess.
cameracery check this fella’s camera equipment out, yo!
my head is spinning over which ones to get. have placed an order with dtjustfilms. hope they get back to me soon!
i hereby pledge to:
buy new film every month. like, stop wasting money on clothes and start buying slide film before they all vanish off the face of the earth. let’s say: 1 roll slide film and 5 rolls negative film.
start expiring my own rolls. technically cheaper to buy expired film, but i don’t like how they’re charging RM7 per roll. wow, a whole RM2 discount, fucking higway robbery. might as well buy it, age it, use it myself.
get off my ass and go somewhere interesting. no point shooting rolls and rolls of my dog. my feet. my shadow. and other mundane shit. when is malacca happening? :(
finish the fucking roll in the matchbox pinhole. i just haven’t been able to bring myself to. firstly, JT made it for me. secondly, i’ll have to rip it to shreds to develop it. lastly, it’s made of a matchbox that says SEE NO EVIL. it doesn’t get any more awesome than that.
make some pinhole cameras! i did buy a bloody book with templates from singapore for SGD35 (which i arguably could have downloaded for free on the internet. haha, sucker!) and so i better bloody use it.
flickr pro account? what for? really? itchy fingers? long run? affordable what? what can i say, the glint of my credit card is just so mesmerising.
decide what giant camera purchase to make. panasonic lumix lx3? fujifilm finepix f200exr? nikon fm2? (and of course but of course i just read joyce wong’s olympus pen advertorial after seeing the banners all over the damn place but it’s a whole thousand five hundred over my budget.)
sigh.
so i picked up my singapore rolls on the way to the doctor (yeah, sick on the fucking weekend. go fucking figure.) and while JT loves the cross processed look, i’m still not too sure how i feel about it. no doubt it’s interesting, but i think my money could be better spent on other things (RM38 per roll as opposed to the usual RM9). maybe i’m just not fond of the tint. shot sensia 200 at 400 to underexpose. have read about its red/green hue. like… huh, really? mine were blue/green. i want a slide that shifts red! anyway still have another roll in my golden half and a roll of kodak professional b&w lying around.<3
[update: JT rescanned the negatives and i love them!]
so, seeing as how easy it is to lomo-fy photos (tweak R,G & B curves respectively; contrast curves, overlay another solid; add noise) i guess it can’t be the look i’m in love with.
so what is it? the spontaneity? the breaking of traditional framing conventions? the indie street cred?
or is it a simple preference for warmer, not-so-super-sharp photos?
beats me.
