Montreal and San Fransisco on Film

It's been an oddly busy summer here. We recently made two quick trips - first to Montreal, a lovely city with amazing food that I very much want to go to again when they aren't experiencing record heat. So hot, in fact, my plans to take photos at the Mount Royal Cemetery were thwarted. (We did at least stop at the scenic overlook though.) Then just two weeks later we went to a beautiful family wedding in Marin, California. Since we were flying in and out of San Francisco anyway, I insisted we tack on an extra day to see the city. More great food and drinks and the weather was much more to my liking!

Still working on my backlog of negatives to scan, but here are a few of my favorite from the first batch. First, Montreal:

And San Francisco:

Learning Curve

I'm still working out the best way to use my Agfa Isolette. I've gotten some great images, but I thought I'd share one I wasn't that happy with. I was so excited to see this on the scanner thumbnail view, but when I looked a little closer it became apparent that I had the focal length all wrong. I'm guessing I was going for a shallow depth of field, with the statue in clear focus. With the overall soft focus, it looks more like a Lomography photo. I haven't yet decided if that's a happy accident or not. The hardest part of film photography for me is remembering to slow down, which is exactly why it's also therapeutic. Manually setting everything when you have a great shot lined up and the light is going is a true exercise in mindfulness and being in the moment.

Vintage Camera, Vintage Cemetery

Other than one roll of film just to make sure the thing worked, this was my first time experimenting with my "new" vintage camera, an Isolette "folder" from Germany. I picked it up from an antique/junk store in Cary, NC with no idea what I was doing or if it would work at all. I found some folks online who pointed me to Jergen at Certo6.com who unstuck the focusing ring and did an amazing job cleaning it up for me. I gathered up a few friends and went, where else, to a beautiful local cemetery. Despite the name, Congressional Cemetery is open to the public, and anyone can be buried there. It's well off the DC tourist trail but worth a visit if you're interested in history or old cemeteries.

Mystery film!

It's the first day of spring, but it's a miserable and cold one here in the Washington DC suburbs. The Cherry Blossom festival just started, but there's no way I'm going outside today. Instead, I reached into my (extensive) backlog of processed but unscanned film. Today's random roll is some Lomochrome purple I shot last summer in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland. On the one hand, I want to get better about scanning and sharing photos in a timely manner. On the other hand, it's a perfect day to re-visit a great Scottish vacation. The photos below were taken ( as I recall) at the Calton Burial grounds in Edinburgh.