3.07.10

Day 9

This is one of my friends' favourite sheesha lounges.  It's pretty lucky that it's still around.  A couple of years ago, the city passed a bylaw that banned smoking in public places.  Great if you don't want to get second-hand smokers' hack every time you go to the bar, not so great if your business is smoking.  The city gave the sheesha lounges and cigar clubs one year to close up shop.

But then, somewhere along the line, they decided that it was stupid to put a high-tax-paying store out of business, and the people going there probably weren't going to complain about second-hand smoke, so they let them stay.

Lucky for me.  I really like those tables.

Have a great (long!) weekend :)

Love,
Hearts & Photos

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1.07.10

Day 8

I went to the Camera Store yesterday afternoon.  It was pretty exciting.  Buying film is always exciting.  There are so many choices!  I can get Kodak, Ilford, Fuji, or Polaroid; black & white or colour; vivid or neutral; any ISO from 50 (!!) to 3200 (!!!!1!!); high contrast, vivid, neutral aghhh!

I ended up with 9 rolls/packs (I think)- 2 packs of black & white Fuji instant film; 1 pack of Fuji instant colour (which was $33 for a ten pack- ouch!); 1 roll of 35mm Ilford SPX 200 and 2 rolls of it in 120; 1 roll of 35mm XP2 400 and 2 rolls of 120.  Oh yeah.  And a 35mm roll of Ilford Delta 3200.  So excited!!!  (I also ordered a few packs of sepia and black & white polaroid from the Impossible Project.  Yay!!)

Ok, so maybe it was more than 9.  Stop judging me!

Alright, remember yesterday when I was telling you that I love downtown so much?  Well, like my parents used to say, I'll always love you, but sometimes I don't like you very much.  This picture was a pretty good example of one of those times.

I was walking along, saw something that I wanted to photograph, stopped, set up, metered, was about to take the picture when a group of German tourists walked in front of me.  No big deal.  Just wait for them to pass and try again.  Just as the last one passes, some douche-bags with blackberries, suits, and too much gel in their hair step in front of the camera.  Fine.  It's downtown.  People tend not to pay attention to other people.  Maybe they just didn't see my gigantic camera.  A few random shoppers pass through the viewfinder, but I look down the street after them- the coast is clear!  As soon as these women are gone I can get the shot!

Then this guy walks out of the pub door on the right, stands right in the shot, and stares at me.  Whatever.  I take the shot and walk away.  And you know what?  I kinda like it :)

Happy Canada Day!

Love,
Hearts & Photos

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30.06.10

Day 7

Here's a big surprise- I like downtown.  A lot.  I'm a big fan of wandering through back alleys and checking out dirty little niches to photograph things that people try to overlook.  Sometimes this works in my favour (see above photo) and sometimes homeless guys use those niches as urinals.  While I'm standing in them.

This particular spot has become a favourite of mine.  It's beside a little cafe, this side of which, faces an alley.  As I mentioned above, some of Calgary's residents are not too particular about whether or not they have an audience when they need go.  In order to prevent their customers from relating their beef tartare to something decidedly less savoury, the cafe installed some heavy drapes.  (It's probably something a lot less exciting, like the drapes look nicer than a view of a dumpster, but just go with my story, k?)  They've yellowed and wrinkled, and most people walk by without a second glance.  I've done it dozens of times myself.

If you're lucky, though, you'll walk by just before sunset.  The alley is east-west, and just before the sun disappears behind a behemoth building downtown, it hits these heavy drapes and, for a few moments, you see the beauty in the texture of the fabric and the play of light and shadow.

It makes you feel like the world shifted just for you.  Like you were supposed to see this mundane little thing be elevated to something beautiful, and it makes you realize that everything has beauty- you just need to be open to it.

Have a great day :)

Love,
Hearts & Photos

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29.06.10

Day 6

Because I've been away so much this month (blame it on the wedding.  It's a living, breathing entity entirely it's own) and been a bit of a blogging dilettante, I've decided to extend the Polaroid contest so you guys actually get a month's worth of photos.  I promise not to let this take 6 months!

So, wedding and honeymoon recap.  Basically, it was awesome.  It's great to have married my best friend and I think he appreciates having graduating from "BOYfriend" to "MANfriend".  It makes him feel all grown up, but not too responsible.

We tried out "husband" and "wife" for a little while, but it just didn't sit right.  It felt sort of like we were playing house, but with a really high awkward factor.  Odd, no?  We've been together for four years, lived together for over two, and that never felt fake or forced, but calling him husband?  Whoa now!  Slow down!  I don't want that kind of commitment!  I can't be that old already!!

Luckily, the honeymoon was fantastic and made up for much of the weirdness (except when Steve had to ask for a skinnier pillow for his "wife").  Tofino is such an amazing place.  The people are super laid back, the landscape is beyond belief, and there are more VW vans per capita than any other town I've been too.  The trifecta.

So, back to the photos.  I was thinking, it might be kinda cool to give you guys a bit more detail about the pictures I'm posting here.  Nothing long, just a little background.

This polaroid is one of my favourites.  The building is the old CIBC on the corner of 12th Ave and 1st St SW.  I've walked past it about a million times (it's a block away from DeVille and if you know me, you know how much caffeine I need to function) but somehow never noticed it until a few weeks ago.  This pack of polaroid expired a year ago, hence the weird, horizontal blotchiness and at first I was kinda disappointed with it, but the longer I looked at it, the more that blotchiness fit with the image.

It's part of the reason I love to use film and crappy old cameras- it feels like they have their own personalities, and they are helping to decide how the image is going to turn out.  When I use digital, it feels like a dead hunk of plastic that I force to take a picture.  Film is a dialogue.

If your camera could talk, what would it say?

Have a great day :)

Love,
Hearts & Photos

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23.06.10

A very late
Day 5

Cathedral Grove.  This is my favourite polaroid from the entire trip to Tofino.

I hope you like it, too :)

Love,
Hearts & Photos

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