Words to Shoot by - Out

I'm very honoured to say that I'm now part of the wonderful people participating in Words to Shoot by!

The project was started by Steph Parke. The ideas is for each contributor to create a series of three images based on one word. Everyone's take on a word is always different and the variety of photographic mediums used is pretty wide too. I've always enjoyed seeing the various photos that the many talented photographers have contributed since it's inception. 

This time the word was out. 

I used some Impossible Project PX70 Push! film that I've had for awhile. I forgot how great the colours can come out on it! It works really well when there are big contrasts between light and darks, the picture with the cowboy boots for instance. 

The first picture is looking out at my parent's backyard through their kitchen window.

The second picture is Spandy, looking outside at our new neighbourhood and desperately wanting to go out and chase birds.

The third picture is my cowboy boots, by the door of our new home, just before I went out to go to work.

I hope you enjoy these and make sure to check out everyone elses as well!

Pink and Delicate Blossoms

More Impossible Film photos that I took in Vancouver! More cherry blossoms! I never get tired of looking at photos of cherry blossoms. 

I don't have much to say this week. It's been a bit of an emotional up and down. If you want to know more about it, I posted on Hinterland Home in regards to it. In short form thought, transition and moving is hard and the emotional impact of it doesn't go away once the boxes are unpacked. 

Until next time, enjoy the pretty photos of flowers and I hope you're all having a great weekend!

Antlers and Blossoms

While we were still in Vancouver, I spent a morning collecting cherry blossoms from any trees I could find, and then used them in an bit of a still life shoot. I still have lots of shots of this on 35mm film that I have yet to develop, but here are a couple of Impossible Project film shots.

In other news, Life up north is continuing on and perhaps even settling down. We're slowly falling back into little routines and it feels nice.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

App Review - VSCO cam

I have a confession to make.

I love my iPhone, and I love taking photos with it. As much as I would like to be a 'serious' photographer, and as much as I love all my film cameras, my lenses, etc. There is just something fun about taking photos with my iPhone. I love how I can share them easily with other people and I like how I always have them with me. On days when I need a pick-me up, I just flip through all my photos and see my favorite things, people, places and memories.

Up until last week Instagram was pretty much the only photo app I had ('cause I'm cheap and don't want to pay for other apps). But when Visual Supply Co. released their photo app... well, it was hard to say no.

The Stats:

App: VSCO CAM

Price: $0.99

Interaction: none, but it's easy to take photos from there and share them on facebook, twitter or Instagram.

Layout: very intuitive, but not flashy. The focus here is on your photos, not on their graphics, which is how it should be.

Thoughts: Visual Supply Co. is known for their film style presets that they sell for Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw and Aperture. I've been eyeing them for awhile, debating on whether or not I should take the leap and get them. As they say on their site it's "the legitimacy of film" and "the editablity of digital". So when VSCO CAM came out for the iPhone, I thought of it as a bit of a test run, to see if I'd want to go for the full product. 

But this app is more than a test run. It's well rounded in it's own right.

This app allows two options for getting photos into it for editing. 1) You can take a photo right in the app, using their lovely rule of thirds guides to assist in framing. Or 2) you can bring pictures over from your camera roll. Both ways seem to have the same quality, so it just depends on what you prefer.

Of course, the fun part comes after the photo is taken and is ready for editing. There are 3 black and white and 7 colour presets for you to use. The differences between them are like the differences between shooting Fuji film and Kodak, minor and each great but sometimes one fits a subject better than another. Aside from the presets there are also 9 other tools you can adjust: Fade, Grain, Contrast, Temperature, Fill Light, Exposure, Vignette, Saturation, and Highlights*. With these other tools you can create and almost indefinite number of styles, variations and personalization. It's like your own mini dark room, but on your iPhone.

As I mentioned before, it isn't an app that is set up for interaction the way Instagram is, but I don't think it's supposed to be. And since it makes it very easy to transfer the photos to Instagram, I don't think it needs to be. It's a fantastic tool for editing your iPhone photos and right now, I'm reallying enjoying it!

And in case you're wondering, yes, this app has completely made up my mind, I need to get their presets for Lightroom. If I'm having this much fun with the sized down app, think how much fun I'll have with their 35 different film presets and 26 different tools. It's a no brainer for me!

In conclusion, this app is a winner and more fun than a barrel of monkeys... hey, I wonder what a barrel of monkeys would look like with this....

*UPDATE: I totally missed a few tools 'cause I didn't know you could swipe for me. duh! Glad the VSCO twitter account let me know!

Hello again!

I have been away from here for far too long! 

If you have been following my posts over at Hinterland Home, then you have heard about how our move and renovations haven't gone as smoothly as I would like. But I'm not here to go on about that, I'm here because I finally I have new photos to share! Now that we're in our new home and have our computer set up, I finally got a chance to set up the new Epson scanner that I was given this last Christmas.

And thanks to that, I'm finally able to share some instant film photos I took at the beginning of March when Michael and I went over to Victoria for a few days. Before we went, I was beginning to despair about whether or not I would get a chance to see some cherry blossoms before we left Vancouver. But then, to my surprise, Victoria was full of them! I was happy and wanted to dance under the trees for hours. I settled for just taking some photos and smiling a lot as I walked around.

These photos were taken with the older version of the Impossible Project PX680. With this pack I had a bit of trouble with undeveloped spots and striping. I'm not sure if it was the pack, or if there is a problem with my rollers. I must investigate more...

In the mean time, enjoy the photos, I'll be back soon with more!