i see you everywhere

part of the trouble project that i posted about a couple days back is that i've been taking a polaroid portrait of each person in the film (and the poet). here are the first few. (i've been having some trouble with the scans -- so these colors aren't quite right.)

matthew

barbara

bonden

bonden no. 2

i saw it in your face

i used to do this thing where i'd make everybody i meet take a polaroid picture and sign it. i haven't for a while now, but the other night i went looking through those old shots and i sort of wished i'd never stopped. i turned to my friend and asked him to pose three times.

you, you used to have all the answers

while i was in arizona for christmas, i took a few pictures of the place where i grew up. these are softtone polaroids of my childhood homes. the house on the left is my dad's. i spent some time there, but mostly i lived in the house to the right, with my mom. both are pretty smack dab in the middle of suburbia, just a few twists away from major streets lined with strip malls and palm trees.

for a while, things were cold

these are that last few polaroids i took over thanksgiving weekend, stitched together as diptychs. the second one is a combo of softtone film (on the left) and 600 film (on the right).

come on, sunlight - a fall 2011 ep

fall's nearly over, which means it's about time i posted my seasonal ep. it's a little bit longer than ususal, and there are a few songs on here that'll probably overlap some with my year-end list (which'll be up here in the next few weeks), but i tried to keep them to a minimum. anyhow, hope these beats get your feet moving. (you can download the whole mix by clicking here, or you can grab it bit by bit by right clicking on the song titles.)

vanessa - grimes


nuclear season - charli xcx


212 - azealia banks


beat and the pulse - austra


mellow doubt - diamond rings covers teenage fanclub


sunlight - the one am radio


what becomes of the broken hearted - jimmy ruffin


nervous lonely night - jessica lea mayfield


love, love, love - of monsters and men

how do you make forever?

a few more polaroid 'tychs from the weekend in rhododendron:




top image was stitched together from polaroids shot on softtone spectra film, the bottom from 600 film.

and we are far from home but we're so happy

thanks and the giving of thanks

i sat down and wrote out a list of things that i'm thankful for. a poem in the form of a list. but, for whatever reason, it just doesn't sit right. maybe i'm not done with it. that, of course, isn't to say that i'm not thankful for beautiful weekends like the one i just spent in a cabin in rhododendron full of truly great company and too much food and walks over fallen trees and movie making and lessons in dream-catcher weaving.

that is just to say that i'll leave it to a song that's stayed with me to finish this post:

i'm so blessed to 
have spent that time
with my family and the friends 
i love
with my short life i have met 
so many people i deeply care for.
-- red cave by yeasayer

to the end i'll never know

near kate's house, there is this ridge filled with palm trees that always pulls at me. it seems so right. it seems like i ought to live within walking distance. it reminds me of the way birds rest on telephone wires, all spaced out just so. anyhow, my diptyching continues, again with two softtone polaroids taken with a specrta system. if you look really hard, you can find kate, somewhere in here.

it's always good to see you again

i'm not sure if it was the steely sky and the light it threw on everything, or if it was just the tug of nostalgia for a place the reminds a little bit of home, but last weekend, as i walked down echo park avenue in los angeles, i felt this need to take pictures of nearly everything.

pictures of palm trees and telephone poles, of mission-style homes and sloping streets full of bouganvilla. and also, apparently, of unicorns stuck to store fronts. (i spent the weekend wondering what sort of store pastes an angry unicorn head above its entrance. my last night there, i found out: a store selling 80s and 90s work out clothing. obviously?)

amanda's work with diptychs has been rolling around my head lately. both of these images were shot on softtone polaroid film with my spectra system.

in the mornings i rest here

portraits on softtone spectra film. (the last two are by kate and james, in that order.)

     

three minutes

these were all taken with the spectra system camera on soft tone film, except for the one on the bottom right, which, if i remember correctly, was shot on image film (which is to say, film without a particular effect). there's also a slight distortion in the bottom left image, but that's due to a bumped scanner. the original is perfect. naturally. all of these photos, it's probably worth noting, were taken within a three-minute walk of my house. oh, portland.

new camera on the block

these are the other shots from my first pack of softone film with the spectra system. the new camera lets me play around with double exposures. well, you can double expose with most any polaroid camera, but it's super easy with the spectra system. i tried a few of them (the last three images in this post). they didn't turn out as well as i'd hoped, but i sort of looked at this pack as a test pack, more or less. since i've been in arizona for the past 24 hours, i've taken some more photos with the spectra system. i'm pretty happy with the results. i'll post them when i get back to portlandia and my trusty scanner. until then, happy christmas!

note about the post title: on my way up to seattle (where a good half of these polaroids were shot!) last weekend, i noticed that new kids on the block was playing in tacoma. they were hooking up with the back street boys. really.

buildings that speak

a recovery center in north portland. (shot with spectra camera on softtone film.)

because i have no self restraint, i recently picked up a new polaroid spectra system camera and a few packs of film to go with it. this is my favorite of the first ten exposures. the rest to follow shortly.