pinhole pinhole spinning around...

The Pinhole Camera class yesterday was a blast! And the fact that my employer paid for it made it even better!

We spent a part of the day making the typical oatmeal-carton-pinhole.
We also had some of the instructors homemade wooden box pinholes to mess around with.


(they looked similar to this)

And then, he also brought along the bulk dry-food barrel that he had converted into a large-format (16" x 20" negs) pinhole. That was worth the price of admission alone.
But, I also pulled out a nice array of photos; most of which impressed a lot people in the class. So much so that a few of them tried to jack my style. Whatever.

As soon as I can get them scanned (well, the 4x5 images, at least; it'd probably cost a pretty penny to get the larger images scanned), I'll post'em.

Tuesday, my second round of darkroom class starts up.
Free darkroom access for a month! Yay!










* in case you missed the reference in the title, here you go

ketch(ing)up

Got a huge stack of CDs from the library.
I haven't been able to buy much (if any) new music recently, but as usual the library came through.
This time I picked up:

The Birthday Party ~~ Hits
Bloc Party ~~ Intimacy
Blut Aus Nord ~~ Memoria Vetusta, pt 1: Fathers of the Icy Ages
the Boredoms ~~ Vision Creation Newsun
Broadcast ~~ The Future Crayon
Built to Spill ~~ There's Nothing Wrong With Love
Death Angel ~~ Killing Season
Los Campesinos ~~ We are Beautiful, We are Doomed
Mount Eerie ~~ Lost Wisdom
No Age ~~ Nouns
Squeeze ~~ The Complete BBC Sessions
Thin Lizzy ~~ Live and Dangerous
Torche ~~ Meanderthal
Velocity Girl ~~ Copacetic

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*Finally* started reading Crisis on Infinite Earth.
I figured I knew enough base knowledge of the DCU (or DCM, I guess it was then) to give it a go. I haven't made it too far in yet, but it seems to be aimed at both DC fanatic and arm-chair reader alike.


Also read the first Decimation collected trade -- Decimation being Marvel's follow-up to the House of M storyline, dealing with all of the mutants left depowered and whatnot in the aftermath. It's so-so so far.

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Thursday, started my Beginner's Photoshop class at Newspace.
As expected, I'm in a room full of idiots who still don't know their way(s) around a computer, yet make at least 3x my annual salary.
But, the class itself seems fine.

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Friday, took a quick jaunt around the Bite of Oregon with Mike, Michael and others. Nothing remarkable. Or memorable.
Reser's had a booth, handing out samplers of potato chip dip.
Noodles had a booth.
Wii Sports Resort was represented.
Regal Cinemas was represented.
And the musical acts seemed to have sunk pretty low since the night I moved to Portland, wherein I went to the Bite to catch the Pedro the Lion/Death Cab for Cutie/They Might Be Giants bill.

Though, the pomme frites covered in brown gravy was well worth it.

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Saturday night, watched both [Rec] and Hausu, with Mike, Michael, Vadim, and Kevin.

[Rec] -- kinda fun, kinda boring. A somewhat watered-down take on the Cloverfield approach; and seeing as how Cloverfield was pretty watered-down to begin with...

Hausu -- completely incomprehensible batshit bonkers Japanese horror fare. I'm not quite sure if I enjoyed it because I'm not quite sure what the hell was going on.

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Sunday, got talked into going with Mike to Slow Bar and having one of the most delicious and gut-busting meals I've yet to have in Portland -- yummy fried chicken and hushpuppies for appetizers, then the infamous Slow Burger. Everything you've heard/read about this burger is true. If you eat meat and are near the area, make it a destination.
Though, be wary eating inside. The jukebox seemed to annoy some. But, in my opinion, any jukebox with the first two Iron Maiden albums on it is A-OK!

The Summer 2009 class schedule for Newspace has just been released. I was hoping to take a course that would teach me some basic negative scanning techniques, so that I could skip the middleman and develop my own film & scan my own negatives. However, the only class that involves negative scanning requires basic Photoshop skills, of which I have none.

So, I may just take the Beginner's Photoshop course this quarter and aim for the negative scanning course sometime in the fall.