Fuji Neopan (3 of 3)

At the pow wow:

This Indian Mission schoolhouse (where my grandfather went to school) and Episcopal Church on Bear Mountain:

Fuji Neopan (2 of 3)

Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, VA:

Appomattox Court House, VA:

South River Friends Meetinghouse* Cemetery in Lynchburg, VA:

*Lynchburg was founded by John Lynch, a Quaker.

Fuji Neopan (1 of 3)

I shot a lot of black and white towards the end of my “shooting season”–I don’t like to shoot during summer, I’m not a native southerner and I simply can’t withstand the heat and humidity. I had 3 rolls of Neopan (all shot in the Wide & Slim) that I sent to Dwayne’s  at once; I’m ready to move on from Neopan but the rolls I have are all expired and I want to finish them first. I have Tri-X, Ilford, and Lomography Earl Gray in the fridge and I’m eager to make some comparisons.

Harlem Plantation in Plaquemines Parish:

Holy Rosary Cemetery in St. Charles Parish (look for the chemical plants in the background):

A fragment of the de la Ronde Ruins in St. Bernard Parish:

A cane field… somewhere. I think it was Iberville Parish:

In other photography news, I’ll have a new camera whenever I’m ready to go back out. A pen friend of mine said he wanted to send me his wife’s old camera and I said sure, I’ll give it a good home. It turned out to be a Minox 35, arguably the smallest full-frame 35mm camera ever made. It’s an EL, the very first model; production started on that model the year before I was born. I just have to find a replacement battery for it, it takes a 5.6v and those fractional volts can be hard to find.

If you like my work and would like to help me create more, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

Midori Traveler’s Notebook (Part 2)

So a while back I wrote about this planner/journal system and how my introduction to it was a cheap knock-off from Michael’s. Yeah, I went a little bonkers with that. A couple of weeks later I decided to upgrade a bit to a fabric cover that I bought on Etsy, then I discovered that a lot of people make covers in Fields Notes size (I am already a committed Field Notes junkie), then I started adding charms and folders and bookmarks and more inserts… long story short, I am now the owner of 5 TNs total: one standard size, one passport, and three FN-size. I use them all, although of course I don’t carry them all around with me. I’d have to be She-Hulk to manage that.

Last week I saw a post in a Facebook group for buying/selling TN gear where someone was selling a TN brand Airport Edition, the cover that is only sold at the Traveler’s Factory stores in Japanese airports (as far as I know, just Narita and Tokyo). Apparently I thought WELP I GUESS I HAVEN’T BLOWN ENOUGH MONEY ON THIS HOBBY YET, because I wound up buying it, although I did get her to knock $20 off her asking price and include the shipping. BEHOLD:

The charm is a hamsa, that I added myself.

It came with this insert. The other is my lightweight paper insert; I’ve taken to covering the boring covers with craft paper.

More covered inserts.

I found these vintage camera magnet bookmarks at Barnes and Noble and of course as soon as I did there was a 100% chance they were coming home with me.

I use the weekly planner to keep notes about photo shoots: what/where/when, weather/light conditions, films/cameras used, etc.

The kraft paper insert with some stuff from my recent Virginia trip.

The folder (from Analog Stationers) holds tourism brochures as well as loose items that haven’t made it into the kraft insert yet.

OKAY I’M PRETTY SURE I HAVE NOW REACHED TRAVELER’S NOTEBOOK NIRVANA

Indian Mission School on Bear Mountain, Amherst County, VA

I’m still waiting for film I shot in Virginia to come back from the lab but I’ve uploaded all the cell phone shots, and I realized that I shot a photo of the Monacan schoolhouse from almost the same spot both times I’ve been there, in late November of 2014 and mid-May of 2016.

I was a little closer and a little more to the left in the fall shot, but it’s close enough to be an interesting comparison.

If you like my work and would like to help me make more of it, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

Harlem Plantation, Plaquemines Parish, LA

I found out about this house while Googling for things to photograph in Plaquemines Parish. There isn’t much information on the internet other than that it was built in 1840 and is considered architecturally significant as an example of the shift from French Colonial to Classical architecture in south Louisiana. I have no idea who owns it now, but it obviously hasn’t been lived in in decades. Sad to say, but I think this one is beyond saving. I wasn’t even 100% sure it would still be there when I set out, the most recent photo I was able to find was the Google Street View for that stretch of Louisiana Highway 15, dated October of 2013. But it was right where the GPS coordinates said it would be.

I didn’t have very good light, it was midday on a totally cloudless day so it was very hard. These are just my cell phone shots, I also shot some B&W in my Viv and Ektar in my Argus C3—haven’t taken that one out in a while. I forgot what a satisfying “ping!” the shutter on that one makes.

Please consider supporting me on Patreon

Fuji Neopan (expired) in Wide & Slim

This has been one of my favorite film/camera combos for a while now. I only have a few rolls of Neopan left, but I feel like I’ve progressed through all the stages of grief and I’m ready to start trying other options. (Don’t talk to me about pack film yet, though. Too soon.)

In other news, I’ve gone back to my old idea of trying to find a ghost town in southern Louisiana. I did dome research on it about 4 years ago but gave up because websites were always mentioning “ghost towns” that no longer existed. They would turn out to have been washed away by the river when it changed course, or totally demolished to build a section of highway, or wiped off the earth by hurricanes. One website claims Bayou Goula is a ghost town, to which all I can say is that those are some pretty lively ghosts.

Morrisonville in Iberville Parish seemed like a good bet, it was small community on the River Road that had to be abandoned in the mid-90s when Dow Chemical spilled vinyl chloride. There’s nothing left but the cemetery but I thought it might make some interesting photos anyway, with all the pipes and industrial crap in the background. However, the Dow facility has grown around the site of the town in the intervening years, and the cemetery is now on private property. It’s theoretically accessible by the public, and a security guard gave me a phone number to call, but no one ever answered. So that was a big, fat goose egg.

Back to the drawing board. If you know of anything, please leave a comment.

If you like my work and would like to help me create more, please consider supporting me on Patreon