relativity

time works as a very relative dimension depending on so many aspects. four months could feel like a very long time, like forever, while a year passed like a blink of an eye.
 
i brought my 35mm film camera with me when i was in europe. but during months i was there i only managed to shoot one roll. one! i guess i was too busy absorbing everything by just being there and i didn't want to complicate things so i mostly just took photos with my digital, if not with just the phone.

having said that, my one and only roll turned out to be disappointing. duh. these are some frames i took in paris. can't say that i like it tho, but oh well..

tourist.

From an old 35mm roll

strange season

I still can't figure out what state I'm in these days. Things keep changing, me myself keep changing. Focus keeps being shifted, finding pleasure in different kind of things where I never before know I could find, experiencing agony which once I thought I would never again have to go through. But then I'm still the same person, who's not a planner and just do stuff. Still the same person who depends on synthetic happiness to keep on living.

Meanwhile.. I stumbled upon a photography portfolio which I adore so much by Isabelle Bertolini. They're not at all "sophisticated" but very much adorable in a simplistic way. The way she displayed the pictures in cropped is very pleasing to my eyes. This kind of photography soothes the heart. And yes still nothing beats the tones of film photography.

MOT - Cloudy Seoul

recapturing, recharging

I've been losing balance on the way I drive my life on daily basis although overall I can still say that things went okay. As I've said before, being consistent is way harder than being good. But I guess that only means there are things piling up to do, relationships to manage, thoughts to be channeled, emotions to recover, body clock to be readjusted, and days ahead to conquer. It's not that bad at all to have that feeling of keep restarting and renewing.

Photos are taken with 35mm film, the first time I tried using ISO 200 expired cause they no longer sell the 400 I usually used. I pushed it to 400 though, expecting more grainy pictures. I actually didn't expect the reddish tones but the whole roll turns out to be the way I like it.

rooftop grain

One of my new year resolution was to shoot one roll of film per month, and yet here I am on the mid of the fifth month, just developed the first roll I shot. Was actually taken around mid of April, I don't know what took me so long to develop.

I was actually expecting to be at this place earlier at the evening cause the ambience would be nicer, but we arrived there very late and it's so dark you can barely shoot anything. I got my 400 film with me which I pushed to 800, tho it still didn't help much. Should have pushed to 1600 but I'm grateful I didn't because I wouldn't have known howto process it with the C-41 process at the photolab.

I went back and forth to the photolab, they couldn't get it right because most of the films were underexposured. They didn't even cut the film because the border between each frame isn't clear. And the scan result was a big mess, they didn't scan within the right frame. But I managed to get it right and here's some frames that are quite okay. Haha.

ps. On the second from the last photo, I was actually aiming at two cute guys sitting at the bar but it doesn't showed at all, so just pretend I was showing the texture of the wall which is so cool. Hehe. Oh, if the photos look extremely horrible, try an apple screen, turn to maximum brightness, might look slightly better. or calibrate your monitor! huahaha.

gloom

This is a contact print of a photo essay I did for my final on my photography class five years ago. It was a group work, and this one is my roll, shot in a black and white 35mm film. Story is about a guy who's on drugs, then got HIV, was outcast by his peers, then committed suicide. Lame, I know. Hahah. It was five years ago! Everything is on the wrong exposure and angle anyway. But I always love how contact print turns out. Been wanting to do a new series.

Speaking of death, I talk (and ponder) a lot about it. It's not a new issue to me but the intensity has extremely increased the past few months. Today on the daily newspaper I read a column with the word Death as the title. The writing begins with the history of the song Gloomy Sunday, which is labelled as Hungarian suicide song, because of an urban legend about a lot of Hungarian committed suicide during The Great Depression. There was a darker period of time, of human genocide, poverty, hunger, and too much suffering in the world, death was seen as a way that leads to freedom.Then she wrote about Japanese Buddhism monks who determined their own time of death. When they felt like they've done enough, they'd drink some poison, then went meditating until death came pick them away. Death was once generally seen as something divine.

Sadly, in today's modern world, where people are enslaved by materialistic things and existence is hold in highest regard, death has become something evil-ish and feared.

ps. the film strips are not in the right order.

more than awesome

Two out of five film frames I recklessly shot on my friend's wedding on last November. Hehe. Two months after the wedding I asked her how marriage life is and she said, "Some things are more than awesome while some things suck. Haha."

a rainy day and a cake

smoke

My 35mm is seriously dying on me so I needed to finished a roll, so these are what I came up with. Failed to catch the smoke here, too lazy to clone some.

yeah, we need the eggs

Angus & Julia Stone - Yellow Brick Road

This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs."

I guess that's pretty much how I feel about relationships. They're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs.

- quote from Woody Allen, via ywhtvr

pure analog

I was busy cleaning up my room on the last day of last year and I threw away almost half of the things in there, and it feels GOOD. It reminds me of the minimalist blog which I read a while ago about how living with less is always better.

And while cleaning I found this:

They are test prints from photography class I took back then at college, I think like five years ago. And no, it's totally unlike photography these days. We did all manual (analog) photography, and only with black and white films. No autofocus, no photoshop, but films, darkroom, chemicals, printing (on papers!), dodging and burning (on the enlarger!), and all those. It was so exhausting back then between all other overwhelming architectural classes. And compare to what I know today, I understand very little back then although I was taking a class. Some things are better understood not by teaching but self learning, really.

So test print is basically exposing the paper on the enlarger in different timings to get the correct exposure for the final print. Do I like these images? Not really. Do I miss the whole process of it? Absolutely. Pity you kids these days who only get digital classes, you're clearly missing something.

satisfying oneself

I spent minutes in front of that red flower painting amazed by the translucent red layers, wondered how they were made. For me an artwork whether it's a painting or photograph or a song or a movie or an architectural object, it is good when it makes me wonder how it was created. Like there's a process of creation that is so awesome it makes me want (wish!) to also be able to do it.

Well actually this was an art exhibition I went to about one or two months ago. And while I was there what I thought of mostly was how amazing it is being a true artist cause they work solely for themselves (except some commissioned works), without clients, without rules. And all they do is to satisfy their hunger to create, to say what they want to say. And the way other people perceived their creations is another story.

si vive meglio

Jovanotti - Gente della Notte

però è molto più facile parlare con la gente,

conoscere le storie, ognuna originale,

sapere che nel mondo nessuno è normale.

Ognuno avrà qualcosa che ti potrà insegnare,

gente molto diversa di ogni colore.

now we're all the same,

we're missed by and missing someone with a name.

- Torun Eriksen

of black and white

I'm currently digging the art of black and white photos again, but processing black and white pictures for me is always harder than colors. You have to get the right contrast to make the picture works. These ones I post here are not digital though. I got two old rolls of black and white 35mm film (Lucky BW 100-another reason why I rarely shoot black and white film, I can only find one with ISO 100!) from last year that I never published. These are some frames I like. The pineapple is still my favorite, I submitted it once to a competition. Haha.

recreating reality

Why do we keep recreating the same reality? Why do we keep having the same relationships? Why do we keep getting the same jobs over and over again? In this infinite sea of potential that exist around us, how come we keep recreating the same realities? Isn't it amazing that we have options and potentials that exist, but we're unaware of them? Is it possible that we're so conditioned to our daily lives, so conditioned to the way we create our lives, that we buy the idea that we have no control at all. We've been conditioned to believe that the external world is more real than the internal world.

- from the movie about quantum physics, What the Bleep Do We Know

Speaking about jobs and reality, I once read in someone's blog a comment from a girl in Japan, she said that she doesn't fit in the nine to five job and she's still figuring out what suits her best, then she said, "Me and some friends are in the same situation. There are times that we want to quit. We call ourselves 'floating sh/t' waiting to be flushed and find our direction. Then, a friend was having problems, wanting to vanish in thin air. We told her, we're not FARTS! We're just floating sh/ts! We shall not vanish!". Kinda disgusting and corny, but I found it funny. Haha.

ps. Photo is one of my view everyday walking to my office. They look ten times cooler on midnight in the dead silence. I have couple of other shots (some with fresh fountains) but I think this one represent best what I'm writing here.

can i go now?

please?

let me fly, let me sail

Do not forsake me.

ps. 35mm film, taken today, processed today, posted today, happy. I didn't tweak the color at all, I like how they turn out originally.

losing appetite

I don't remember if I ever called in sick for four consecutive days in my whole three years of working experience. Maybe I did, I forgot. But being sick pretty much put you in a whole different dimension than what you usually are, physically, of course, and mentally. One day you woke up and found no balance to stand up on your own feet. Spent the whole day laying down sleeping, dreaming hundreds of nightmares. Reminiscing good things and bad things. You couldn't help your head filled with negative thoughts. You couldn't understand a word from the book you've always wanted to read. You lost appetite for food and when you finally gain it, you still couldn't eat or drink cause your mouth taste too bitter.

But, feeling much better now. And thought I'd post some food pictures for some happier mood.

All films. 35mm. iso400.