Sun Soaked
We got into our bathing suits early Saturday morning and didn't get out of the pool until Monday night. We only ate slow cooked Bar BQ ribs and drank sweet tea like it was our job. We napped when the children napped. We watched the sun go to bed into the lake and turn the wind rippled surface into a light show of golden sparks. We stayed up late watching movies with Tessa and eating popcorn. We did every thing you're supposed to do to welcome summer, except we didn't plug a watermelon with an entire bottle of vodka, and then grease it up with vaseline, and throw it in the pool and wrestle over it to see who gets to drink from it first. We didn't do that. We did eat our weight in melon and strawberries, and remembered to have some ice cream for dessert. I still smell like chlorine and sunblock and will spend the rest of this weekend willing the calendar and clocks to speed along so that we can get to the weekend, and do the exact same thing all over again.
Every time I look through that Polaroid of mine to take a picture, all I can think of when I am framing a shot, is "I'm so lucky." That camera is magic, and if it was practical I wouldn't use anything else to shoot with. All I had left was B&W film and was bummed that it wouldn't tell the part of the story about the golden sun, and the cool water, and boy was I wrong. I am going to move some things around, and get myself into a film camera to be companion to that 600SE. We will see how long it takes me to find the right camera. The digital rage happened so fast, I bet there are so many amazing film cameras stashed away in attics and forgotten about. Get these things up on ebay so I can find them :) For any of you still shooting film, what are using?
Hope you all had as pleasant of a weekend as I just experienced, how is floating around on a raft in a pool so much fun? Are we officially old fogies now? Cole and I didn't even drink anything, or grind on one another poolside to Usher! Do the kids still listen to The Usher? I don't know anything anymore.
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38 comments:
Love it! I'm wanting to start shooting with a hasselbkad again. Noting gets as clear and sharp, it has it's own distinctive look. I miss it, maybe I will use one for a wedding this weekend...
So jealous. I'm over here in Germany soaking in the light showers of rain. Oh well, summer will be here soon enough and with no A/C to run into it's gonna be a hot one!! You are one lucky dude! haha
Love your blog and your amazing little family.
Ahh how lovely... I can feel all your happiness in the photos and words. Who cares if your old fogies your happy... it is beautiful. I love to see and read it. It spreads good things all through the world.
Thanks for sharing. ;)
at least you swam in someone's pool monday.
These are some of my most favorite images of your family yet! Wonderful. :)
Oh I'm so jealous! No real pools around Chicago except city pools that are much too packed for us to ever look as relaxed as Cole does in that pic! Glad you guys had a fabulous weekend! :)
Love the pictures, and I'd take regular watermelon over the vodka soaked kind any day!
You didn't plug a watermelon with vodka because my kid ate all of it before we had the chance.
Next time though....
No worries, there's a kid I volunteer with at the hospital that loves Usher. Or "Us-O" as it sounds like in his six year old dialect.
love the black and white film. it forces you to make use of shadow and light rather than just using plain color. glad you had such a superfun weekend, sans grinding and drinking.
xo
sami
though recently I shoot much more digital than film, when I do shoot film I use my Canon Elan II, a trooper that served me faithfully through all my college photo courses & is now 11 years old. I'm also angling for my dad to give me his Olympus that I learned to shoot on--I LOVE its split-screen (manual-only) focus mechanism--but thus far he still refuses to part with it. He did give me his Zeiss Contina though, so I've been thinking about playing around with it, but it's so old that its focusing mechanism is different from more modern cameras.
Cole looks like a movie star in that pic.
I'm no photographer, but I've loved pulling out my mom's old Polaroid 600. I just got some film from the Impossible Project, and it's been a lot of fun to play with.
I have an old minolta and a cannon Jed's dad gave me. Time to fiddle with them some more. If I could only grow another set of hands...
I have yet to make the jump to digital. I can't get over the excitement of digging a camera out of a bin at a garage sale and running home to shoot. I develop b&w in my basement, its better than christmas pulling the finished film out of the canister. My old stand by is a Canon AE-1, new favorite is an Exakta VX, I also have been playing around with a Kiev 60 and a little Russian toy camera that is super light weight and reliable.
I use a canon A-1 that I looooove. I have a handful of other film cameras but I have used them once or twice each - they aren't as user-friendly or reliable. If you buy one from eBay make sure the seller has a guarantee policy! I got a camera at a yard sale once and the guy swore it worked. Luckily it was only $15 because the shutter locks after every handful of shots and two exposures are wasted! And film ain't cheap!
I usually use my FM2 which I love to pieces, and for bringing it everywhere the Rollei 35t, great quality, and super small :)
Aaaahhh...this is the weekend I was dreaming of. You make it sound so good! Only, there's no pool here, just an icy lake. And our baby met the sun (and sunscreen) for the first time and was confused how he was supposed to nurse when both of us were sweating. It was a hard adjustment to the summer that is only now peeping its head out.
Grinding! haha! The Usher is no longer. Now the kiddies have the Bieber fever.
Cole is such a hottie. I want to wear a little bikini top and have some lovely legs.
I haven't been playing around with film (although I should) but I HAVE rediscovered my love for point and shoots. My husband bout me a Lumix DMC ( the waterproof, shockproof one) that I have used and abused all Spring....It has made me rediscover spontaneity in pictures.
Welcome summer! You should get a hasselblad, there's something magical that happens with that camera. Square format, the winding of the film, it is heaven.
Ha! "The Usher", too funny. The other day we were with our 9 year old nephew and he played that Justin Bieber song with Ludacris in it and I was all, "What the hell, this is Ludacris on a Justin Bieber song?!" and he responded, "You know who Ludacris is!!??" with a look of shock on his face. Damn, I'm only 27 and he already thinks I'm an old fart.
I have a Nikon FG and a Mamiya C220 twin lens. The Mamiya is my favorite, although I have small hands, so my photos come out slightly crooked sometimes because it's slightly unwieldy for me :) But I love the waist-level finder, and the photos I can take with it.
I just got a Mamiya 645 Pro body, and I'm looking for a lens and viewfinder so I can start shooting :)
Can't help aking if Cole's swim suit top is a vintage find or new? It's lovely!
Wow. That picture of Cole is the kind of picture you wish someone would capture of you (if that makes sense?). It's really quite lovely. And Tessa is adorable as always. I wish I had a better camera. I'm going out to take pictures of my favorite spots in Tucson tomorrow and hoping they come out quasi-decent with my lame Sony P&S.
@Michelle- That is a new suit. It's from The Gap
My friend Shawn is a great photographer and is really into shooting film. You might find some good info on his site shawnhoke.com (esp in the blog section, he has tips on developing your own film, etc.). Also, I want to see more of Cole's bathing suit, it looks so cute!
Lovely photos!
I use a Canon AE-1. Solid, reliable little thing. Definitely check them out!
Mamiya's are GREAT Ryan, but they are medium format. I personally love to shoot large format, but that isn't practical outside a studio.
i was using this perfect old 35mm nikon that was my best friends dad's when he was real young so it is pretty darn classy. for some reason though, the shutter speed decided to stop functioning. i was heart broken. i got a 35mm film camera from the 80s off ebay for $25 but its just not as nice and i haven't bought film for it yet. i have a polaroid too but no film which is always sad.
oh your photos are lovely as always btw. i just caught up on all your posts, i loved the sexy preggo one. it was just too funny. i sincerely hope you can bring another bundle of joy into life soon.
oh my lord, a litte afraid to finally come out and admit that you are for sure my online crush. my husband is well aware. ha! CHEERS!.. to vodka free watermelons...;)
My favorite film camera is the Contax 645 but they are completey impractical because they are way too expensive and there are no parts available to fix them if they break. (I learned the hard way). My second favorite is a 35mm and it's the Canon F1. It's my favorite of all our film cameras (other than the Contax) because it's just so easy and portable and I love the look that comes from it. You can come see it and play if you want. But we've got about 20 old film cameras including a Hasselblad 500c (Nate's favorite) a twin lens, a few 35mm's, a mimiya rz67, and some others. You're more than welcome to come play around.
I LOVE my Canon AE-1! It's easy to use and it takes really lovely shots.
Sounds So Nice! Erin flew me out to LA because she had four days off, and now she has an amazing job she can do things like that. I was here for a week. Saw all of my good friends and had a blast. I leave tonight on the red eye back to JFK.
I will talk to you soon. My book is done and it's 23 pages long, yea dog. Things are happening so fast, I might not even need it. But had to go through the process to get here.
Miss you guys, you are very lucky! very Lucky. but we create our own luck. so good job buddy.
Cole is so beautiful!
Love these shots. Your photos are always an inspiration for me. I'm eager to dust off my Canon film camera again too (just a 50E but I love it).
My film camera is a Canon Rebel...I love love love that camera. But I retired it in favor of my digital Canon. The cost of film and developing would have bankrupt me by now. I'm a bit spastic when I take pics.....I'm more likely to take 10 shots of the very same thing so I can pick the best one later. Can't do that with film. For our family reunion last summer, I blew through 1800 pictures. Managed to edit down to roughly 900. I don't even want to THINK how much that would have cost in film!
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