Strange Pulse

I’ve had a ton of freelance work, a big project with a ridiculous deadline. Been working 40+ hours last week. Hopefully it slows down this week. I’ve been jonesing to get out and take some pictures…and to clean the house! It’s turning ugly quickly.

The smoke finally cleared. My daughter thought I was weird when I noticed I could see the sky. “The sky! I can see the sky!”

And your lungs, and your hair, and your houses…and your neighborhoods.

I know, I shouldn’t complain, I’m sure it’s much worse in other areas. And I’m not really complaining, just trying to show what this is like.

I took these pictures today at noon in our apartment complex. The sky is overcast. Not with clouds. With smoke.

It looks like the sun is setting. There’s a pinkish hue to the light everywhere.

Out front, our street:

I realize these don’t look remarkable. But I’ve never seen it this dark at noon before.

The winds have died, which is really good news. I wonder how long all the smoke is just going to hang here.

I keep getting people asking me (ok, so it’s only family members) if we’re ok, if we’re anywhere near the fires. We’re fine, we’re not anywhere close to any of the fires. The closest one is Irvine, about 20-30 minutes away. For once I’m glad to be surrounded by miles and miles of concrete. The fire would have to destroy several miles of malls, housing, stores and offices before it go to us!

I used to love the Santa Ana winds. They blow in off the desert, all warm and lovely. Problem is, they suck all the moisture out of everything and make the dry desert even drier. Some spark sets off a fire and boom, the wind blows it every which way.

I haven’t been watching the news, so some of you probably know more than I do. I just know it’s super hot, and I can’t open my windows because the smoke outside will get in. And it gives me a headache.

Malmroses! Family joke.

These were taken at the San Luis Obispo Mission with my Holga. I’m still figuring out how close I need to be for the up-close focus range.

That last one is my fave. (The blue/green lines are from my scanner wigging out, not the picture.)

Daniel, Elijah and I ran over to the high school (kitty corner from our apartment complex) to drop some stuff off for Cat to take to a football game. The school is surrounded by a big gross ditch, which the kids all call the moat.

Elijah asked why their school had a moat.

I said, “To keep the kids safe from dragons.”

Daniel gave me a look that plainly said, “I am so irritated that you thought of saying that, and I didn’t.”

Elijah said, “Uh, Mom, dragons can fly.”

The gross moat:

It looks like dragons could be living in it.

Daniel said, “I can’t believe you said that. Obviously, Elijah and I are rubbing off on you. And anything that you gain, we lose.”

I was listening to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with Elijah this morning and had to tell him about how when I was a kid going to arena concerts with open floors, they’d make you sit on the floor back a ways from the stage. And you waited and waited for the lights to go out, which meant the show was starting. And it was a mad rush to the stage to try to get a front spot.

Do they still do that?

And there’s no reliable water source. Apparently, you have to abandon it, and decades later, people drive way out into the middle of nowhere to photograph it.

That’s Nathaniel.

One of two stone fireplaces.

The other one.

There were all these rusted tin cans piled in one area. I guess people camp here and leave their cans behind? Who knows.

That shadow is mine.

You’d never guess it, but it was raining back at our house this day.

I’ve been wanting to try flipping a lens because of the cool pictures my brother’s taken with a cheapo toy camera with a flipped lens. Well I picked up this cheap camera at a thriftstore and managed to flip the lens:

Lenses are concave, so when you flip them, you get a neat distorted effect around the outside of an image. I didn’t realize this camera only took panoramic shots when I picked it up. I ran a roll through it when I went out into the desert, to the Llano Socialist Colony ruins, and a field of Joshua trees.

Kind of cool, huh? That last one is two exposures that overlapped at the end of the roll.

Last weekend I bribed Nathaniel into driving up north with me, up near Victorville, to an old stretch of route 66. There’s some old abandoned buildings there. A lot of the houses along the road are in really bad repair, so it was kind of hard to tell which buildings are actually still in use. I only stopped at places I could tell for sure were abandoned. Which basically meant they were boarded up or had graffitti.

I took all of these pictures in color and then saved them out as B&W in Photoshop. Which do you think wins?

1)

I like the shade of brown. I think the B&W makes the building look older/scarier. I can’t decide. I don’t particularly think this picture is that great, to be honest.

2)

I think this is kind of a weird picture. I go back and forth between liking the color (the blue is nice) and liking the B&W. I think I prefer the feel of the B&W here though.

3)

I prefer the B&W here. I like how the tone of the sky in the top half sort of matches the tone of the ground in the bottom half, and I think your eye goes directly to the building in the B&W, whereas in color, the sky is competing. But maybe that’s just me.

4)

I think I like the color shot here, but it might be just because it’s a boring picture, but less so in color.

5)

I think shots of decay like this one are almost always better in B&W. Just imagine what’s been done on that couch…the mind reels.

6)

Color.

7)

Color. If only because the Indian figure is such a great rust color.

We also visited the ruins of an old socialist colony near Llano, and a field of Joshua Trees, but I’ll posts pics from those places later.

I’ve been carrying this thing around in my purse for ages, I kept forgetting I had it. I finally just started snapping random pictures, mostly when I was driving through Santa Ana in the car. Some of them were taken indoors, though, which was a no-no—they’re way too dark.

It’s a 110 film camera. Remember 110 film? Yeah, well it’s hard to find, and even harder to get developed. But I actually managed to pick up several rolls at my local Wal-Mart. And there’s a place in Santa Ana that develops it!

I forgot to include something in the pic for scale. The camera is about 2 inches long.

The first and second exposures overlapped:

Dropping Nathaniel off for school:

A house in Santa Ana:

Crazy storefront in Santa Ana with mirror-like windows:

Me and my shadow:

The camera lab that develops 110 film, plus my shadow:

A house I drove by:

Another drive by:

The traffic light near the mall that is close enough to touch:

Me in the mall:

Elijah in the mall:

The mall skylight:

The camera is fun because it’s so tiny. The film is too.