Saturday, December 20, 2008

Caustic Paste

About a month and a half ago I found a great deal on craig's list. $4 for 4 packs of polaroid 600. So after a small adventure, I pay $4 in mostly quarters to an old guy while his somewhat anxious wife observed. Jump ahead a month and a half and I only have one pack left, the oldest looking pack of them all! There was a two pack box from K-mart that had some ridiculously low 80's price tag on it, I think it was about $18, FOR TWO PACKS! anyway this last pack seemed to be one of those.

So I load the pack up, and setup my shot, spend a minute focusing, getting the shot just right, put the filter on and press the shiny red shutter release button. The shutter opened, but nothing else changed, no glorious pop of the mirror or squeeky grind of the gears rolling my photo out, what the hell. I knew it had to be that the batteries had gone bad, I also knew what had to be done.

I moved into the bathroom, bringing with me a old empty plastic film cartridge, my camera, the top slip, and a crappy polaroid photo. In the total darkness I take the 80's dead battery pack out and feel my way around it until I can slip out the first photo. The photo glides out easier than I'd imagined. Next I had to fanaggle the photos one by one into the new cartridge back through the same slot I was pulling them out of the other cartridge. Thankfully these cartridges are flimsy cheap plastic and you can easily bend them. After a few monotonous minutes putting each of the 10 shots into the new cartridge I put the top slip in over them. Then felt around and found the camera, put the crappy polaroid photo in the camera so that I could fit the 600 film into the sx-70. For some reason when I'd put the cartridge in, three or four shots and the top slip would be forced through the small front slot of the cartridge, not allowing it to be fully inserted. After a few tries I secured the shot's into the cartridge and pushed them down into place.

It worked, all the normal photo taking sounds occurred and the top slip came out... Followed by half of the first photo, shit. I pulled the photo the rest of the way out. The chemical pod had ruptured and spread it's demon seed all over the innards of my camera. There was blueish purple caustic chemical paste all over my fingers. I was still pumped that I had saved 9 of my 1980's cartridge shots so I went and took a few more photos. All of the photos had random portions of the chemicals scattered all over them like butter on toast. You could tell the film was expired, it lacked definition and was yellow brown, consisting of mostly mid-tones.

That's when it hit me, like someone had touched my right eye with the tentacle of a jellyfish or bee stinger. I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, there was what appeared to be a bluish purple slug on my right eye lid. I immediately wiped it off with my finger followed by alot of water.

I get polaroid goo on my hands all the time, but this is the first time it had ever brought me physical pain. I got my chat on with Erick and told him about the ordeal. He sounded worried and started copy and pasting things about the caustic lye chemicals in 600 film chemical pods and their warnings, you know deep chemical burns and blindness. Tight. That's when I got super paranoid and washed my eye and skin around it like 50 times wondering if I'd go blind. 24 hours later my eye still stings, and I have a little sore burn like thing on my eyelid. It looks sorta like someone dug their grimey pinky nail into my skin and it got infected. I mean what's the worse that could happen?

So yeah, that photo above is the photo that got the chemical all over. It sort of reminds me of Pimento loaf, out of focus and growing mold.

So kids and dudes, let this be a lesson to you and your friends. If you get polaroid chemicals on your hands, for the love of sweet baby jesus(btw happy birthday player) DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE GET THAT SHIT IN YOUR EYES! Holy god, you will regret it for days to come. my eyeball feels like a cactus in my eye socket.

the end.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Halloween 2008


This halloween Nancey and I went as Andy Warhol and a giant tomato soup can.
My initial Idea was to buy some hula hoops and some canvas and construct a tube suit. For some reason Toys R' Us discontinued hula hoops, WEAK. What's up with that? Next stop was halloween express to find nancey a wig and some makeup. As many of you may know, most halloween expresses are fucking huge, so was this one. While wandering around overwhelmed and drooling I came across a Beer Can Costume for $40. At first $40 seemed like a ridiculous amount for a foam can suit. The more I thought about it $40 didn't seem so bad considering how much construction time it would save me. My eye was on the real prize, painting the label. It also didn't help that it was payday and I had an excess of cash. So I bought it. Next stop, Wal-mart. I know, I know it's satanic and evil, however it's sort of interesting shopping at Wal-mart, atleast in the midwest. You see the most unique, weird plethora of the human race. Anyway, I picked up a few yards of canvas, a quart of red rustoleum gloss paint, and various cheap paint brushes. Using the oil based rustoleum paints was sort of fun because they took awhile to dry, so if you made a mistake you were stuck with it and would have to wait until the next session to touch it up. This really made me think things out before I jumped in. After filling in the solid red and white color fields and the metallic gold seal circle I pinned the label up on a blank portion of wall.

campbells soup label


I printed a few reference cans at work and did a rough layout with a pencil. Was sort of tricky since I was painting flat words based on a photo of the words on a round can. Didn't worry about it too much (obviously, look how jacked up my TOMATO type looks hahahaha). I had alot of problems with drips but in the end went back and chopped them all off. The final task was to sew the label on the beer can. This ended up being a HUGE pain in the ass. I had to sew it by hand obviously and there were some parts in the foam that were really tough to get the needle through. At one point i was using an altoids tin to push the needle through, leaving deep dents on it. Sewing only took a little over an hour but it seemed like forever. Got alot of positivity wandering around on Halloween. The party we went to was sort of weak but then we hit this club by our apartment and danced a little, there was a really tall gay dude dressed as michael phelps dominating the dance floor, that was pretty awesome. Erick was Ziggy Stardust that was also pretty awesome. Oh speaking of the weak party, Dave showed up with his crew. Armahn pulled off lil wayne. Thanks for the Bob Dole Tape. That's about it for halloween.

Creating this costume really got my hand painted juices flowing. I have alot of type paintings in the works and plan on doing some posts about them, so keep your eye out. I promise it won't be another few months hahaahahaha.

Friday, October 17, 2008

sandwiches, photographs and videos...


tea sandwiches
Originally uploaded by nanceypantalones

During my school break i decided to finally try a recipe i've been dying to do. it also helped that we finally went grocery shopping for the first time in 2 months. (it was exciting!).
i got this recipe from padma's cook book. i believe her recipe uses goat cheese instead of cream cheese and also has honey, but i like it better without.
it's basically a piece of toasted bread. a layer of cream cheese with chopped dill, then a layer of thinly sliced cucumber (i didnt peel) and then an uber thin slice of cheese (your choice, i put this manchego i got at whole foods). topped with some finely chopped dill and pomegranate. after stacking everything you cut the brown edges off and cut into two triangles... so cute!
drink it with some apple+pomegranate+lemongrass tea while listening to asobi seksu and it is heaven. seriously.i wouldnt lie about that.

a fews weeks ago i was introduced to aura photographs. im intrigued... or maybe just attracted to anderson cooper.

if you have not watched the epicness that is doglover199709, im afraid you have not lived. enjoy. and watch out for 1:50, where she shows of her bare foot. EPIC!

while on the subject of videos. i think its safe to say Ryan Lochte (some dude who looks like this guy i met last tuesday called Bryan Hochte) is the best thing to happen to the internet. see for yourself.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

4x5 polaroids


sunset fawn
Originally uploaded by jeremyhead
It's been awhile...
So over this weekend Nancey checked the large format camera out of MIAD. We sort of forgot that we had bought alot of 4x5 polaroid film off of Amazon. Back when we first got the sx-70 I created a little scene using random things I had laying around the living room and photographed it.

fantasy landscape

I remembered how fun it was setting up this little surreal scene and I wanted to give it another go with the large format camera. It was sort of spur of the moment and the ideas all sort of built off the plastic deer. A few weeks ago I found a posters sized sky photo in the garbage on my lunchbreak walk. I used this for the background, then by luck found that deer photo in a drawer in the office.

At first I was going to try and find some green colored fabrics and cut out large colorfields for shrubs and plants but decided to keep it quick and simple by using my green sweat shirt. Next came the out of focus shrubbery. In the same drawer as the deer photo I found some transparency film so I smeared some black and green acrylic paint on it. Since Nancey is actually a photographer, she set the camera up and took a BnW test shot. After that I added a sun on the horizon and double checked the framing.

What does this all mean? Large format cameras are tons of fun and you to get very precise control over your photos at higher levels of detail. Yes, they are bulky and slower to operate than most cameras. BUT it's a great reminder that you pre-planning your shots and taking your time can really pay off with some beautiful photos. Something you forget when you have a digital camera and don't have to pay for each of your 200 photos. I hope to do some more little scenes in the near future, just need to come up with some themes in the mean time.

Monday, February 25, 2008

photos.fashion.obsessions


breakfast
Originally uploaded by nanceypantalones

some days it seems like my passion for food is too overpowering of my time. i still dont know if it is something bad or good.
my relationship with photography is still a love/hate. sometimes i love it so much its all i think of, and some other times i feel like i should be doing something far more productive with my life rather than sitting in a room and discussing the colour of a girls shirt damaging a photograph. it seems ridiculous. i think most of my hate comes from my hate towards school. as of right now im in love. im in love with being able to capture what i see in my head. i am in love with being able to create my art and i love the direction its taking. overall i think i am pretty happy with how things are going.
on a more serious note(ha!): i am never ashamed of my love for the giant that is brangelina. and how exciting is it that she is pregnant again!? if i were ever to get my dream present it would have to be the W magazine in which they did a 60 page spread on them.

magazineonebay
its about 60$ on ebay and you know whats coming up? my anniversary with the boyfriend (;))
a while ago i got ridiculously into runway fashion shows. well today i finally got to see the only runway i am ever excited to see every season: Burberry Prorsum. just how fucking sexy adorable is this coat? and by the way who is super excited about their new parfum (the beat) coming out in march? i know i am!


i feel like this was a whole lot of nothing. sorry =\ maybe next time i will update something more worth reading.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Polaroid 330


ed
Originally uploaded by jeremyhead
So my dad found a Polaroid 330 for me. The battery was dead so I had to rig it up with two AA batteries. The 330 takes standard polaroid packfilms 669, 667 etc which were still being made up until like a week ago. I've been messing around with it and haven't really mastered it yet. So far most of my images have been too dark. Above is the photo I took of my grandpa on his tractor while up north last weekend. Turned out sort of blue even though I developed it inside where it should have been warm enough. Weird. I might try modifying it to use an external flash. thanks to erick for the flash link. For more of my 330 experiments check my polaroid set on flickr

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

4 things i am currently obsessed with


1. POLAROIDS
a while ago me and my boyfriend became obsessed with polaroid. our polaroid wall has about 200 type 600 film polaroids. and about two months ago we even more obsessed with buying different polaroid cameras rather than the normal oneStep.
(SX-70)
this has to be my favorite camera ever. everyone and their moms and dogs talks about this camera but i cant talk about polaroid and not mention this one. it took a while to get used to the exposure settings but once you get to know the camera it can practically do anything you want it too. if i could only have one camera it would definately be this one.

*ebay has a lot of reasonably priced ones

2. CUPS
i got into (tea)cups this winter while being back home.
the big chunky ones are great for hot cocoa topped with tiny marshmallows, girly movie and fluffly blankets. as of right now i am in love with the more tiny, delicate ones that are perfect for tea (green tea +pomegranate being my favourite).
anthropologie.com has some incredibly amazing teacups. their monogrammed missus cups are my obsession.


3. NECKLACES
long simple and bold necklaces are the only necklaces anyone should ever have to wear. you can wear as many or as little as you want and it still looks incredible. urbanoutfitters has some very nice pieces like that envelope i love you one, but forever21 and h&m have cheaper cute ones.




4. KASABIAN
english quartet kasabian is probably one of the best bands from the british rock ish type of music that is going on right now. i first heard of them while watching green street hooligans and fell in love. their Empire album touches more on the subject of war which is something i dont really tend to be into but the music is awesome, the lyrics are catchy, and the videos amazing. i cannot recommend this band enough, even though everyone already knows/loves them.