Spinner 360

While I was in NYC, I really wanted to make a special trip to the lomography store and buy something really amazing to bring home. I decided to buy a 360 spinner. Frustratingly, the store did not have any 35mm color film so I ended up buying black and white. Don't get me wrong, I love black and white film, but I think some of these photos would've been really amazing in color. I hand processed this film in the darkroom and my favorite photography friend Robert scanned the negatives in so that I could share them here.

Early Morning Sunrise Part 2

Sometimes the sun shines through my dining room and illuminates things in my living room. It is a golden rich light that can only be seen for a few minutes each day. Taking photos of cameras....interesting concept.

Lomography {Framed}

Today, I am in Kansas City at the Nelson Atkins museum for an art teacher conference. We are doing boring things related to common core standards, but I am always up for a visit to KC with art teacher friends. Anyway, tonight is the 3rd Thursday art walk in Joplin and unfortunately, I do not think I will make it back for much of it. However, if you are down there, stop by the Fluffy Pop shop and check out my new photo strip  frames.

I made these frames using sticks. They are perfect for photo booth strips. I had actually designed them just for photo booth photos....but then I dug out the box of contact strips from the darkroom and realized that many of the photos were the perfect size for these little frames. The photos have been hand processed in the dark room, 120 film from both Holga and Diana medium format cameras.

They are reasonably priced, so make sure you check them out and take one home!!

The fotoclipss are from Photojojo.

They look much better in person....so make sure you find the big green and yellow RV parked on main street in downtown Joplin and go inside to see them for yourself!!

Fisheye Photo Outing

Even though I stayed in bed past 11 a.m. this morning and could've laid around in my pjs all day, I managed to force myself to join up with a little photo outing this afternoon.

One of my super special Christmas presents this year was a fish eye lens attachment for my Nikon camera. It is just a cheap little attachment, but I love using those kind of lenses because they give the digital a little bit of a lomo feel. I was also shooting with my Holga and Instagram on my iPhone 4.

I am excited to see how my Holga images turn out....I'm always nervous whenever I use 100 speed film.

Below you can see some of my favorites from today's shoot with the fish eye lens.

Machinery on the farm

 As grotesque as it looks, I could not stop filming this deer skull. I even made a little stop-motion video with it....

Robert let me bring it home. It is on the mantle now....should be a great source of inspiration. (A little O'keeffe in all of us, right?)

The hip-hop-hippy on a windy day.

How many cameras does it take???

Interior, old shed

Wasp Nest Bird Cage

Jeepers Creepers, where'd you get those peepers.

Photo Collage Friday {Number thirteen}

A few weeks ago, we put together a show of sculptures and Lomography work for the 3rd Thursday art walk in Joplin. Here area few of my favorite photos from the night. It was so great getting to hang out with all of my artist friends.

Story and a photo.

Gum, black hole and dog tags......

One day a few months ago one of my students had on a necklace. It was one of those key chain dog tags and it had been personalized with his name and football number on it. It was very shiny and new. I told him it was very cool. After that, he just HAD to give it to me. I knew his mom would probably be wondering where it was eventually, so I put it somewhere safe so that when he came to me later I would be able to give it back to him. My safe spot just happened to be a special zipper pouch that I tuck into my purse where I carry my lipstick.

Today my student came to me during class wondering where ’my’ necklace was that he gave me...I told him that it was safe, in my purse. Of course, being an inquisitive 10 year-old, he wanted to see it...to make sure that it was safe. I went to my purse and unzipped the lipstick pouch...but the necklace was missing. I knew that I hadn’t taken it out of my purse so I began searching for it. I looked in the side zipper part. No, it wasn’t there either. So I started to remove a few of the bigger things, my wallet, my address book, a bottle of lotion, my checkbook, some ink pens, my gianormous set of keys, a granola bar.....

Finally, I spotted the shiny silver dog tag at the bottom of my purse....That’s right...it was buried beneath the bottomless pit of bobby pins, paper clips, buttons, earrings, pennys, rocks, scraps of paper, gum wrappers, tiny chunks of trident that have wriggled free from the wrapper, rubber bands, reciepts ...there it was....luckily I had found his necklace...but....when I rescued it from the rubble I realized that it had been slimed with some of that yucky spearmint gum...chunks of the gum had somehow goo-ed up the chain and his once-shiny namesake was now minty fresh with rubbed on gum residue. He saw the gum immediately.

He looked up at me. ’What did you do to my necklace?’ All I could do was laugh. ’I am sorry’ ’your necklace got gummed’ was all I could giggle. I went straight to the sink and got some soap as he watched me frantically trying to clean off his precious un-shiny dog tag key chain. Other students started to gather around at this point and I tried to explain that I didn’t realize it had slipped from the safe spot into the bog of junk in the bottom of my purse. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but the gum was stuck...Lime green gum.....I vowed to take it home and use some special gum remover to clean it off. "My mom’s purse wouldn’t have had yucky gum in the bottom of it" he said...."I know, but this kind of thing happens to me, I’m so sorry" I laughed, embarrassed.....

Um, yeah...my purse is not going to be a safe spot for children’s treasures ever again!!

five hot dogs heading back in space.

You might be wondering why I would post an image of some hot dogs after a silly story about dog tags and gum at the bottom of my purse.....well....recently, I participated in a photography scavenger hunt and one of the photos I had to take involved linear perspective. This photo is 'five hot dogs heading back in space'.....they aren't exactly lined up to be in 'linear perspective' and they also aren't in outer space...I wanted to create a little play on words with this title...to encourage the viewer to ask questions and think a little longer at they photo than they might normally do if they just saw a photo of hot dogs.

This is a lomography photo--taken with black and white film, fish eye lens on a Diana Camera.

Lensbaby.

Yay for snow!

Yesterday after school, I went out while the snow was still coming down and played with a fun little contraption.

I attached a lensbaby muse lens to my Nikon D5000 and wandered (freezing) around my neighborhood. The muse is designed to shoot fast and loose. Squeeze the Muse to focus, and bend your Sweet Spot around the photo.

This is the hideout of the famous Bonny and Clyde. 

Today, I am enjoying a day off school, watching movies, editing photos. I need to get motivated to make some art.

Just haven't been feeling super creative lately.

Lomography: A Ghost Town

Last weekend I planned a photo outing for my lomography-loving friends.

Question: A blogger recently asked, "What is lomography?"
Answer:  Lomography is the term for an approach to photography that emphasizes casual snapshots, sponteneity, ubiquity, randomness, and close-ups, rather than being concerned with the technicalities, aesthetics, and the conventional world of photography.

Lomography.com is an awesome online community that celebrates all forms of toy cameras, high contrast, twisted colors and noticeable vignettes. 

I recently started a club in my town for my friends and lomography-loving photograph enthusiasts. We talk about our Hogla and Diana cameras, film processing, photographers, websites, and all sorts of other photo-related things.

We set out a couple of hours before sunset at a local Ghost Town....The nearby 'former' town of Picher, Oklahoma was a center for lead and zinc mining.

It was discovered that the ground was contaminated and could possibly cave-in so the town was ordered to evacuate in 2006.

In 2008, the town was struck by a tornado. Most of the town was destroyed by the tornado.

In 2009, the school system was dissolved (enrollment had gone from 340 to 40 in 3 years).

The city is considered too toxic to  be habitable.

Read much more factual, interesting, enthralling, descriptive account of the town's conditions in an article in Wired magazine Armageddon, USA: A Tour of America's Most Toxic Town here.

I will be posting my digital photos as well. I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Below are my first roll of Holga pictures from the shoot.

This is the first roll of film that I have ever processed in the darkroom.

I actually processed two rolls of black and white film Sunday night, in the roll below, every picture turned out pretty cool.

I ruined the other roll because I wound it on the spool incorrectly and the processing chemicals weren't evenly distributed on the film creating white streaks--SO disappointing. But, at least the pictures were of Picher and not Paris...analog....its a learning thing....and the results are magical.

Here is a contact sheet from my first roll. I enlarged the Holga images below directly off the contact sheet in iPhoto...there was some dust on my scanner, and you can see little white dots on some of the pictures, I can't wait to enlarge the real images in the darkroom later!

Check back tomorrow for my digital images. There is a stark difference in the results. I think you will like the contrast.