Archive for April 22nd, 2008

22 Apr 2008 Speaking of Odd Symbols
 |  Category: Culture + Society, cameraphone  | 2 Comments

I present to you Exhibit B, taken with my crappy cameraphone in the parking lot of Sobey’s (grocery store) — much to the puzzlement of other shoppers.

a stork? come on

A stork? Come on. Not only am I sceptical that this is a truly universal symbol of maternity (the stork reference is firmly rooted in Western popular culture; Toronto is more cosmopolitan than that), but this is a parking lot. The bird appears to be happily making off with my groceries!

22 Apr 2008 Royal Botanical Gardens, on film
 |  Category: film photography  | Leave a Comment

standout

I picked up my roll of film tonight of the photos I shot with the Pentax K-1000 on Saturday. They turned out so-so, which means I should either switch the type of film I use, the lab, or both. I’m super-cheap so I buy cheap stock and get $2.99 processing (straight to CD, no prints) at Shoppers Drug Mart. There’s always lots of dust on the negatives when they scan them even when I tell the person working in the film lab to watch for dust. I spend time cloning out the dust in Photoshop later, but I don’t really complain because for $2.99 I must lower my expectations.

I figure if I get a few decent shots per roll it’s worth it. I can pay more for better quality results, but imperfection in film is actually a pro rather than a con in many instances. Despite digital’s dominance in the field of photography, I hope analogue sticks around for a long, long time because it has a character that no amount of pixels and digital manipulation can match.

If you like Polaroids, there’s an interesting site devoted to the instamatic: http://www.polanoid.net/

Anyway, without further ado, some of those film shots I mentioned:

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