Back for More Gabs

I flew back to Gaborone, Botswana over the last 26 hours. There was a little bit of rough weather, but that was it. I got to spend 2.5 hours in the International Transfers area in Johannesburg, South Africa. That is one dark, dingy place. Here's a picture on the right. It really does seem that dark -- that's not just photographic license.

After escaping from the transfer area, I went and grabbed a sandwich at a restaurant overlooking the puddle-jumper gates. The second picture has the view.

And, finally, the last picture is of my modern gate.

Now I'm safely at my hotel, the Gaborone Sun. I'm glad I'm here and I can't wait to go home!

A Golden Gate

I stopped by the bridge today at sunset for a few photos. There weren't any clouds, but it was still pretty nice. Check it out:

Classic View from a Classic Camera

One of Lori's friends has a custom dining room lamp with a silver spoon shade. Basically, it is a wooden lamp structure about 2.5 feet long with silver spoons hanging around the lights. They had the light custom made in France, so it probably cost more than my truck is worth.

Anyway, we thought the lamp was interesting and would be pretty easy to make. Of course, we didn't want to just copy the idea, so we came up with our own idea that was a bit more personalized: We thought it would be cool to create a shade that uses photographic slides from our own travels.

This poses some problems for us in the digital age. First, we didn't have a film camera. Second, we thought that 35mm slides would be too small. After a little looking around, I found that twin lens reflex (TLR), medium format cameras are pretty cheap on ebay. I picked up a Mamiya C33 with three lenses for $150.

The camera is about 45 years old, but it is in excellent condition. It makes slides that are 2.25" x 2.25", which is actually large enough to see the images from a few feet away. My thought was that we would take a bunch of pictures and then I would re-sell the camera.

Going back to film with a fully manual camera (it doesn't even have a battery or on/off switch), was a big change. No more chimping your shots to see if they turned out the way you hoped. Nope, now I have to actually think about everything from focus to film speed to exposure before I push the button. It's a much slower, more thoughtful approach; and it got me hooked on film again. Film has other interesting quirks too, like developing and scanning the film. (In this modern age, I can't see actually printing photos using an enlarger. Just scan and print etc.)

So, the picture above was taken at 12,000 feet at Kite Lake in Colorado this past August. You can see it was cold, windy, and stormy. The next day it snowed on Pikes Peak, so I'm sure it snowed here too. Very beautiful isn't it? Not to mention the cute models...