Dinosaurs everywhere!

Recently there’s been a lot of interest in the dinosaur wedding invites I shared awhile back. It’s been great to see that so many people enjoy the design! I am happy to take inquiries about using the artwork for your own invitations — leave a comment and I will respond as soon as possible with details and pricing information.

In the meantime — or if you love dinos but don’t need a wedding invitation — I’ve also created some items with this graphic for Society6. You can find my shop here, and shipping is currently free worldwide (until June 7) if you visit from that link!

On Resolutions

So it seems I’ve managed not to post anything here for over a year — which is a shame, as 2014 was fairly eventful.

I’m not usually much for New Years resolutions, but early last January I did write a note on my phone: “Get fit, get married, get British citizenship; make more art, make more music”. I rediscovered the note about halfway through the year and was both pleased and surprised to realise I’d accomplished nearly all of them, to some degree. Using myfitnesspal and focusing on lower-calorie weekday dinners, I lost more than 10kg over the year from last January’s all-time high weight; my husband and I got around to planning our wedding after a year’s engagement, and married in the fall; I finally got around to applying for British citizenship, and had my citizenship ceremony in the spring. We discovered a weekly life-drawing class just around the corner, and attended regularly through the year, improving our skills bit by bit. (Music is the outlier of the list, and still needs attention, although by definition we have made more music this year compared to a previous baseline of almost none. Baby steps.)

One year of weekly life drawing; first pose on the left, last pose on the right.

My goals for the coming year are perhaps less well-defined, but I hope to post here somewhat more frequently. I’m usually dissatisfied with my writing ‘voice’ in blog posts, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from this year’s cooking and drawing, it’s that the way to improve is to keep doing the thing.

Sophie and Neal’s Leeds Town Hall wedding

Over the summer, I had the lovely opportunity to photograph the wedding of Sophie and Neal at Leeds Town Hall. My partner Roger came along as a second shooter. The ceremony took place in the Albert room, and the bride and groom looked radiantly in love as they said their vows.

Outside, the tall columns of the town hall made a great setting for portraits.

After the ceremony, we moved on to The Lounge for the reception. The candy buffet and bride-and-groom dalek cake toppers were a big hit!

Later in the day, we took advantage of the venue’s giant chairs for photos with the bridal party, who kept things fun with their expert silly posing. I loved the ladies’ vintage-style polka-dots and petticoats — especially the bride’s bright pink!

The Lounge is in a great location for receptions, being walking distance from the Town Hall and next to a scenic green garden. We moved outside for some final shots, and the weather indulged us with soft overcast light.

Sophie and Neal, thank you for inviting us to photograph your wedding day! We had a great time.

A custom dinosaur wedding invitation

And now for something a little different: here’s a recent personal design project that I’m excited about! I designed these custom dinosaur wedding invitations for my friend’s upcoming wedding.

The invitation design was a very collaborative effort with the bride. We kicked around some more generic dino ideas in early stages, but things really took off when she came up with the idea and rough sketches of the bronto-groom craning to snack on the bouquet of his adoring bride-osaurus. From there, I created the artwork and layouts for the invitation and RSVP postcards, while refining the graphics to their final form.

I loved bringing this concept to life, and can’t wait to celebrate what is sure to be a unique and fun-filled wedding!

Lomography Sunset Strip film

About a billion years ago when I last blogged, I mentioned the Sunset Strip film from Lomography. Since then I’ve had my first roll developed, so thought I’d follow up and share some results. It turned out to be more different from the Revolog films than I expected, giving a more subtle colour cast.

I’m not quite as thrilled with the results from this roll, though the subjects may be a factor; I’ve got to stop bringing film cameras to late-night parties (not pictured)! The colour shift gave a sepia-esque tone to some photos, but was almost undetectable on others. These negatives came back a very deep blue, and for whatever reason the quality of the scans was particularly poor, with a distracting amount of visible grain. I’ve run these all through Noise Ninja before posting (and I’m not sorry). Some additional shots are posted over at Lomography.

In the meantime, I also finally purchased a Diana camera from the Manchester Lomography shop, right before they sadly shut down. The first roll totally exceeded my expectations – I love it! Here are a few shots taken along our European road trip in March. More at Lomography.

Revolog results

Alas, far too much time has passed since my last post here! Much has happened in the meantime, including a holiday and a house move, but I’d like to start back up by belatedly sharing the results from my first roll of Revolog film.

Revolog are an Austrian-based company who make special-effect 35mm films. Their range includes various textures, scratches, and light effects. I was most interested in the colour-shifting films (600nm, 460nm, and Kolor), so I picked up the mixed pack. I don’t know exactly how they achieve this witchcraft, though unofficial consensus seems to be that the rolls are pre-exposed.

The first roll I shot was the 600nm, which is advertised to give either a red or blue cast depending on developing. The packaging suggest that underexposure will result in a stronger effect than overexposure, so I intentionally underexposed my shots — I’ve found I like strong colour-shifting results in other films, so didn’t want to risk negating the effect! I was very pleased with the results of my first roll. You can see the full set here.

Interestingly, not long after I ordered these, Lomography brought out their own pre-coloured film, ‘Sunset Strip’, which looks like it has a similar effect in blue/orange. I’ve just turned in my first roll of this film for development, so will be curious to see how they compare.

Weekend app challenge

While we were out in town last weekend, my boyfriend proposed a challenge: to take photos using an app other than Hipstamatic or the main iPhone camera. I accepted the challenge, then had to consider what other apps I could delve into. As a rule, I’m not big on straight camera replacement apps, and I thought it in the spirit of the challenge to use something that applied an effect either immediately or directly after shooting, rather than relying on later post editing.

My first thought was to reach back in my toolbag for the Cross Process app. It’s a bit of a classic, having been around a couple of years, and it does one thing but does it well. It has an option to turn particular colours on and off, but I usually let it randomise the settings. I still reach for this when I want to give a photo some flare but don’t have any specific editing in mind. It’s a quick way to get usually-good results, and I used this app for several shots around the Piccadilly basin area.

CrossProcess app images

The next app I tried is one I downloaded a while back, Harris Camera. My first (indoor, handheld) experiments with it were a bit disappointing, and I never got back to exploring it further. On our walk, I first tried taking some pics with this over by the Lomo wall, but the busy background and handheld shake produced less-than-stellar results. Later in the day while we were sitting with a coffee, I finally tried this with the phone on a tripod, and voila – it really made all the difference! I took several shots from this window, waiting for a tram to roll in at the right moment. The interface is a little quirky, but now that I’ve got the hang of it, I’ll definitely be using this more often.

Harris Camera, Market Street

(This shot also tied for top spot in an @igersmcr weekend challenge!)

This weekend, I’ve mostly been enjoying the new W Mag FreePak from Hipstamatic (below) – and I’ve *finally* finished off my first roll of Revolog film (600nm)! I can’t wait to see how it turns out; watch this space.

Out & about with the W Mag FreePak

Eulogy for an app

Lifeinlofi has reported that the Hipstamatic Disposable app has been removed from the app store, in what is likely to be a permanent disappearance. I have mixed feelings about the demise of this app, though its features were often overshadowed by technical issues.

Manchester snow, my family in New York state on Christmas eve, Manchester Christmas carnival – from a Disposable D-Fault roll.

On the one hand, this app had many serious flaws for me: even after initial blank-image issues were (somewhat) resolved, my friends’ photos often only came through as low-res with extreme JPEG artifacts. During my HipstaMarch project, the app managed to eat through ALL of my data plan in one weekend, even while shooting mostly on my own. There were a host of smaller glitches like lagging on invites or failing to save to the camera roll. It was problematic that the app only ever worked well over WiFi, when it was most interesting to use when out and about. I always wished it had a better system of syncing, say, only the shot counts, with something like a local cache to save the heavy data transfer for an Internet connection.

Hipstamatic Disposable BlacKeys shots around Manchester

On the other hand, the concept was unique and interesting. Early on I shot a shared roll with my sister-in-law back home in the states over Christmas, giving us a peek into each others’ celebrations, and always wanted to start more rolls with friends abroad. If it had worked better, it would’ve been great for days out with my partner and parties with friends. Unfortunately, the poor performance without WiFi actually prevented me from using it in some situations where I would’ve liked to – I thought it would be brilliant to share a roll with my siblings at a family wedding, but alas, I was abroad with no data connection, so it was a non-starter. The pay-per-use rolls were an unpleasant pricing model, and made it far more frustrating when a roll went wrong. But the Dreamy, Foxy and BlacKeys cameras offered really lovely effects, whereas the unlimited-use rolls rushed out in reaction felt a bit chintzy in comparison.

D-Fault around town

Overall, I won’t miss the app too much for day-to-day use. But it’s a shame the problems couldn’t have been better worked out to allow its unique social features to take the spotlight.

Hipstamatic Disposable ‘Dreamy’

In other Hipsta-sibling app news, an Incredibooth update this past week offered a new set of booth styles. They also appear to have snuck in the ability to flip round and use the back camera, a long-requested feature! Though it’s never among my highest-rotation camera apps, Incredibooth’s gimmick is a fun one, and my boyfriend and I often do at least one photobooth shot together when we’re travelling. The new booth styles draw from some of the recent Hipstamatic lenses, and seem quite usable for all situations. (Though I actually love the silliness of the face-recognition effects like elf ears and antlers in the Holidaze booth, they’re not great options for everyday pics!)

Old Incredibooth shot from a walk (sorry, nothing from the new booths ready to post yet!)

Manchester Instameet

This weekend the Instagramers Manchester group (@igersmcr) held its third meet-up, corresponding with an Instagram worldwide Instameet. We met up in Castlefield and walked around the area, photographing the bridges, boats and Roman forts. Castlefield is a familiar photo spot for me; it has some great views and walking around with the group brought some new perspectives. The weather veered from brief downpours to bright sunshine, but mostly held off for a pleasant day. There were some other events going on in the area and we spotted some dancers warming up in the rain, a seashell-poetry art installation and an outdoor violin performance.

Pictures from our most recent Instameet

My partner @poodog and I have attended two previous IGers Manchester walks this year. On the first, we met in the centre of town and took in a large loop of city landmarks. The group got split up a bit when the route was interrupted mid-way by a parade coming through!

Pictures from the first Instameet. Center parade photo by @poodog.

The next meetup took us around Ancoats for some interesting industrial scenes. The rain didn’t let up that day, but I enjoyed peeking into old mills and finding things to photograph in an area of town I don’t often see.

Pictures from the Ancoats Instameet

At the end of the walk there’s always a stop for drinks, while everyone starts editing and posting their pics from the day. It’s one of the rare social occasions when it seems acceptable for everyone to stare at their phones! The Instameets are a fun way to get out in the city and enjoy a shared interest, and always a nice group of people. I look forward to future events!

Instagrammers instagramming! from the first Manchester meet

For more pics of the most recent walk, check out the #mcr_walk_03 tag on Instagram. Previous walks are under #mcr_walk_01 and #mcr_walk_02. The Instagramers Manchester group can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

All photos above by @mactire except where noted.

Brownie daydreams and my first roll of 120 film

I first had Brownies on the brain in the wake of Kodak’s unfortunate recent bankruptcy announcement. I grew up near Kodak headquarters in Rochester, NY, and always enjoyed the displays of old camera models in the Eastman House’s galleries, from gorgeous art deco enamels to primary-color plastics. Friends and I speculated on how more could’ve been done to leverage Kodak’s nostalgia value to appeal to niche markets and hipsters. I dreamt of a Brownie brand revival, apps emulating classic film stocks, Beau Brownie iPhone cases. (I even channeled this enthusiasm into a Spoonflower fabric). Browsing through Brownie fan sites online, I wondered about obtaining one of my own; but reading about technical details and respooling film, I initially thought that getting a model in functional order would be too arcane an effort.

The idea next came to my attention after a visit to the newly-opened Lomography gallery in Manchester. I started pining for some lo-fi medium format film goodness. The Dianas were tempting, but I waffled over the cost. My thoughts again drifted to the old box Brownies.

Enter the Real Camera Co, a few blocks away from the Lomography shop in Manchester. I noticed their box camera selection along the top of a shelf on one visit, and was amazed to find out how reasonably-priced they were. Though all the available Brownies took 620 spools, they had other box camera styles that used regular 120 film, no respooling required. I was convinced! I resisted the urge to take them all, and chose an Ensign Ful-Vue, a British make of box camera. According to online sources, this boxy style dates to the early 1940s.

The camera got its first try out on a Jubilee week roadtrip we took through the south of England. It was wheeled out for tourist shots of Hever Castle, Stonehenge, Durdle Door and Glastonbury Tor. The point-and-shoot mechanism couldn’t be simpler, but there was a tiny thrill in first seeing the reflected image come into focus through the viewfinder. When we returned, I turned in the first finished roll for processing, and spent the wait time worrying about whether anything would come out at all. Had I loaded the film correctly? Would everything be a frightful blur? Were there major light leaks going undetected after all this time?

Happily, there was nothing to worry about – nearly all our bright outdoor shots turned out well (although indoor shots were, somewhat predictably, a lost cause). Now that I’ve seen how these rolls turned out, I’m looking forward to trying out other films with it, in higher ISOs and colour. And though I’m enamoured of the Ensign, I won’t stop keeping an eye out for a Beau Brownie No. 2 to call my own.

A note on processing: Negatives were scanned by the developing lab. They have had post-processing adjustments in Photoshop. Digital edits have not altered the content or character of the images beyond what could reasonably be achieved by darkroom processing.