adetorrent; photography, lifestyle.

Some more photos from the reverse alchemy roll. I remember watching these three coots play.  One of them started getting ignored by the other two, and eventually swam away.  Not long after, one of the two left also left abruptly, leaving just one in absolute solitude. I'm quite sure I am projecting human emotions unto birds, but the whole affair played out like some kind of broken friendship drama to me.  

The whole process of developing film, especially the bit where you gaze at your negatives for the first time, has been described by many as magic . Chemistry has had that effect on us for a very long time. Practitioners of a certain mystical, 'magical' tradition also dabbled in chemistry - claiming to turn simple elements to gold - Alchemy! Fast-forward to today, I think I've managed the opposite. Well, my lab did. They have somehow managed to turn a roll of Kodak Gold  to violet. I'm not sure how this happened, but you know what? I kind of like the resulting effect. After all, I do have a little inclination to lomography and their crazy cross-processing sometimes.  I have messed with some of the photos digitally by desaturating to black and white. They don't look too bad then. For now tough, I think I'll leave them purple.

I had been cured of GAS, briefly. I came across this beauty for a very affordable price and I had to have it.  The Asahi Pentax Spotmatic itself wasn't what caught my attention at first, but rather the lens mounted on it - the Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4! I couldn't believe my eyes. I assumed something must have been seriously wrong with the camera. I picked it up for a quick inspection; looked through the viewfinder expecting to see a giant fungus obstructing my view, but no, my view was crystal clear.  I then went ahead to play with different shutter/aperture combinations and sure enough, absolutely smooth on every setting. I grabbed it, parted with very little money, and jumped on my imaginary getaway horse and rode hurriedly into the sunset. After both my Prakticas broke  and the Helios lens on my Zenit-E got slightly damaged, I'd been looking for another reliable SLR.  I couldn't wait to take the Spotmatic out for a spin, so I loaded a Kodak Gold 200 film w...