Diana F – Surfer Lanikai
Surfer Lanikai, O'ahu. Vintage Diana F, Ektar 100.
Lanikai Beach, on O’ahu’s windward coast, is a place that existed in my imagination well before I ever knew it actually existed.
It has a beauty that makes any words used to describe it feel brutish & hackneyed in comparison:
– Water that openly defies Crayola with an ever shifting palette of blues and greens not found even in the big box of crayons.
– Sand so soft you could use it as cake flour.
– The sun in the sky so inviting, that you lay back and close your eyes to let the warmth embrace you; yet still feel compelled to open them every couple of seconds to reassure yourself it’s not a dream.
– Two picturesque off-shore islands that so perfectly compliment everything you see around you, you’ll find faith in a higher power, because shit like this doesn’t just happen… this… this is Intelligent Design.
– It inspires hyperbole so thick… uhmmm… you could eat it with a spoon…?
Yeah, sorry about that… got a little carried away there, I suppose.
Ok, ok, one more:
– The ocean, so serene, gently lapping against the subtle sloping shore, that despite being in Hawaii, you nearly wonder aloud “what the hell is that surfer doing here?”
BHF – A couple more from Hawaii
Palm Fronds, O'ahu, fBHF on expired Ektachrome (1990).
As I twittered (tweeted, twooted, twinkled, twunctated or twhat-have-you) yesterday, I’ve finally finished scanning all the 120 rolls from my December trip to O’ahu; now I face the Herculean task of processing the rough scans into pretty pictures. At first glance, there are several frames that have caught my eye that I can’t wait to return to later.
The fact I at least finished scanning two consecutive projects (HolgaHike & O’ahu 2009) is progress, in more than the immediate literal sense. I should try to explain.
I’ve been loosely following The Art of Waiting project. The concept, as best I understand it, is that several photographers go out & contemplate ‘waiting’ in their work; then, they themselves (and the audience), have to wait until next year to see the fruit of their labors. I said “loosely” following, mostly because their concept hit a little too close to home: part of what they’re doing as art, I’ve been doing for years out of sheer procrastination.
I have a backlog of twenty-some-odd rolls of 120, some dating back to 2007 and most before I started labeling my rolls with location/camera/date information. So I have a shoe-box’s worth of my mysterious past awaiting to be discovered. Perhaps, instead of feeling traces of guilt about neglecting the past, I should mentally justify my procrastination as ‘art.’
If my negligence was on purpose, then what I’m really doing is just ‘aging’ those rolls, like one would with a fine wine or cheese, to be appreciated at some later date with pinkies out.
Or not.
So the fact that I’m close to completing a project or two, means I can start another with a clearer conscience, which is progress.
Waikiki Morning, O'ahu. fBHF on expired Ektachrome (1990).
Anywho, here is some more recent Hawaiian ‘wine,’ fresh from the box (camera).
The wife & I were strolling along Waikiki beach (as one is wont to do in Waikiki) in the morning on the way back to the hotel from a sunrise breakfast at Duke’s (great view, good coffee, terrible eggs Benedict). The beach itself was still mostly abandoned due to the early hour, so it felt like we had the entire shore to ourselves, which, in & of itself, is a somewhat rare thing in Waikiki.
It was serene.
An amusing aside about Duke’s: our relatively youthful waiter noticed my BHF sitting on the table as he took our drink order; first he asked what it was and then inquired how many mega-pixels it had….
See more:
Gallery: fBHF – O’ahu 2009
Sometimes the magic gives you toads
'Wading into the Light.' Waikiki beach, Hawaii. Vintage Diana F, Kodak Ektar 100, PS.
Somewhere along the way, my vintage Diana F developed a dastardly light leak in the upper left-hand side of the frame (lower-right image).
As opposed to a beneficial or relatively benign light leak, I’d say this one ruined several rolls of film from Hawaii, except ‘ruined’ is such an ugly word.
How about I just say it ‘challenged’ the composition of several of my shots?
When dealing with crappy cameras, you learn to expect the unexpected. Sometimes the magic gives you unicorns riding motorcycles; other times it gives you toads.
Mind you, they’re still magical toads, so with some effort you still might be able to finagle it into a Princess; but then again, sometimes all you end up with are warts.
The above image is my attempt at saving a princess from an eternity of toad-dom. It’s definitely not the image I had conceived when I shot it, but I think it works. The mirrored symmetry of the new composition balances out the unevenness of the original.
So the good news is that it only took me the better part of fifteen minutes today to diagnose the leak in the Diana F (around where the viewfinder & the flash contacts meet) & plug it with ‘fun-tack’ (you know, that ubiquitous sticky putty adhering beer posters to walls in dorm rooms all across our nation’s colleges & universities).
The bad news is I still have a whole bunch of amphibians waiting for their turn to be kissed.