Tony 0001

Tony 0001
Originally uploaded by slightly-less-random.

There are three parts to this blog entry.

First, this is very strange time for me to be blogging. 2am used to find me fast asleep, since I have relied on a kind of depressant drug to put me to sleep for quite some time. The problems with this drug are several; at the very least, it impairs memory and sharpness, and it reduces motivation. I've stopped using that drug, for better or worse, and must find healthier ways of satisfying the needs that caused me to become so attached to it in the first place. I also quit smoking cigarettes at the same time. Both compounds change how you sleep and thus, both change how you sleep while you recover from their use. I should expect this to last for 2 weeks or so, by which time I'll have replaced my kettle and started making regular use of night-time teas.

On to part two. This photograph is the first out of a camera that a friend of mine turned me on to. Kellogg's air-dropped these cameras into our supermarkets last year, and they are now turning up all over the place.

These cameras have some interesting capabilities; they require no batteries, they were mass produced by a company aiming to protect its brand, and it appears to be designed by a camera designer that knows how to make small, durable, plastic cameras. The cameras are extremely simple and so I can understand everything happening inside of it. Perhaps the best part of all is the brand being protected are a collection of characters we all know. They have a kind of fundamental appeal that has been honed for decades, and I for one am fully willing to make use of these characters. To put it bluntly, they are disarming.

As I develop my photographic eye, it becomes more important to learn the deep connections between abstract concepts such as lighting and concrete concepts such as shutter speed. I believe that by working with very limited cameras such as these, I can better appreciate a scene's lighting and that light's effect on film. This is pretty fundamental stuff.

It is kind of thrilling to also know that I could translate this knowledge to my main shooter, the Contax, which has a 1/50th all-manual shutter that one can choose to use instead of the electronic shutter. Very handy, as the Contax tends to kill batteries prematurely.

Finally, the third part. This photograph shows one of my work spaces, a table for working with small machines along with some of the tools you might expect. The tools were being used on another camera, which was responsible for the creation of the workspace in the first place. A work space says a lot about a person, and I'd like to see more work spaces!