I know I’m sporadic in my posting anyway, but I have a genuine reason at the moment. I’m down to the final three weeks before I have to hand in my MRes dissertation. Yeah, so I’m posting this instead of writing it, but it could be worse – I could be scanning negatives or cloning away dust.
So unless I have a complete meltdown between now and the 17th of September, there will be nothing to see here. I will likely be doing the majority of my procrastination over at twitter, if you find you’re suffering from separation anxiety.
I really love the hipstamatic iphone app, especially the new 150 version with extra flash and film types. My (current) favourite combo is the Helga Viking lens, Ina’s 1969 film and Dreampop flash. I’ve noticed different combos look better in different conditions, but I always forget which is best when, so I tend to stick to the above combo now – it’s a pretty good all-rounder.
One niggle about hipstamatic though: while they’ve added a great new feature that lets you select a picture you like and apply whatever combo you used for it to the camera ready for the next shot, they’ve seemingly neglected the atrociously lengthy loading times. It takes an age for the app to warm up when you first open it, and then when you’ve taken the photo it takes what seems like a lifetime for the picture to ‘develop’ and the camera be ready to take the next. This, sadly, makes hipstamatic a bit useless for those sneaky, on-the-go pictures, or for anything more fast-paced than the most leisurely of strolls in a place where nothing ever happens.
I used to be prissy about keeping my blog and flickr stream free of ‘crappy’ photos (subjective cat is subjective). Life’s too short though, and what’s more I couldn’t give a crap. I get just as much joy from my daft iphone app photos as I do from stick-up-my-arse polaroids and the like.
I’ve been grumbling to various people about my 35mm gremlins. I never seem to get what I want from 35mm film, whereas I get a satisfying ratio of crap:not crap photos from 120 or digital. I don’t understand why. So I’ve spent some time going through a few 35mm group pools on Flickr, which eventually led me back to my own photos taken with my Olympus XA. They’re not too shoddy, I suppose.
A beautiful early morning, then a dull dinner time, then a beautiful afternoon. Charlie of Doom mocking my lack of free time by lounging on the sofa in the sun.
No time, no time … no time to write, take pictures, enjoy the internet, enjoy anything other than books, books, books. But my fleeting comment on some historic what-not that appears to have happened while I was lost in the bubble comes in the shape of a link to my favourite, if slightly odd, blogpost of the day: The First US Presidential Speech to Mention an Animal?
Here’s another animal, not so scarred, not so famous, and not so impressively-held:
They are the best damn talking cats I’ve ever had the pleasure of embedding.
And talking of cats, I spent some quality time with monkey this morning, sat on the bed doing some ear massaging (which is probably more therapeutic for him than it is for me). Here he is being all adorable and stuff …
