An odd sort of wish

Because I’m trying to break my habit of taking endless photos – you can’t believe how many gazillions of images I need to delete – today’s garden shot is one I took way back in Newport, Washington, the town where we bumped into the rodeo.

But the reason I’m thinking about gardens is a walk I took yesterday. Yes, the flowers in everyone’s gardens were beautiful, but the part that really got me was the smells! It seemed that nearly every yard had its own particular fragrance.

It made me want a camera that could take ‘snapshots’ of scents – something like the ‘odorifics’ machine owned by Ruth Gordon’s character in the cult classic, Harold and Maude.

I guess I’ll just have to take a walk again today, and fix some of those lilting scents in the odorifics file cabinet of my mind.

Grand Canyon Days

How many people are lucky enough to spend almost two full days poking around the Grand Canyon! Heck, we even got to camp there for an overnight.

The object in the photo above is a Graflex View Camera -- just one of the many tricks the Dear Man carries around. It's a 4 by 5 camera, so each image it takes is captured onto a photographic plate that's 4 inches by 5 inches in size.

If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you might be able to see that the image in the viewfinder is reversed. The side-to-side aspect is tricky, but the upside-down sky is clearly there.

These images will be black-and-white, and likely processed in our little camper -- more of the magic tricks I get to travel with.

As for my own snap-snapping efforts, I took waaay too many photos. It's just a good thing
mine weren't on film -- or, on those hard to find 4 by 5 plates in the big Graflex -- especially with the weather we're about to contend with next.

Piper on the wharf

What a time to be stuck without a camera! We're out on the dock at sunset, and a man approaches, walking down the pier, carrying a small suitcase. He opens the case and starts pulling out various pipes and connectors. We start chattting and he explains more than I ever knew about bagpipes and how they work. There's still some light in the sky, and looking out over the sailboats moored at the marina, I'm thinking about my friend, Jackie, who died of a heart attack so recently. And then, those magical pipes begin. Oh Jackie, you'd have loved this night, camera or no.

Vancouver Camera Show and Swap Meet

This was the scene this Sunday at Cameron Park Rec Centre in Burnaby, B.C. All part of the Vancouver Camera Show and Swap Meet. Cameras as far as you could see. And lenses, Beta machines, every imaginable variety of Polaroid cameras -- even pop-out flashbulbs and cubes. Apparently, the biggest such show in Canada, and one of the biggest in North America, it's an annual event -- one I hope to attend again next spring. Even if I don't have any plans for buying a Brownie Hawkeye.