Photography

So, I've been getting more into making^[1] pictures lately^[2].

Olivia has this little digital camera _{(a samsung WB250F)} that she's had since high school. We started using it in the early days of the pandemic when we'd go on our grandpa walks to keep ourselves sane. The camera was a fun way to be off the phones but still "physically" memory-making. We brought it on a few camping trips and we brought it with the day we got married in the arb. I've beeing into video-making since at least early high school, but it wasn't until a fairly recent confluence of circumstances that I started honestly considering the pursuit of picture-making as a hobby for myself.

Mainly it's two circumstances: I started volunteering in Free Geek's AV zone a little after we moved to Minneapolis and was in proximity to its total swirl of funny and charming electronics and I also got on cohost a little under a year later and got to see people doing so much beautiful stuff (big RIP to the #coho digi club and cohost's unparalleled image compression).

This blog post is also sitting in the meta tag because this is me properly figuring out how to format photos here on the ol' s(b)log. You can click photos to open them big in a new tab (and yes, most of the photos on this actual page are tiny little thumbnails because WOW there's well over 100 photos here! I personally use Faststone Photo Resizer which works really great for me for batch resizing and renaming, I'd recommend it) which I guess might be annoying for browsing but also hey! I'm pretty proud of all of these so if you think one is pretty then just take ur time actually looking at the dang thing okay?

Berlin

We brought the camera with us on our trip to Berlin this summer which was a great opportunity to practice using it seriously as an alternative to my phone, and it yielded a lot of great photos. I could share more, but mainly I'm just going to use this moment to make good on something I wished I'd done when we were living there: photo all the discarded Durstlöschers I saw.

These things are so perfectedly shaped and iconic, and since they aren't categorized as pfand they get left around a lot... something about them is just so fucking funny to me, idk

(you can click the photos to make them bigger!!)

juicebox in the netting on the back of train seat

juicebox in a corner of a bench next to a pretty girl

haha ok ok, I'll share some of the beautiful pictures too (some of these are also from prague.)

perfect yellow fingernail crescent moon. the best moon photo i have ever made.

(This is the most beautiful photo I've ever gotten of the moon, btw.)

Cohost Wake

Up next we've got the photos I have of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Cohost Wake Meetup:

I talk more about this in my previous post btw, plus there's a link to Evie's blog post if u want to see more photos!

Minnehaha Falls

As a prelude to the Wake, Sapphire and I scouted out Minnehaha Falls (plus did some heart-to-heart visual novel type shit), here's some photos from that:

A heron against a brick wall across the stream.

Birthday, Moon Jellies, River Rave

an interlude for some miscellany:

Fran smiling holding a beer outside at a picnic table with a bunch of people in the background.

group of queers posed around two picnic tables between two trees.

(these also contain a moment when sapphire said that it was nice how I brought the camera to things because it felt like a tool to be more present, which was sweet to say and has stuck with me.)

Palouse

And finally, the real one I've been working towards for this post (drumroll please...) my week-long trip to the Palouse! :

blurry, a back porch and a shed on a dark night.

This was... an extremely beautiful trip. I'm still struggling to put it to words, but I'm so happy it happened, I'm so touched to have been (and still be!) part of such an incredible network. It felt very nourishing and reminded me of who I am and who I want to be. I miss country life!! I miss my friends!! My heart is so full of love;; bursting!!