Spotmatic camera

There's a magic to film. I got my Spotmatics repaired and have been shooting film lately. And will take more. I have a Leica film rangefinder, the Spotmatic is better.

I'm ordering a developing tank that will handle 120 film. I have one that takes 35mm film. C-41 chemical process too. Maybe a better negative scanner.

My digital camera gets quirkier and quirkier every day. The auto-focus is acting up now. The rear control wheel has been acting up for a year. It might be cheaper to invest in film considering a replacement digital body is more than I want to spend these days. And Nikon hasn't made a digital body I think is any better than the one I have. It's hard to invest in something you don't really like.

Maybe my Nikon F100 will come back out into regular rotation. Maybe I'll just keep shooting the Pentax Spotmatics. I'm alright with either. Or both.

Astoria.

Astoria is a lovely little town west of Portland at the mouth of the Columbia River. It's claim to fame is that Goonies was filmed there. I like it for the dive bar in town that plays new wave music and serves micro brews and a damn fine Reuben sandwich.

And photographs on film. Medium format. I figure if you get 2 photos out of 15 you like you're doing pretty good.

I like these.

The first time I drove into Astoria it was on the day of the Superbowl when Seattle lost to New England. Seattle is as close to a local team as you can get in Astoria. I came in from the north and there wasn't a car on the road until the game ended and then slowly cars appeared. Not many, but a few. I found myself driving along the coast which turned inland at the Columbia and then hung a right onto the causeway and that bridge. It was dark and foggy and as I drove across the causeway I could seen the red tail lights in the fog ahead of me and then they just floated up into the dark, foggy sky and disappeared. I didn't know the bridge was there. I didn't know they were rising up the incline and then disappearing over the hump. It looked like aliens were sucking cars up into the sky and they were disappearing.

I'm going to Astoria again in a couple of weeks. There will be Reuben sandwiches, pinball, a cheap hotel on the river, and some medium format photographs, if dreams come true.

Richmond, BC.

This is what you find in Richmond when you ride a bicycle through it on a Sunday afternoon in April. And all over Vancouver too. Redevelopment is epidemic. I probably have something to say about it all. Probably. But I don't know what.