My new Zumi Camera!

I got a new camera!!!! It's a Zumi! Formal Name: Digital Harinezumi 2. How's that! It's a wonderful, little, digital, plastic lense camera that even takes videos!!! Yeah!!! Last year I got a Holga and loved the pix, but couldn't keep buying all that film. Now, I can take hundreds of photos and load them into my computer to pick and choose which ones to print. Oh, how I love this camera! It has two ISO settings- 100 for daylight and 800 for low light conditions and it even takes black and white photos with just a few pushes of the few buttons that are on this little camera. I got it on-line at www.photojojo.com - the place for cool photo stuff! I cannot stop taking pictures!!! My pix look like I have an old camera that is slightly amused at being asked to take pictures because it is so not perfect. Love the distortions, love the grainy-ness, love the super saturated color I sometimes get in daylight, love the strange color tinges that come up, and it is so small! Fits into the palm of my hand and I just point and shoot. There is no window to see you picture before you take it, but there is a nice review display so you can delete a photo if you want to. (I never do, I'm in too much of a hurry to get another photo and see how it turns out. Everyone is different because the effect of changing light conditions changes your photo amazingly.
My P.T. Cruiser never looked so - interesting.
Our Florida sky never looked so - painterly.
Our house never looked so -blessed by the Light.
And, I never looked so - mysteriously curvy?
Oh, I am in love with technology. Thank you PowerShovel,Ltd! Fantastic! Fun! Fully functional and all mine......

Lomography - Holga 135

I saw a small paragraph in the Sun Sentinel newspaper last December about the new popularity of plastic cameras. After seeing some of the photos taken by these low tech devices, I HAD to have one! I am SO TIRED OF PERFECT DIGITAL PIX! These photos were taken with a Holga 135. It's a plastic camera with a plastic lens and no flash. This style is cool because you can use ordinary 35 mm film and have it developed at any local store AND you can have your pix put on a CD.
This shot was taken early one sunny morning with a 400 speed film and I just love the dreamy quality of this view. Beautiful, soft, south Florida sky with green, green trees. The sun hitting the plastic lens makes the light scatter all over the place and I would have a hard time creating that effect in any of my photo altering programs.

This is a view of our pool and plastic chairs. Look how lush and dense the folliage presents itself as it pushes through several of the now absent screens of the pool enclosure. Surprisingly, most people in our neighborhood have fixed the hurricane damage that was left in October of 2005, but we kind of like to see Mother Nature pushing her way into previously forbidden spaces.

(And besides, I can swim quite naked without fear of nosy neighbors wondering what all the splashing is all about.)

This is a shot of the gable above the master bath. Look at the incredibly intense color of the sky! This camera is amazing! I just love the soft edges that blur parts of the photo. That vine attracts Zebra wing butterflies and I can't begin to tell you the joy I feel as I see them reeling about those big juicy leaves looking for the flowers to drink sweet nectar and lay dozens of eggs for future generations of little transformers.

I got this photo just while taking my morning walk down our sweetly shaded street. Look at the misty effect created, once again, by the plastic lens.

Plastic. Irregular. Imperfect.

Creating softness, reflecting the mystery that is everpresent in each newly created moment of this most beautiful day.

Our House- back gable

I was preparing food for the pets when I saw a dark cloud descending, making the early evening sky dense with mist - ery. The air smelled thick and moving through it felt like a slow glid through water. Tree outlines became black against the heavy gray light and a sporadic wind whipped through the leaves shaking many free to swirl in circles descending down only to be swooped up and away again. I couldn't follow their path, the movement was so quick.


Grabbing my camera, I hoped to catch some of this difficult to explain light, but its' automatic settings insisted on a harsh flash of light, ruining the moodiness of that dark, black, down to my feet now cloud.

Moving away from the screened in porch and out the side door into the yard, I noticed the outline of the gable against the watery vapor and snapped the colision of man made precision hallowed by its' everpresent cover. The sky is always there above this roof and it changes its' clothes minute by minute. I miss most of those changes everyday because I am either under it or away from this small summit in the hours of my life.

I am envious of this little peak. It doesn't have to do anything at all but be. The view changes around it all the time. Birds perch on the round tile to sing early in the morning, but I do get to hear their song as I dress for work in the bathroom below.

How the peak experiences all of this is what I want to understand. So far, it has never let on what it does know. I've seen that sometimes the cover of the sky is a cool turquoise, or a hot blue-green. Then there's white, gray, robins egg and cielo blue, too. All colors and weights that I immediately miss because I am ... away. This gable sees and feels and knows the moods of the sky because it is like a sentinel built to oversee this little corner of the world. Maybe by taking this photo I am saying, "thank you" for just being and I hope that beingness is a good experience.


That heavy vapor coalesced right after I got this shot and drops of water splashed on the tip of the gable, cooling it, refreshing it, cleaning it, caressing it. All I could do was witness it, never knowing if this cover of dark wetness was felt as beautifully as I could see it.

Squirt the Cat

It's truly amazing what can be done to photos using a couple of computer programs.

This is one of our cats, Squirt. He's 16 years old now and came to me when my youngest sister died in 1993.

He had to travel from New Jersey to Florida right after the funeral and it took him one full year to come out of my bedroom/bathroom area to creep through the family room and head out to the porch. Most of the time he hid under our bed. He was not a happy cat.

I remember having to give him a bath in the kitchen sink one day because he was itchy with New Jersey fleas. He was so upset, he bit down on the middle finger of my left hand and wouldn't let go.

My impulse was to pull back, of course, but that only left him hanging off my finger. By this time I was screaming, he was growling and my 14 year old son, Joshua, was totally beside himself. "Ma, Ma! Get him off your hand! Ma! Let Go!"

Finally, I gently splashed Squirt back into the dishpan and got my heavily bleeding finger back. I put a towel over him so he couldn't get away with soap all over him.

Josh was going to be late for school, so like any good mom, I told him to go.

"What? Are you crazy? And, leave you here alone with this nutty cat!!!"

"Josh, I'll be alright. Just help me bind my finger so the bleeding will stop", I said.

"But, Ma..."

"Don't worry, I'll call Daddy and he'll call in some antibiotics. I'll be fine"

"If it was me," he said, "I'd have flung that cat across the room and slammed it against the wall!"

So, off he went to school and I got Squirt rinsed off and let him scramble back to safety under our bed.

This cat now practically owns the house. He demands to sit on my lap when I'm at my computer and has taken to mimicking me by meowing, "hello", "hello". If I don't pick him up, he won't shut up. Very demanding. And still has a tendency to bite.

sigh.

Love. It sure comes in funny packages. Over the past 14 years he's been costly with high vet charges, irritable, hissy, and downright mean always wanting his way, not ever considering our way. He's 18 pounds of gray fur, jealous of all the other pets in the house, who climbs on my husbands' chest every night to nuzzle into his beard while my husband falls asleep.

The rest of the night he is on my legs or near my head, still a nuisance, but still a perfect piece of love in a truly unique form.

Oh, and this photo was altered in Paint Shop Pro 9 with Virtual Painter Version 4 plug in. I've printed it out on fabric and am using this and other photos in my art work these days.