New babies, New Year, New Project!

Over the Christmas holidays, our sister-in-law surprised us with a big box of old analogue cameras which had accumulated at her house from past relatives, etc. She told us to go through them and take whatever we wanted. We were like kids in a candy store!! We were so happy!

These are all the new babies that we brought home with us:

The two cameras on the far left are both Kodak Instamatic. The blue one is a Hawkeye R4 (1965-1971) and the brown on is a X15F (1976-1988). Both take 126mm film cartridges, which are very difficult to find. They both had old, partially used rolls in them already. We just finished them off  but still need to get them developed. We are going to try to get the developers to keep the cartridges for us so that we can try to reload them with regular 35mm film using this awesome tutorial from lomography.com.
The super awesome looking camera in the center is a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515 (I think), made in Germany between 1934-1958. It also takes an unusual but slightly easier to find film size - 120mm, which can be bought at a few specialty shops around town, or ordered online. I am most excited and anxious to try this one out. I really hope that it works!
Next, is a pretty high tech Nikon FE (1978-1983) which has even more manual settings than our Pentax K1000 cameras, and a lovely 43-86mm lens. This one is going to take some reading and experimenting to master, but at least it take regular 35mm film!
Finally, the beautiful silver camera on the left with the lovely brown leather case (we both actually "oooh-ed" when we pulled it out), is a Kodak Retinette IA which was produced from 1963-1967. I already shot a 35mm roll with this one, and though it looks very pretty, it is not particularily practical. There are limited settings and the focusing uses a "distance focus" system which I find slightly frusterating (I had a lot of blurry photos in my first roll). I am not giving up on it just yet. I'll definitely come back to it in a little while.

As a very important side note - those two beautiful photo albums in the background were gifts from one of my dearest friends Erin. She sent them to Jeffrey and I for Christmas. I can't wait to fill them up!

And with all these new cameras and a brand new year beginning, I was inspired to join a new photo project for 2012. I am still going to pop into the Weekly Assignment Group (which has also been revamped), but will remain focused on shooting more film. The film26 project is organized by the lovely ladies over at Girl's Guide to Gear, and is a challenge to shoot a year in film. The year is divided into 2-week long projects, every project representing a letter of the alphabet. So for January, I took pictures inspired by the letter A for 2 weeks, then by the letter B for the next two weeks. In February I will start C, and so on and so forth. I am really excited for this project and to get to know all of my cameras a little better, and to hopefully improve my photography skills.
I am also thinking of ordering some (pricey!) polaroid film from the Impossible Film Project, since we have 4 different polaroid type cameras all lying around with nothing to do.

Expanding my horizons in 2012!!

Keep Calm and Macaron

We dropped off a few rolls of film to be developed last weekend and when I got back this roll, I was surprised to find pictures that spanned from August to December! It seems that the fall was such a busy time for me that I couldn't even get through a roll of film before the end of 2011. But, things seem a little calmer now, and with the motivation of the new Film26 project that I am trying out this year, I hope to be getting through a lot more film and posting a lot more frequently here.

These photos were taken last summer when a post I wrote about the macarons at La Duree in Paris, sparked a conversation between some friends about finding the best macarons in Vancouver. Thus beginning the "Great Vancouver Macaron Crawl". My friend Michelle took some beautiful digital photos and wrote about it on her blog here.
Since this outing, we have actually added two more places to our list of places to try and will soon organize another Macaron Crawl. Any suggestions for places to add to the list?

The Urban Tea Merchant - Best Overall Macarons & Most Expensive

Thierry's - Not even a contender

Thierry's - skip the macarons here, and head straight for the croissants, very tasty indeed!

Ganache Bakery - Most dissapointing overall

 We also tried Chopain on Davie, and must have had day old macarons because they were awful! We actually threw one of them out! I have heard though, that their fresh macarons are a little better.

Thomas Haas - Best Bang for your Buck: tasty but not as expensive as The Urban Tea Merhant

My beautiful and always hilarious "dessert companions" - Michelle & Sarah

All photos taken with my Pentax K1000 and Fujifilm RHPIII (which we picked as part of a whole bundle of film at a garage sale and is apparently a slide film. Despite having to send it away to be developped and paying a little more, I have to say the colour is actually very impressive!)

WAW - "By Request: Something Humerous"

With a new year comes a new photo project, and this year is all about film! I am starting the Film26 project and I am super excited. More on that to come... but before I leave my Wonderful Weekly Assignment group, I had just a few more assignments that I wanted to try to complete.
One of those is my "By Request list" from way back in the summer months.
Here is the list of requests I received -
- something broken
- something humerous
- zoom-out photos
- favourite things I use everyday
- insect battle royale
- shoes or cocktails or jewelry
- my dad giving my husband a noogie
The linked items are completed, and this post is to fulfill the "something humerous" request. Because my nieces are freakin' hilarious! I love these photos of them making silly faces in the bath.

Here's looking at you Pup

Jeffrey and I love animals. Dogs and cats in particular. It kills us that we can't actually have a pet of our own (Jeffrey is allergic to cats, and our rental suite doesn't allow dogs). We make due by visiting with animals of our friends and family, and also by meeting random dogs on the street. It is not unusual for our conversations to be interupted by one of us calling out "Puppy!" as one walks by. I have even been known to sneak a pet in, if they walk close enough. Someday, we will have one of our own... for now here are a few furry friends we have made along the way.

Fish-eye Friday - Look at me! I'm so freakin' cute!

Chopper - a.k.a The Big Bad Wolf (What? Doesn't he look it?)

(Michelle usually doesn't wear a napkin in her shirt, it was for a game we were playing - sorry Michelle)

Adorable Hobbit - *snortle*

Fish-eye Hobbit - Who you lookin' at?

Chief - all tuckered out

Cessna - always ready to play

Bubba & Jeffrey - full on BFF's now

Buddy (or maybe Frankie?) - These two siblings look so alike!

WAW - "Smiles" and "Friends & Family"

The holidays were the perfect time to catch up and complete two more Weekly Assignments - "Smiles" and "Friends & Family" because our vacation to Alberta was filled with both of these things. I think one of the best parts of our trip was seeing our 3 nieces, and 2 of our pseudo-nieces (daughters of close friends) who we never get to see often enough. They are all starting to get so big, and we had so much fun being able to interact and play with them all a bit more than in the past. They really know who we are now, and their love for us (despite the distance) just breaks my heart.

Pseudo-niece Aine - Not in frame: Jeffrey giving the best pony rides, causing smiles and giggles galore

Jeffrey and Amalie in "The best fort ever!"

Makenna & Amalie peeking through the "window" in the fort - Our two sides of the family collide :)

Cayleigh with her biggest smile for Auntie Melly

This is also Jeffrey & I's first Christmas as a married couple. And though it wasn't really any different than previous Christmases, being surrounded by both of our families really highlighted the fact that this is now officially "our family"... for better or for worse. And so far... it is all for the better.

Jeffrey loves my Momma & Papa! - sometimes I think they would pick him over me given the choice ;p

Jeffrey has the best smiles!

Merry Fisheye Christmas!!

 Jeffrey and I's birthdays both fall in December and with Christmas at the end of the month as well, December ends up being a month full of celebrations, family and presents. This year since we are spending Christmas in Alberta with Jeffrey's family, so my parents came down to the coast to visit us during my birthday weekend to celebrate our birthdays and Christmas together.
We dined out for my birthday, had family over for brunch and even hit the Vancouver Christmas Market (though the market nearly didn't happen because of my mom's bad knee, but she was a trooper and we made it out for just a quick lap around to help get in the Christmas spirit). For Christmas, my parents got us a fisheye lens for the digital camera and I have been having fun playing with it ever since!
So here are our Merry fisheye Christmas wishes to you and yours!
~ MelRoy

Jeffrey hams it up for the lens

So many beautiful displays! These are actually soap!

An overly happy, but adorable Gingerbread Man greets vistors

An old time carousel for the kiddies

Giant nutcracker statues keep an eye on things

What are you looking at?

The giant Christmas tree- I can only imagine how beautiful this is at night

WAW - Ornaments & Holiday Lights

Over the holidays we received two weekly assignments that were a little time sensitive (so folks like me couldn't procrastinate like usual) - "Ornaments" and "Holiday Lights". Though I guess the "Holiday Lights" assignment could probably be put off for a few months before people actually take down their light displays in March or so. ;)

The majority of my ornament photos were taken back at home or at the Christmas Market. I had high hopes of getting some better ornament photos at Crazy Christmas Lady's House (a friend of Jeffrey's family whose house looks like Christmas literally exploded all over it!), but because there was so much stuff, I really had a hard time focusing on or creating good framing on any one thing.

 

 

I haven't been able to get many holiday light photos either as we don't have our tripod with us, and the cold Alberta nights don't lend well to holding a camera still for a long period of time (if only I could stop shivering). For now, here is my favourite shot from a neighbor across the street from Jeffrey's parents' place.

I really wanted to try out a homemade "shaped bokeh filter" on the Christmas tree lights, but we'll have to see if  a) I can actually pull it off, and b)  I manage to find the time to do it. In the meantime, we found a neat pair of glasses that look similar to the old 3D movie glasses but actually make any lights look like stars. I was playing with them and wondered what would happen if I put them in front of my camera lens.
Here is the result... fun, hey?!