Notes from the Sub-Basement of Mars

I received a Fujifilm X100V camera for Christmas. I really enjoy taking photos. I was briefly a photography major in college. I started with black and white film photography, and progressed from there. I really enjoyed being able to go to the photography lab any time of day I wanted and just work. I when I would have trouble sleeping (which happened quite frequently), I would go to the photography building, pop some music on the dark room speakers, and lose track of time. It was very nice.

But I’ve always been my own harshest critic, so I dropped it and changed majors.

I still have my old film camera somewhere. I picked up a Canon AE-1, the first camera with a computer chip inside, at a garage sale a while back. I went through a couple rolls of film, but after seeing how much developing film costs these days, I guess it’s relegated to being a conversation piece.

I’ve really been enjoying using my new camera. It’s about a decade old, but I can’t tell. It was previously owned, but it still works perfectly. I haven’t been using it as much as I’d like, having become too reliant on my phone’s camera. Below are some photos I really like. They haven’t been edited, which is probably for the best – I abused the hell out of the poor photos I took, using a faux-HDR effect that looked substantially less-cool than I thought.

Anyways, uh. Here.

I really enjoyed taking these photos at the local Ren Faire. I hadn’t left the house in almost a week and was getting a little stir-crazy, and wanted to socialize a bit. Going up to strangers, complimenting their outfits, and asking to take their photo was not something I would’ve been able to do when I was growing up. It was a lot of fun, and everyone was incredibly nice.
The toadstool even gave me a little glass bauble with a toadstool pattern on it.

This is Cricket. He is our dog, and he is absolutely the sweetest boy. I’ll definitely post more about him sometime, but I just love this shot. Dormouse is out of the country for a few months, so while they were normally the one working with him the most, I’m getting a lot of bonding time with this sweet boy. I love him so much.

That’s all I have that I want to share right now. I’ll be bringing my camera with me more and more, especially as I continue to force myself to go outside.