I had two pictures left on the roll of tri-x 120 film I was using to test that lens I bought and took a self-portrait next to my enlarger in my darkroom, and above a picture of the picture I made yesterday in the tray of fixer.

A lovely image of Wisteria I took last Spring. 

"For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and centrally and simply, without either dissection into science, or digestion into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands:  so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can:  and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is.

This is why the camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time;  and is why in turn I feel such rage at its misuse:  which has spread so nearly universal a corruption of sight that I know of less than a dozen alive whose eyes I can trust even so much as my own."

From 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men'  1939 by James Agee and Walker Evans

Another photograph from my Oak Grovian series.

Very weird Dragon Gate found outside home in Oak Grove.

I want to continue my collection of what I like to call "Oak Grove Gothic" a collection of photographs of the small and rather weird community I spent my childhood in.

Oh in inspiration’s midst,

I shall await tomorrow’s beauty
and truth when we shall say’st,
“Is it worthwhile in this moment
to capture life with light?”
Ode to a Camera by Lorita O’Leary

McIver Park out around Estacada in 1972.  The scene of Vortex a few years previous (Oregons Woodstock).  I've recently reconnected with a friend of mine who was with me on this day long bike/photography trip.  I had never got around to making prints from the negatives I took on that  trip but still had them.  She still had her old negatives and gave them to me and I finally got around to making prints from that day almost 40 years ago.  It was pleasant revisiting that day through processing the photographs.  Looking at photographic manifestations of a time and place not forgotten but not remembered with the clarity and details of the camera.  The way we looked, seeing images of my old bike, and my Nikon F which is still with me but no longer the pushing edge of technology it was back then.  It's just a relic now like me.

My first printing session probably since January or maybe even December.  Made 12 prints from some 1972 negatives a friend and I took on a bike trip together out to Estacada. 

I have started volunteering with the Oregon Historical Society Research Library.  For the most part this involves copying documents for people and learning about the collection.  I have yet to get the opportunity to spend some time on my own there but I hope to soon.  Fascinating place. I love to go through the folders full of photographs from around Portland.

A scan from a contact print of some negatives an "old" friend gave me of a bike/photography trip we took way back when.  Me with my Nikon F when it was still relevant. 

Another new flood light.  I found this pretty cheap photo-flood with barn doors at Citizens yesterday while dropping off a roll of color film for processing. 

I finally got my Mamiya C-220 back in operation with another lens that has a working shutter.  Shot a roll of film through it a few days ago and hope to develop it today.  Here is the picture I took, and a picture of me taking the picture.

Photograph from 1972 maybe 73.  I took this picture and made a print for a friend and she recently posted a scan of it on my facebook wall telling me she still had it.  I still have the negative and I think I tried making some prints from it but they didn't come out as nice as this.

I have been really neglecting photography lately but I hope to remedy that this week.  I have that replacement lens for the Mamiya C-220 that turned out to be in real good shape and I want to run a roll of film through the camera to check it out and do some printing again. 

I started volunteering at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library and have had little chance to do much but copy documents and photographs for patrons but I am hoping to get a chance to do some personal research soon.  There are thousands of photographs in files from all over town going back a hundred years.  I hope to do some research on old photographs of familiar places and follow up contemporary photographs of the same sites here in Southeast and Downtown and Oak Grove. Something I thought about years ago and never got around to.