Up to Something: Part II, It's All Irish to Me...

I did the following short story using characters from the book I'm writing (Yes, a book. What is it, you ask? I call it an "Epidemic" = An Epic Comedy Drama with Apocalyptic Tendencies) to relay my Ireland experience. It was more interesting than *me* telling it, for sure, and it was a great chance to practice writing dialogue (my absolute least favorite aspect of writing a novel) and an opportunity to build some back story for these characters. It even ended up with a nice twist at the end, that I didn't see coming till I got there ;)

click here for the story... go on, i'll wait here for you.

{goes to get coffee...}

done? ah. So now you can see I rather failed at the 'exercise in dialogue writing' part, hehe... I promise my book has more actual dialogue and less soliloquy. (Though not necessarily between these two characters; awkward tends to be their norm, at this point anyway.)


cheers,
me

Up to Something: Part I

A friend recently scolded me for 'making' her follow my blog, but then my not having posted anything since she did. True. I've been bad. but busy. sooooooo...

What have I been doing?

Let's start where I left off by looking at those polaroids I promised in my last post. It was exciting to finally push the capture button on my vintage SX-70 (see previous post) and have something actually pop out the front. The film I got from The Impossible Project, "TZ-Artistic, Paul Giambarba Edition" for Polaroid Type SX-70. I must say, I'm a little disappointed in the quality. Though occasionally the overexposed, unsaturated aesthetic works -- it made getting a good shot difficult. Here's the best I've got so far:

 for comparison's sake, here's a photoshop enhanced version (though i didn't remove the linear artifact that runs through the middle. these lines showed up on several prints, though not all):

I happened to take this camera with me to Ireland, as well as my shiny new Sony NEX-5 (love love love - it has interchangeable lenses, fits in my purse, lightweight & is almost as good as a pro dslr) - how's that for diametric opposites? While riding the train to Dublin, I got antsy waiting for some sheep to show up on the endless farm lands that whooshed past us & decided to experiment a bit. The following were shot holding my NEX-5 in my right hand, pointing it through the viewfinder on my polaroid which I held in my left hand, pressed up to the train's window glass.... I love the painterly quality that these images have in person (don't know if it is obvious in these lower resolution images here) - but I'm excited about this series and am looking forward to taking my time getting good (BIG) prints of them eventually:

cheers,

me

ps- be back w/ more of what I've been doing soon... (next up: Ireland & a short story)

My Irish Ancestry -or- I Bet My Great Grandma is Cooler Than Your Great Grandma

well... maybe not, but how cool is this?!?!
{thanks mom for digging these up!}

Meet my Great Grandma Cain:

Her sash says "Out For A Good Time"

{for reals}

"Turns out that her father (your great-great-grandfather Jim Cain) ran a "tent show" and she was the entertainment.  She played guitar and sang." -Teri Odell

This is my favorite.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

{the irony is that at this moment my Israeli husband is on his way to Ireland from London - as I write this - no kidding, he just called an hour ago before he boarded the flight. Wish I was there! RawЯ.}