Two weeks off…

At around 3:20pm on Friday, I got pulled into the Program Manager’s office and was told to go home and not come back to work until January 5th. Technically I should have been at work yesterday and today, but they said don’t worry about it and don’t take vacation. I guess it pays to put in multiple 60+ hour weeks, never see your child, and always be extremely exhausted. Because of the hard work I’ve been doing, I was given a gift card from my boss that contained quite a large sum of money; hence the discussion about the Bronica cameras in the last post.

So I bought a Bronica ETRS off of eBay. The auction contained the camera body, the AE-II prism, the 75mm f/2.8 lens, 3 120 film backs, 1 220 film back and the Polaroid back. The camera is pimp. I’ve already shot a roll of TMax 400 Black and White through it and the pictures can be seen here. I have another roll of TMax in one of the other film backs that was half shot at Squaw Creek Golf Course on Saturday when I went hiking with Eric and Craig. I loaded up some expired Ektachrome 64 into the last 120 back and have taken two shots with that, one of snow on some dead plant thing at the house and one of the Christmas tree with it sllightly out of focus to get the blur of the lights.

This is my favorite shot from the first roll out of the Bronica.

I also bought the Starving Student Light Kit from Midwest Photo Exchange. That should be here on Christmas Eve; I am really excited to have a good flash, the umbrella, and the radio trigger (for which I’ve order the parts to mod the transmitter and receiver).

Erica and I took Lilly to have Santa pictures at the mall and we left disappointed; you can’t use personal cameras and the Santa sucked. He didn’t smile and looked bored as shit (I can see where this is valid, you’re just sitting in a warm suit with a bunch of kids). Either way, you should still try to make the best of it if you’re getting paid. The prints we got suck and we have determined to find a free Santa and take our own pictures with cameras better than what is being used at the mall. If you know of any free Santa’s in the Cedar Rapids area, please let me know.

Things are getting wild…

Life at work is crazy with deliveries and the sort. This week coming up is no exception, I’ll probably be there past midnight every night. The nice thing is the possibility to not have to work the week of Christmas at all, seeing as I am off the 24th through the 2nd. I am making a good name for myself, which is awesome.

This is the first Christmas in a long time where there are presents under the tree weeks before Christmas eve. I have Erica pretty excited for the floral print fleece mittens I made for her; I also made her a scarf that matches. Go me!

Yesterday was the Rebel Photo Club’s Portrait shoot day. It was a good time and I was able to borrow a Mamiya C220 from Eric who borrowed it from the work Photo Club. It’s a sweet camera. In other photography news, I’ve made up my mind on what I want to shoot and it’s not digital. I’m going to buy a Bronica ETRS or SQ-A. I really like square shots, but the SQ-A’s are slightly more expensive on eBay so I will probably have to live with almost square with the ETRS. The cool thing about the Bronica’s is the interchangeable backs include two variations for 35mm film, meaning I can blow through the 40+ rolls I have. I just need to get the film back and I’d be set. The camera I’m looking at doesn’t have the waist level viewfinder, but I can get one of those since that’s what I’ll probably want to use all the time as it’s way cool.