Making Mandelas

As part of a Meet-up group, one of our recent get togethers waws a class on drawing Mandelas.
This experince was both interesting and REALLY fun. I am looking forward to doing more things with this new group! I know this is not the most expressive blog post, and I hope you can forgive me for being a little groggy this morning. Maybe I will come back and edit this to sound more exciting? In the meantime, here are a few photos of the Mandela I ended up making that night.

See the Orca? I was kinda happy about that one sneaking in there!

eBay & Me

A Dangerous Combination but Oh So Fun

So the other day I decided to do something rather taboo for me. I jumped back onto eBay to peak at all those wonderful things they have up for bids. While I was actually looking for something specific for someone else, I happened upon this little camera. Beaten, broken and looking entirely forlorn it pulled at my heartstrings. If not already assumed, I love cameras, including if not especially old ones. As the auction was close to closing, I decided that I would make a bid for it. No one else had bothered yet and by the looks of the camera - it was going to be rare the someone would. My $1.00 bid went it as .99 cents and low and behold, some time later, it was mine. This little Kodak Brownie Special Six-20 (circa 1938 - 1942) was in my mailbox this afternoon.

After a quick wash down for dust, I proceeded to take it apart.

The inside was fairly clean (go figure) so a brief cleaning and it was off to pull apart the shutter mechanics.

The leather covering was almost all off, so I cut the long piece that was hanging off, cleaned the body of most the of the heavy rust and glue residue and cleaned, dryed and oiled the covering.
After consulting the all mighty internet I found that ordinary school glue was a good recommendation to reattach the covering. (Huh, Who knew?)
Just over an hour or two worth of TLC and elbow grease and the final result:

Not to bad for 99 cents huh?

Mal Kitty

         Malcolm Reynolds (AKA Mal Kitty) came to live with us on December 6th, 2007. He is a rescue kitty, adopted from the shelter. We couldn't ask for a sweeter cat. Well, okay, maybe we could, but we couldn't ask for a better fit for our crazy family. I am adding a few older shots of my Mal here, plus the ones I took today because, well, I feel like it!

Finished reviewing and editing my photographs from my visit to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. What a wonderful place! I could have spent all week there, if not just in front of the large viewing window in the Ocean Voyager Exhibit. If you get the chance, you should visit - it's worth every penny!

March 31, 2012 

If you have not heard of Meetup.com I suggest you give it a look! I found a number of interesting groups, but one of the ones I am most thankful for finding is the Richmond Photography Meetup Group. On Saturday, March 31st we met up at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens for a day of shooting in one of the most beautiful places in Richmond!

While I do not have a lot of great equipment - I do try to make do with what is available to me. I decided to try my hand at some 'high speed' photography. the set up here was fairly simple, a chair, some window light, a piece of white poster board, a glass, a flat pan to catch the spills and my son for help. I also used a $9.00 clamping work light I bought at Home Depot. Next time, I know to do it earlier in the day when I have a lot more natural light available to me, but I'm still rather happy with these first time shots.

It's amazing what you can do with a tripod, a pitch black room, a flashlight, a few DVDs and some water! I really like the outcome here, and I love the variety that can be achieved simply bymoving the flashlight in different ways.