It’s been dark these last few days. Not in some metaphorical sense, but literally – dark in the daytime. Heavy clouds, steady rain, a good week of this… Not ideal for photographing outdoors. Not ideal for natural history photography – close ups of insects, shots of wildflowers. And you can more or less rule out a lot of toy camera photography – the fixed shutter speed and apertures are calibrated for sunshine, and there are limits to how far you can push film. Well, anyhow, I still try to carry a camera or two around with me and grab whatever incidental shots I can.

I recently was helping ot clean out a house that is about to be sold.  I took a Nikon Coolpix 990 with me, along with a Holga. “Bush and Pole” is the only Holga shot to make it to this blog – most of the negs were just too thin to scan, even with a hefty push to the development. I like the hypermodern feel to the image, even though it deviates from the theme a bit (I was running an errand at the superstore and stepped out of the car in the parking lot to snap this shot.) All of the close-ups are found object still life images. “Still life with Nails And Paper Wasp” just popped before my eyes as I dropped a wooden drawer full of nails and bits and bobs of other hardware into the back of my car. No arrangement of the nails was needed – I guess things like that just confirm the impeccable order of the universe. As Morgan says, “There are no misteaks." So I spent the day actually accomplishing some tasks – like cleaning and packing and loading – but also contemplating the light as it fell on the bare walls in the now empty house.

Technical details: Holga shot taken on Classic Pan 200, developed in HC110 Dilution H for 25 minutes (very low agitation.) Color shots taken with Nikon Coolpix 990.