Happy Holidays and all that hullaballoo.

Merry Christmas to those that do that thing, and happy whatever else you may celebrate. Haven't been doing a lot recently. Working two jobs between semesters, so it's keeping me busy. I did make a day trip with a photog friend, Sol Exposure, a couple weeks ago. We had planned to check out this place north of Phoenix called Castle Hot Springs. I complained about this place once before, just because it's this huge hotel out in the middle of the mountains and desert. I couldn't get there in my truck. Sol has a 4WD, so it was no problem. You have to drive about three miles of river to get there. Well, we get there, after stopping at a few cool photo ops along the way...


...and there is no way to get near it. All fenced off with a caretaker living there. Funny, they had red Christmas ribbons all along the fence, next to the "no parking" and "no trespassing" signs. Merry Christmas! Go away! Anyway, I got one kind of crappy Polaroid of it from above. Expired. Dunno what's up with the white area.


Nothing too exciting. We keep driving, and about a mile further up the road, we see this building. The area was very similar to the hotel. Large grassy area surrounded by giant palm trees. Looked kind of abandoned. I ran up to the house and glanced in. Empty. Sweet. We went in and took lots of shots. Creepy and ugly. Some long exposures with the Banner.



Really neat buildings surrounding the house, too. Probably had something to do with the hotel at some point. There was what looked like an old garage or firehouse, along with a 'cold room' next to it. Really thick door with some old refrigerators inside. These are using the 195 with Type 665, negative scans.




Also took my Sabre 620, which is the same camera as the Valiant, except cream colored, and called Sabre, not Valient. Duh. Scratches the film very nicely. Horror movie quality photos.



Arizona Chainsaw Massacre, eh?
ALSO, I took my pinhole Polaroid and wasted some shots. Kind of interesting, but needs some work. Maybe some people shots would be better, and get really close up. Have to mess around some more. 665 again.



This Bud's for...some litterbug idiot.
Was that it? Of course not. I also took my new plastic Gakken pinhole/stereo pinhole camera to test out. I promise I will write more about this camera when I've used it a bit more. Need to get a cheap flexible tripod to get it up off of the ground. Neat camera, though. I didn't use the stereo setting, but the pano setting makes a really wide shot on your 35mm film...a little over two normal frame sizes.





The two inside shots are "artistically cropped" because of all the dark area. The last two show the actual width of the photos. Looks to be lots of fun! and only cost about $30. You can get them in Japan, or you can get them here. Took about six weeks to arrive. I think they raised the price. Again, neat camera. I'll cover it in detail soon enough. Or not soon enough.
I plan on at least one more day photo trip before the next (and last semester) begins. When I'm done, I'm looking at a couple opportunities to leave the country for a bit, or at least be a travel RN in the interim. Ready for a change. Just getting burned out a bit by the area and a bit disillusioned here. I love the desert and really do like this city...just had my life on hold for long enough now (and had kind of a crappy year) that I'm ready for some changes, and then I'll come back. Five more months of this madness. Anyway, too much about me.
I leave you with this, this night:


I'm really going to miss 665. At the current going price of a pack, I think that's about $5 wasted. Too rich for my blood. That was my last pack. I have a couple packs that expired in the 80s, but I doubt they work. I still have, I think, three packs of Type 85, the square version. Then it's no...mo.

Check out Sol Exposure's flickr page for some of her shots from the drive. Some neat color shots of what I lovingly refer to as murder house.
And I have no problem following the words "murder house" with "have a great holiday and be safe!" And Happy next year if I don't write in the next few weeks. Seeya homies. Oh, and, really, thanks for checking this silly blog out. I'm getting like 1000 visitors a week for some reason. Dunno who all you people are (probably mostly searching for Diana+ info), but...thanks. Makes me want to keep doing this.