Darkroom Fun

Following up from my last post, I tried my hand at developing my own black and white film. The very first time, I had a few issues to iron out, like getting all the chemicals at the right temperature (20 deg c) before starting. I tried putting ice in a basin but it wasn't getting anywhere near that figure, so I just stuck them all in a freezer till it dropped. Thanks to the timer from the Massive Dev Chart App on the iPhone, once everything starts, it's pretty easy. I took a shot of my setup and here it is.

I've done 3 rolls so far with 2 different type of films and the results vary quite a bit. I think I may have been a bit overenthusiastic in agitating the chemicals in one of the sessions but I'll know more after many more trials and errors.

He's wearing a 'I love mum' shirt... -.-

This last film with Delta 3200 - oh the grain!

Thankfully there are many things to shoot these days. Cyrus is growing really fast and looks different everyday.

Now there have been people who have been saying that Cyrus looks more like his mom and yes, if you look at the shots above, you can see the similarities with the nose and the chin. But if you look at him from another angle, you will see that he looks EXACTLY like me.

Huhuh! Thanks for such great hair dad!

What I've Been Doing Last Weekend

My black and white film developing kit has arrived recently and I've been practicing what I initially thought is the hardest step in the whole process - taking the film out and loading it into the tank in the dark.

All the various parts

Going into the changing bag

Magic happens... kinda like solving a rubik's cube up a cow's backside

Tadaa!

Checking to see if everything is done correctly

It's easier than I thought it would be. Now the next step will be making the toilet into a darkroom then it's on to the chemicals! I've got a couple of black and white films bought 5 years ago that can finally be put to use.

A New Family Member

... and one that doesn't need to be stored in the dry cabinet too! We welcomed the arrival of our baby boy, Cyrus, last week with much joy and relief. It's been a long journey for my wife and I, one in which we've faithfully recorded daily in a journal.

One day I will hand it over to him so he will know the ups and downs we've been through together and the many sacrifices made by his mother, but until then, I've got some words for you Cyrus. Think of it as an instruction manual for inheriting your new set of genes, though I can only speak for my part... So let's start off with the not so good news first.

1) Acne/Pimples

Yup, truly sorry about this. I wish I didn't have to pass this on to you. If you wonder why you don't see any of daddy's pics on the day you were born, it's partially due to the fact that I was the one behind the camera. I had a bad outbreak prior to your birth and didn't want that to be immortalized.

I know what you're thinking and hoping desperately for, 'Mom has such flawless skin! So maybe my skin takes after her!' Don't get your hopes up too high, it's a dominant gene. How do I know this? My mom (your grandma) has flawless skin too and she told me she's never had a single pimple, but not my dad (your grandpa). Unfortunately my sisters and I had none of the 'flawlessness' our mom had and had to go through our teenage years 'dermatologically challenged'. So you have around 13 years or so to enjoy baby smooth skin, but hey, thank God you've got pharmacists as parents eh?

2) Facial Hair (or lack of)

Nothing I can do to help you out here... I've looked at the male relatives from your mom's side and the prospects aren't that fantastic either. Clean-shaven all the way then... I don't know if it works but you may want to try finding a hairy wife? Looking at the bright side you'll save a lot of time from all the shaving that you don't need to do.

3) White Hair

Late 20's ... but it doesn't really bother me one bit.

Despite all the flaws, you'll be inheriting my wit, charm and sense of humor. That will be more than enough to see you through whatever life may throw at you. Welcome to the family son!

How To Make White Sauce

I was thinking of making a fish and broccoli dish yesterday but I needed a sauce to tie up the ingredients together.

Normally we buy those ready made sauce mix but I was feeling a bit adventurous and decided to make my own sauce. How hard can it be? I found that the basic recipe for most white sauce is


1) 2 tablespoons butter
2) 2 tablespoons flour
3) 1 cup milk
4) Whatever else you want that sauce to taste like

So first melt the butter and add in the flour...

Then the milk...

Stir till it doesn't look lumpy and add whatever you want. I added black pepper, salt, cheese and some Italian herb mix.

And the result...

Tastes better than the ready made mixes but hey, I'm biased. A few things to add, I didn't measure the ingredients exactly and just threw whatever amount that I felt right. It took only a few minutes to make and wasn't that hard at all. It's interesting and I'll probably experiment more in the future.

So Why Can't I Resist From Buying That...

... gadget? shoes? dress? or camera? Usually the last one for me. I recently read about this concept of 'ego depletion' and it may explain a bit. What it means is that willpower (or any conscious effort that require self control) is a limited resource, like the amount of petrol in a car. So the more we use our willpower, the more liable we are to giving in to our splurges at a later stage. There are 2 experiments that demonstrate that it exists (and if you're not interested just skip the colored text below).

Experiment 1

- A bowl of radish and a stack of chocolate chip cookies were placed on the table

- Subjects were asked to skip one meal to induce hunger and then split to 3 groups - control (who didn't eat either the radish or cookies), radish and chocolate.

- The radish group were placed in the room with both foods and asked to eat only the radish while avoiding the chocolate, and vice-versa for the chocolate group.

- All participants asked to solve an unsolvable geometric puzzle (which was unknown to them).

Results: The radish eating group gave up earlier than both control and chocolate group, which both had similar times.The radish eating group also felt more 'tired' after the puzzle.

Interpretation: The radish eating group had to use more willpower to avoid the chocolate and have used up some sort of psychic energy.

Experiment 2

-The problem with the first experiment was that the task was unsolvable and it can be argued that the radish eating group was 'smarter' in realizing this and therefore gave up earlier. 

- The participants were asked to watch videos, some being humorous and some sad. 

- They were split into 2 groups, one was asked to suppress all emotion when watching and the other had no restrictions. 

- The subjects were given anagram letter sets.

Results: The emotion suppressed group had far fewer anagrams than the other group.

Interpretation: This proved further evidence that some resource was depleted after an act of self control.

Hang on a minute? Isn't life a series of choices?

Sleeping in vs hitting the gym

Reading up on recent developments vs Facebook-ing

Healthy lunch vs not so healthy

Getting the camera vs saving for that vacation

So back to the question... why can't we resist? Simple. Its because we've been working too hard and making too much of the right choices lately. *GRINS* Go have that fried chicken. It's better for you on the long run.

Seeing In Squares

Medium format photography is something that has been on my mind for quite a long time. The digital ones are ridiculously expensive but thank God I'm into film!

It's a bit of a challenge to frame my photos differently, with the looking at the camera like 'checking if my fly is open stance' instead of bringing the camera up to my eye, but I enjoy the experience.

One for the family album

The only downside is that it's really heavy but hey, I'm thinking of it as practice for carrying a new family member.

Allergies

For about a month, my lips have been very dry. Cracked. Flaky. Constant applications of lip balm gave relief for a while but in the morning it will hurt like I've been kissing sandpaper the whole night. To worsen things, the sandpaper gave me an STD - it got swollen and itched. So I tried cutting down on salty foods, drinking lots of water and all but it got no better. Eventually I realized that my lips were a lot itchier right after I brushed my teeth.

I'm allergic to the toothpaste? Heh? I just bought this toothpaste a few days back. Some more this is the second tube I've bought and I've been using it for ...oh.... a month. Ahh...

It made a lot of sense after that - like why the lip balm had no effect even after so long. I immediately bought another toothpaste and almost overnight the symptoms disappeared. Its still a bit dry and it'll probably take some time for it to go back to normal but what am I going to do with the full tube of toothpaste? I could throw it away. Or I could remind myself to never buy that toothpaste again..

I've decided to keep it.