First Self-Portrait

Okay, so I was fooling around with my daughter's "camera" this weekend (it's really just a teeny jungle-animal viewfinder) and I caught myself in the mirror and thought, "hey, that's kind of cute & might make a good head shot!".  Which means, of course, I have to get in FRONT of the camera for the first time in a long time...

Well, I got everything all set up and snapped away.  It's a pain the ass to take your own picture.  Maybe there's some way to hook your camera up to your PC so you can see what you're doing while you're posing, but I didn't feel like trying to figure that out at 10:30PM.  So it was setup, snap, run around & check camera, setup again, snap again, run around again, ad nauseum until I got one that I thought might work.

Here's what I ended up with.

Cute, huh?

I wish the little "camera" were angled up a bit more towards my camera, but at this point it was 11PM and I have to get up at 5:30AM. :)

How YOU doin'?

Well.

Hello, gorgeous.

So, anyway, I finally broke down & ordered this vintage Argoflex box camera to try my hand at TtV photography.  If you're not sure what it is, it's when you "digitalize" an older camera by taking a picture with your DSLR through the lens(es) of an old box.  Neat, huh?

Anyway, my new baby arrived tonight and, get this:  it had FILM in it.  620 film.  Not made anymore.  And only one shot had been taken.  It took ALL my willpower not to run right out and blast away the remaining 11 shots (though, I did take 2 of my daughter just to see if the film advanced).  :P 

It also came with 10 flash bulbs - the freaky kind that basically light on fire & blow up in a small scale inside the bulb.  I did NOT come with the flash itself, though, so off to eBay I go!

The very best part for me, though, was the typed letter from 1978 from the previous owner to Argus asking about purchasing accessories. In this day & age, when one can pop online & order whatever you want, it's nearly foreign to me that letter writing was once the standard way to communicate with people.  The cherry on top, though, is the HAND written response from the company at the bottom.  Unbelievable.  Can you imagine Canon or Nikon WRITING you back?  Hell, you'd be hard pressed to even get an email from a real person!  :P

So, keep an eye out (all 3 of you!) for future posts with *hopefully* some pics through this baby!