It’s been a long time since last regular post. I’ve been quite busy working on my dissertation prospectus which I’ll be defending tomorrow (today resp.). Then my parents are coming and we will be heading north to the trip around the east cost.
But anyway, this post is quite long so I hope you enjoy it. We start at March 2nd, I guess, when we went to Dauphine Island in Alabama to enjoy a day on the beach and some cold ocean water. It was actually pretty good day but I got a sunburn as never in my life. Literally my whole body was red, after two days I got the worst skin rush ever (btw, forcing me get up at 4am and drive to a drug store to buy some skin analgetics). Awfull, never again.
On the other note, the Dauphine Island is now spoiled with the oil spill. What a disaster. F…ing idiots – BP.
BTW, those two things on the horizon are oil rigs, exactly the same as the one which exploded.
Zuz and Margo.
Darcie, Scott, Lauren, and their dog Casey.
Marc was the one who went first. It was cold but after a while it felt pretty good. None of the ladies were brave enough to go in.
Sherman.
Marc and Brian.
Nice hotel. Makes the beach more attractive :-).
Dauphine Island.
and I repeat, it was on March 2nd. Ain’t that cool.
thank you Darcie
Pontchartrain causeway, not sure if it still is but it used to be the longest bridge in the world (23 miles). testing kodak retina IIa. Has some haze inside the lens which I could not clean but shoots great. It’s small and I love it.
a family. in PJ’s coffee.
the bird took it. they are smart and used to.
I’m glad he didn’t take a shit on my backpack.
this is supposed to be a house projected by one of the Frank Lloyd Wright’s students. If it is true, I see where it’s coming from.
french fountains with buddhas :-)
Goethe and Nietzsche.
medium format.
the Wright’s student house again.
Who dat, believe dat.
estimated exposure around 7s on f3.5 I guess.
she’s smilling because she eats chocolate.
There was a French quarter festival. It was actually my first one in three years of my stay here. It’s a lot of music (for free) and a lot of food (still in the US, right). This is the good one.
that girl was hot :-)
Zydepunks were recommended to us and it was worth going. The name says it all.
two horn players.
in the tree.
I love those stupid Hawaian shirts (when somebody else is wearing them of course).
you have to give people chance to spend their money, right?
my favorite hotel monteleone.
she’s watching you.
I agree.
perfect pose.
Every time I go around I have to stop and listen. They are really good.
in the coffee shop on the way home (still in the quarter though).
she had to have a muffin.
I very much like this one.
his sweater was sort of fitting to the floor tile.
another watcher.
two squabs in the flea market.
horse transporters. there is a horse whatever and a veterinary clinic.
In Marigny, the other day I went to french quarter fest again but alone (zuza working).
peeing fountain on the porch = sick and kitsh.
crawfish boil.
some lefovers from st. patrick’s day. Pat O’Brian’s is a pub.
just chilling wit the trash.
japanese quintet. really good although the scene looked weird.
D. Man – I know I should step little bit back but there was quite a bit of traffic there and I was in a hurry.
I only regret I did not see the person coming. I would be faster, or wait longer, or at least wouldn’t cut the head off.
tight space.
I really had to take this shot. Pants squeezed into the fat ass always look disgusting.
chinese foot massage with ATM inside.
clowns.
wallstreet is at war with america. and a huge parrot.
twins.
that’s Zuza on the right.
in April, we flew to Albuquerque, NM for the AAPA conference. This time Zuza traveled with me, just to see another part of the US. Albuquerque is kind of a smaller city and the overall impressions were definitely not the same as from Chicago last year. It is in the dessert and I tell you, arriving from Louisiana was hell. The air was so dry that my eyes dried out, the skin was stretched etc. 100% humidity in New Orleans is killing but the dryness even more for us. The conference was good, enjoyed a lot of new mexican food and hope I won’t eat it any soon (it just burns, burns, burns regardless what you eat – and don’t get me wrong, I like spicy food but this was just a killing machine).
still over the Louisiana and the Mississippi.
this is new mexico.
sandia mountains
albuquerque airport.
pueblean style architecture. from adobes – dried out mud bricks.
strangely, wistarias were everywhere.
reminds me one shot of HCB.
old one…
and a new one.
shoes. oh and the magenta tone is again from scanning kodak bw400cn as a color neg. BTW, I love the film but besides 24frame 3pack in walmart it is so expensive. I won’t be able to shoot it when we move back home. I already have a huge stock of other films recently ordered from freestyle photo, awaiting our east cost trip.
going to the Uni. of New Mexico campus.
pueblo architecture even on campus, nice.
student midday nap
this was the most horrible thing not only on campus but in the whole albuquerque as well. Huge glazed statues of mexican dancers. She looked like a super whore and like an ape.
on the other side this was nice.
albuqurque downtown church.
vespa only the vespa.
sushi bar ID.
kimo, the movie theatre.
one more note on the magenta tone. It already knew that its strength is influenced by the intensity of light but these levels were unexpected even for me. But I left it like this cause I think it fits the dessert feelings from that place.
there is a huge biopark (zoo, botanical garden and even an aquarium).
I wanted to see the Rio Grande river so we walked a bit more.
its muddy as hell. the place around looked like in Africa.
golf course.
note the “european hospitality” sign. we had to laugh. Not only that our experience does not fit it but in such a cheap motel I would doubt this to be true. But maybe….who knows.
this is where we (and other 50 anthropologists) stayed. I booked it up over hotwire, paid, and when we returned home I found out that they charged my card again. So I had to call the hotel and they corrected it.
in front of museum of modern art.
Sandia mountains on the horizon.
the hotel where the conference took place, the guest rooms part was just awful but the rest (conf. rooms, lobbys etc.) was pretty nice.
Trent (my advisor) stayed in this one only because it was in the neighborhood where he lived as a graduate student on UNM
everywhere Trent goes, he has to take picture of this little bear for his daughter. It’s kinda nice.
Trent, Joanna, and Zuza.
super cool house called spaceship (if Trent did not lie).
this one is just next to it.
this is about Yale av. not that horrible bleeefood.
leaving albuquerque.
DFW (inter-terminal train).
it was rainy in Dallas.
home sweet home (although not in alabama) :-).
few more shots from new mexico. canon III, fed 50/3.5 – on UNM campus again.
I like that lens.
bad, bad, bad.
view from our hotel. nothing.
again, around the Rio Grande. like in Africa.
yellow line.
back in new orleans.
waiting for the mass probably :-)
various coffee shops.
some of my favorite street objects.
I was writing my prospectus (so we’re getting to the end of april) behind the glass in the PJ’s and she was just pretty so I had to take a shot.
Calvin.
Bulldog’s pub.
like the small gummy bird.
used bike shop and repair station.
one of the dresses I brought her from Portugal last year. Just finishing the roll (I have more but I can’t show them :-) ).
would you put these on your porch?
for April 28th we got tickets for the Jazz fest (rather expensive – around 60 bucks) for free. We could choose the day between thursday and sunday. We were deciding between friday (main guest Areta Franklin) and sunday (B.B. King). Decided for friday, when we entered, we met our friend who told us Franklin canceled her show. We were so pissed and even more so because the whole festival really sucked. It was all about food and money. It was like a big rock music festival but nobody apparently thought about the fact that with jazz music it is just wrong. In the end, I had to call it the “Lame fest” instead of “Jazz fest”.
at least, they recycled. probably the only thing worth the value there.
the Mardi Grass indians.
that weird word means hawaian.
the mango ice balls.
Mr. Okra. He has mobile vegetable selling. Sometimes going through our street, he advertises through singing the songs about what kinds of vegetables he has etc. Pretty funny.
huge banana.
I forgot, one more good thing on the Lame fest – they had Pilsner Urquell even with the original plastic cups.
something that actually has been in Plzen.
it was supposed to rain, so a lot of peole had rubber boots. You can buy all sorts of them, stylish, colorful – whatever you want.
no comment.
it looked like the water comes to the fountains from the pond behind. It probably didn’t but it looked weird.
do you need to send or ship something from the festival? no problem.
pretty lady.
the only performance that was worth to stay were Gipsy kings. They played the old hits but it wasn’t at least boring.
man and his cigar.
beer seller and a random lady got together to dance.
I like those raincoats.
sometime in between all those events, I bought few new things. One is voigtlander vitessa A. Worked ok, needed some claning (rangefinder, lens). Tested it with a color kodak 400 and I’m very pleased with the results. Although I have to say that it doesn’t hold well in the hand because strangly the righ hand side is smaller than the left one. The lens is really sharp (btw it’s xenon 50/2) and colors are very nice.
that used to be a frog.
black dog and cat.
I also bought a Leica IIIc. In nice condition, seemed to work well, however after letting an old film going through it, I found out that speeds are off. I decided to work on it and finally learned how to service speeds (rollers tension etc.) with the help of tv tester. I’m glad we still have an old analog tv that we can’t use because we don’t have digital receiver. I got the speeds work reasonably well and I’m glad because it’s a nice little shooter.
tulane baseball.
me and leica. I was growing a mustache for the cinqo de mustache party we had but its now gone (I don’t want to look different for my prospectus defense).
The Times Picayune – the local “New York Times”.
skull and crossed bones.
our birdies.
one of the few things that are not so great on leica IIIc is that it frames slightly off of what you see in the viewfinder. The window cover should be there complete.
in Czech we usually build bird houses, here you buy them in the Home Depot.
that’s all folks. it was long and hopefully a bit enjoyable. few more rolls on the way.
