Saturday, December 24, 2011

Gelatin Silver Photographs


My friend Eric took these gelatin silver photographs of me a couple days ago. He has a set up to develop them built into a suitcase so that it's portable but we did it in his apartment. The photographs are on 4x5 glass plates and are even more crisp and clear than these scans. Also, the dark parts on the scans are actually clear on the glass plates, the scans are done with a black background. The light parts on these scans look dark when the plate is held up to light and the image is then negative.

The photographs have to be developed within a few minutes of the plate being exposed and the images slowly appear on the plate, cloudy at first but within a few minutes they clear up a lot.

To prepare the plates he starts with some egg white glue on the edges to keep the image from peeling away later. He then puts on a layer of a combination of cotton and ether to help the silver stick to the plate. Next, the silver is put on inside a dark box because this is the light sensitive chemical. The camera he uses is from the 70's and is about a 1' cube, though it can expand more since it has bellows. Once the plate is exposed he pours the developer on by hand and then stops the development with water. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. The boomerang shaped hole in the second image is a place that didn't get any of the cotton-ether bonding agent so the light sensitive chemicals didn't stick.

The texture of my skin in the images is because the silver shows some of the ultra-violet spectrum that is invisible to the human eye so you can see under the first layer of skin.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Adventure Club #2: Staten Island

Adventure Club #2 went to Staten Island's Sea View Hospital which is in the middle of the Staten Island Greenbelt that Erik and I visited last month. My co-adventurists this time were Eric (not Erik!) and Valentina who were both carrying film cameras with light meters and manual focus so their pictures will probably turn out better than mine did. It was a rare sandal weather December day so we took advantage of that and went the long way through "Blood Root Valley" which was great since it's almost far enough away from anything to feel like you're in a real forest.
There are about 10 abandoned buildings which are all eerily similar. Inside there was a lot of debris and rotting away ceilings. The buildings were brick and seemed to be pretty old but there were certain things like a concrete staircase that we thought had to be from the 50's or 60's. I've read that this part of the hospital was used until the 70's so maybe they were renovated right before they were closed. One of the coolest things that we found was a big pile of metal trash outside of one of the buildings. It was interesting to see how well a lot of it had held up being outside for who knows how long.

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Monday, December 19, 2011

Adventure Club #1: Flatbush

A couple weeks ago my friend Allison and I went out to Flatbush to check out the houses where my grandparents grew up and try to find some graves at Holy Cross Cemetary. We found the houses pretty easily, on the left is my Grandma's house on Beverly Road and on the right is the building my Grandpa lived in on New York Avenue. Next we went down the street to the cemetery. When we told them we were looking for somebody with an Irish name from the 30's or 40's they said we might be there a while but we were able to find some likely candidates pretty quickly. However! When we got to the grave-spot there was nothing there but a tree. The person who was supposed to be buried there is John Drum my great-great-great(?) grandfather.

The neighborhood has changed a lot since the 40's, it's mostly West Indian now, we went to a local supermarket and I got some hot sauce for my hot sauce collection. Tomorrow I'll post some more pictures from my adventure last week to Staten Island!


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Thursday, December 1, 2011

Thanksgiving Pie Experiment

A couple days before Thanksgiving I saw some Persimmons in one of the grocery stores across Queens Blvd near the library. I had been trying to think of something interesting to make to bring to the potluck Thanksgiving that Lesley and I were going to go to at our friend Maggie's house.

I went home and investigated Persimmon pie and it turns out that the internet recipe community is pretty split between two versions. The first I call "Pumpkin Pie Style" where the persimmons are pureed, the filling has milk and eggs in it, and there is no top crust. The second, "Apple Pie Style" uses sliced persimmon, sugar, corn starch and lemon juice in the filling.

I decided to make a Pumpkin Pie Style Persimmon Pie for the "Wendsgiving" dinner I was going to at my friend Brendan and Jennette's house and an Apple Pie Style Persimmon Pie for real Thanksgiving at Maggie's house because I could make that one vegan.

Both turned out great although I didn't end up with enough filling for the Apple Style Pie (I used 4 persimmons for each pie but I should have used more for that one).

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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Staten Island Adventure

Erik was visiting last week and we decided to try to get out of the city but it turns out we didn't even have to! We grabbed some samosas and ginger-mango chutney in Jackson Heights on the way down to the Staten Island Ferry and were quickly rolling along the Staten Island Railroad to the New Dorp Station. After eventually figuring out which direction we were facing we made it to High Rock Park which ran right into Latourette Park. We found a series of winding trails marked by painted squares on trees. It was probably one of the last warm days of the year so I even got to wear sandals.

The middle of Latourette Park is supposedly one of the most isolated spots in New York City, a mile from any building! I'd believe it because we didn't even get all the way through before we had to turn back because of the daylight. On the way back we saw the Scooby Doo Van!


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Thursday, November 17, 2011

#N17

Heading toward the Brooklyn Bridge where Katie Miles is directing traffic. Hope it doesn't collapse because there are thousands of people here!

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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Rhode Island

I went to Rhode Island two weekends ago with my friend Eric. His uncle has a big party every year where they make a whole bunch of apple cider. It was great but even better was the cider! It was really cool to get out of the city by car since I never did that when I lived here before. We also got a chance to go to the beach and throw some rocks.

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Thursday, October 20, 2011

Travelin Songs

Me and Rebecca made a record over the last year! Together we are called Western Gulls and the record is called Travelin Songs. Rosie drew the birds on the cover. I also made a new website so it wouldn't just be my name, you can listen to "Travelin Songs" and more here: http://realgoodrecordings.bandcamp.com/!

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Sunday, October 16, 2011

Occupy Times Square

Occupy everything.

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Thursday, October 13, 2011

October is the busiest month!

October has been very busy so far with lots of visitors. More to come at the end of the month too! When Mariah was here we went to both the Met and the Natural History Museum. Here she is on the left at the Met with some armor, in the middle with me on the roof of the Met.

I had somehow never been to the Natural History Museum before but it was great. We saw things like this ox? Later Christina and I occupied Wall Street

Then on Monday night Becca and I went to go see Jens Lekman and the next day we visited the Unisphere in Flushing!

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Sunday, September 18, 2011

Rego Park: Real Good

Here are some pictures of my new neighborhood Rego Park, it's kind of far into Queens and because of that it's kind of weird, two blocks in one direction feels like some city in another country with fruit stands spilling out into the street and every store sign in a different language, two blocks in the other direction and you're at the mall. I'm doing some reading about New York and I discovered that Rego Park was designed by the Real Good Corporation, hence "ReGo".



On the left is my building "Walden Terrace". On the right two of the markets close to my house. There about ten markets within about a five minute walk (actually probably more like 20 markets) but they each seem to have a specialty so I end up going to a lot of them for different things. Also not for away is the mall and Queens Boulevard which is 12 lanes of crazy:

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Thursday, September 8, 2011

Back in New York

I've been back in NYC for about a week now, I live in Queens now, it's kind of far away from a lot of things but my apartment is nice and it's a new place to explore. I've had one day of work so far, it was just a meeting and things will start more on Monday. Emily came to visit over Labor Day weekend, we did a whole bunch of stuff and it was nice too see the city again with her. Here are some pictures from the first day she was here when we went to Coney Island I took the one of her she took the one of me. Her visit inspired me to do some sort of "take yourself on a tour" book so I'll probably post from illustrations I'm working on for that soon.

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Friday, August 26, 2011

Eve's bike trip pix

Here are a couple of pictures from Eve's camera from the bike trip. Also I put the rest of my pictures and her pictures on flickr.


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Monday, August 22, 2011

Bike Trip Pictures

We just made it back to Hilo after riding from Punalu'u Beach over Volcano. It took us six hours to ride the 30 miles (and 4000 feet) up the volcano but only one and a half rainy hours to ride the 30 miles back down to Hilo. Other than that the weather was nice for the whole trip and we didn't regret not bringing sleeping bags! Here are some pictuers from the trip:


Eve after the first 100 miles and climbing a hill.


My bike coming down to Punalu'u and the first campsite near Waimea.

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Saturday, August 20, 2011

Bike Trip

It is day 3 of the trip and we are about 3/4 of the way around the island. Right now we are at the southern most restaurant in the US and tonight we are going to ride 10 more miles to Punalu'u to camp on the beach. From there it is about 60 miles back to Hilo with the biggest climb yet of 3900 feet over Volcano National Park.

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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

In Hilo!

I've been in Hilo for 5 days now! It still seems like I just got here. I flew in on Friday afternoon, Martin and Eve picked me up at the airport and we immediately jumped in the ocean! We walked to downtown Hilo that night and the next day they had a goodbye party for Martin who is leaving for grad school in the mainland in 2 weeks. Sunday we went to a black sand beach near Puna and then Martin and I went to the Mauna Kea observatory visitors center where he volunteers and I got to be a first time volunteer setting up telescopes. Yesterday Martin and I took a long hike around Hilo to Rainbow Falls then to Boiling Pots then to some caves that I forget the name of. Eve and I are still trying to figure out the logistics for our bike trip around the island including getting me a bike! I keep forgetting my camera so I haven't taken any pictures except this cell phone picture from the hike yesterday.

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Friday, August 12, 2011

Hawaii Tomorrow

I'm going to Hawaii tomorrow, I think it's going to take most of the day to get there since I have a layover in Honolulu before I get to Hilo. I'm excited to go from the second rainiest city in the US to the rainiest according to Martin. I just tried to look that up and it seems like it isn't accurate at all but it's good enough for me.

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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Mt. St. Helens Lava Tubes

Last weekend Zelda, Rosie, Tommy and I went to Mt. St. Helens to climb through the Ape Cave lava tube and to run around in the sun. We left on Saturday afternoon so we could beat the crowds at the lava tubes. We camped on the side of the road in the National Forest and then in the morning I ran up a quarter mile to the base camp for people who are summiting St. Helens. We ate breakfast, went to the lava tubes and climbed through only meeting a few people along the way but when we came out the parking lot was packed, it seems like everyone was just behind us. After that we split a watermelon, went on walk through a lava forest and then found a lake to swim in. I climbed on a log and paddled it pretty far into the lake. Coming home we got stuck in traffic but it was still great. Here's some pictures:


The view of the top of St. Helens, and everyone eating breakfast.


In the cave!


Coming out of the cave.


Afterwards at the lake.

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