True Friends

Post-Script: As I made mention in this piece, I made numerous goofs while creating this print. It started with the first negative, where I tripped the shutter before reminding her to not blink, resulting in an otherwise nice image ruined by half-closed eyes. The subsequent negative came out fine, but I wasted several sheets of print paper in a row with simple mistakes like forgetting to move the film holder back to its preset focus distance prior to making the print exposure; and metering the gray card with the meter set to incident mode instead of reflected, resulting in an over-exposed print. It's obvious that I need more practice with the camera, to get my mental checklist more firmly established in these grayed, tiring brain cells of mine. I noticed this happens more often on the first day of my weekend, after a few long days at the factory. Perhaps I need to type up a concise procedure checklist, that I can briefly review prior to committing valuable photo paper to potential ruin.

Now that I have a few decent paper negative portraits made, I need to embark on an extended printing session, to make up a set of nice example prints that will be mounted on a display board, to accompany the camera out on the streets.

I'm also making notes of further ways to refine this process. I still struggle with arranging the dry bits of my kit; today I decided that I need to cut another piece of laminate flooring and use it as a shelf over the top opening in the wheeled office crate, where I can store items needing to stay dry but within easy reach.

Typecast via Olivetti Underwood 21. This is a nice typewriter, though the keyboard action is a bit mushier than the Smith Coronas Galaxy 12 and Silent that I've been using these last few months. It's also rather heavy, and bulky. But a fine desktop, semi-portable typing iron.