The awesome team over at Fourcornersdark.com just featured an interview with me on their website. In it I talk about my love of toy photography. Check it out here.
New Short Film Project
My friend Mike and I are working on a new short film. We don’t have a title yet, but it’s about a man with a camera for a head. We spent the afternoon shooting up in the mountains of North Carolina, and got about half the film shot. Here’s a little “cast photo” we took.
I was lucky enough to be the one to don the elaborate camera head that we created and play the camera-man. It’s not very fun to be basically blind and walking on treacherous mountain trails! Here’s a little teaser of what the camera-man looks like.
We hope to have the film finished in the next two weeks.
Christmas In Michigan
Here are some images from my Christmas in Michigan with my family.
Christmas In Michigan from Sean Anderson on Vimeo.
Rudolph Rock
My bros and I rock out Rudolph!
Anderson Thanksgiving 2009
Every Thanksgiving we gather with my Mom’s side, also Andersons, and enjoy a few days of food and fellowship. this year I decided to chronicle the festivities.
Analog Blog
I love to write poetry. There was a time when a spiral bound notebook was my best friend, full to the bursting with youthful longings and observations in stilted rhyme. I’d like to think my poetry has matured since then, but I’m still very much untrained.
In my late teen years my poetry made an exodus from the pages of notebooks to the word processor documents on my computer. I even found myself writing poetry on a keyboard instead of with a handy pen on lined paper. For me, poetry will always be a handwritten art form, but the editing and storage aspect had become digital.
I’ve found in recent years that this is no longer the case.
I love buying small leather journals. I have at least five. Some become personal journals, some become concept and scratch books, others don’t really have a purpose and remain mostly blank. I have, however, created what I call a poetry finishing journal–the final resting place for my poems that I deem worthy of this honor. Most of my poems still go on my hard drive, but I no longer trust this as a safe medium. I’ve heard too many horror stories about burnt out drives and viruses, and though I do have a Mac, I just feel that analog is safer.
I guess you can call it my analog blog. Hey, there’s a thought for the yuppies and hipsters! I could make a fortune on overpriced faux leather journals, maybe even start a cafe with public “analog blogs” chained to reading tables so anyone can peruse the newest entries. This could be big!
What I’ve Been Up To Lately
Anderson Family Band
My Dad and my brothers have been playing together for about two years now. Here are some videos I made for them.
My Young Radio Life
It was a Saturday afternoon in October. I was ten or so and laying on my stomach on the faded yellow carpet of our living room floor with my ear to the speaker. Every Saturday, after chores with Dad, we’d turn on “Those Were The Days,” hosted by Chuck Shaden, an Old Time Radio show that ran from 1 to 5 on WNIB 96.9. Saturday was radio day in the Anderson home. When Shaden signed off at 5 to “Thanks for the Memories,” we’d dial over to Wisconsin Public Radio to hear a Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. Tacos for supper, Keillor for company and a bath for Sunday.
Now that I think back, my young life was practically submersed in radio. In the morning I’d wake up to WGN Radio 720 with Roy Leonard, “Spike” and Cathy and Judy. Every day at lunch we’d turn on Rush Limbaugh, and every weekday afternoon at 3 we’d tune into Moody radio to hear another episode of “Adventures in Odyssey.” John Williams would fill our afternoons with lively banter, and on Saturday mornings Lou Manfredini would tell us how to fix up our house and Nick Digilio would review the movies. On Saturday evenings after Keillor there was Weekend Radio and “Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy.” Sometimes we’d stay up late to listen to Cub games announced by Pat and Ron and to Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg debating tirelessly into the night with obscure members of intelligencia. When I couldn’t sleep I’d lay in my bed with headphones clamped to my ears, listening to Wisconsin public radio talk shows, Chapter a Day, Le Show with Harry Shearer, and finally BBC news at 12. I heard plenty of strange things through those late-night headphones: Big-foot encounters in the north woods, rampant liberal ranting, British news.
It was a Saturday afternoon in October and Chuck Shaden had just announced “Adventures by Morse, Episode 1: the City of the Dead.” The City of the Dead was a massive graveyard that lay in an abandoned valley. Only two old men tended it. I could see it in my mind, stark grave stones mounting in thousands of jagged rows against the darkening sky. The two men had heard the bell ringing in the old church, the bell that had been removed almost ten years ago. They went to investigate the ruined building and encountered a screeching thing in the belfry that attacked them and tore at their faces. I had never been more terrified in all my life. I lay stock-still on the carpet, sweating and straining to hear what would happen next, what this monstrosity might do. I never heard the end of the story, I must have turned it off in terror.
I just discovered this series online. What seemed then like the most awful imagination of man now sounds tame to my ears. The power of radio has lost some of its hold on me, but I still listen.
Ages Lost
I walked down a lonely dock in the misty sea air.
I climbed high in pine trees that grew from the ocean floor.
I rode in a boat towards a massive tree made of stone.
I watched in awe as a world I had come to love fell apart because of what I had done.
Cyan made magic. Rand and Robyn Miller created worlds so real they made me cry. I wanted to visit the lost city of D’ni and breath the air of ancient tragedy, to climb to the summit of Riven’s main island and watch the lake people work on the sun-baked rocks. I wanted to sit with Atrus in his cavern study, listening to him talk of the science of word bending and world building, to peer into his three cursed prison books and speak words of sad forgiveness to those too dangerous to release.
Myst is no more. The worlds have faded into antiquated computer programs and slowly dying sequels. The “3D” realm of Myst V held only a scent of that forgotten dream. Perhaps such beauty cannot be repeated. Perhaps the Myst games, like the ancient civilization of D’ni, will be covered by the dust of ages. But I still dream of the blue waters of Riven.
The 10th of July
Last week I was invited along with the crew I’m working with this summer to an anunal 10th of July party. I was a little confused until my friend explained that the family that throws the party schedules it on the weekend after the 4th so that more people can come. There must have been up to two hundred people there. There was good food, a hay ride, a bluegrass band, and one of the coolest and longest fireworks displays I’ve ever seen! I brought my HV20 with, and I just finished editing the footage. Click here to watch it.
Pen-EEs and Selenium Meters
I was doing some prop hunting with my art direction teacher this weekend. We visited an extremely run-down junk store. The quiet and almost toothless proprietor took us into a side room and showed us a box full of old cameras. Most of them were broken Polaroids, but down at the bottom was one of these little beauties.
The Olympus Pen-EE was first produced in 1961. It’s a half-frame camera, which means it shoots only half a frame of 35mm film at a time. The man at the junk store let me buy it for eight dollars. considering these types of models seem to be going for between fifty and a hundred dollars on ebay, I got a good deal!
The Pen-EE is one of the earlier automatic exposure cameras. When set on automatic it uses a selenium meter placed in a honeycomb-like array around the lens to decides the aperture. This is what camerapedia.org has to say about selenium meters:
“The electric parts of such a meter are an electromagnetic measuring instrument which is connected to anode and cathode of a selenium photo cell that produces more or less electric power when exposed to more or less light. The optical part of such a meter is a window in front of the photo cell’s light sensitive side. The window’s surface is usually structured like a honeycomb made of convex lenses. This type of window helps to bundle the light coming from the direction to where the photo cell is directed. The mechanical part of a selenium meter is an analog calculator which accepts exposure value and film speed as input parameters for showing the possible aperture/shutter speed combinations for correct exposure.”
I find this all so fascinating! It’s so cool to find almost 50 year old technology that still functions today without batteries. And my new camera definitely still functions. When I set it to auto and try to take a picture in a dark room, it flashes a little orange gel in the viewfinder and it won’t snap a picture. Definitely an outside point-and-shoot. I can’t wait to shoot a roll!
Mr. Toad Syndrome: Toy Cameras
I think I have a minor case of Mr. Toad Syndrome. I’ve been told that symptoms of this disease include a constant changing of pursuits, an incurable obsession with the current pursuit being pursued, and a total rejection of old pursuits in favor of new ones. Luckily, symptom three has yet to strike. Though I do burn through a lot of random hobbies, at least I hold onto to every one I acquire to some degree. My newest pursuit is toy cameras. This website got me hooked.
Toy cameras are generally vintage cameras from the fifties and sixties that are made of plastic. They have plastic lenses, often use medium format film, and come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. Just type “toy camera” into an ebay search. You’ll see what I mean. The most loved and adored toy of toy camera users is the Holga, a late bloomer that has tons of awful deficiencies including vignetting and light leaks. All these flaws culminate in a wonderfully distorted, dream-like image that is extremely addicting to shoot and collect. I was considering buying one when a friend offered to give me one of his old “toys.”
Introducing the Six Twenty Sunbeam, an off-brand TLR camera manufactured in Chicago.
Twin Lens Reflex cameras are really neat, both to look at and to use. The smaller bottom lens takes the picture. The larger top lens capture the image aimed at and projects it onto a ground glass on top of the camera. Kind of a primitive LCD screen.
The upside, or downside depending on how you look at it, is that you have to hold the camera below your face and look down to take a picture. I think it’s a blast!
I’m still cleaning up this old and slightly damaged camera. I’ll get some film for it soon and post some pics once I get them developed. Whoo hoo, what an absolutely glorious, scrumtuous way to take photographs! Toot toot!
Are We Human?
Pay my respects to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good
Give my regards to soul and romance,
They always did the best they could
And so long to devotion
You taught me everything I know
Wave goodbye
Wish me well..
You’ve gotta let me go
Lyrics – The Killers
The Epic Quest of The Book Hunter and the Tragic Demise of Suprema
In the tradition of a generation of bloggers, I will now depart on a long-winded discussion of some of my hobbies.
I love book hunting! There are two thrift stores right off campus and both of them sell softcovers for fifty cents a piece! It’s really the thrill of the hunt that I love the most, digging through dusty piles of outdated computer manuals, crummy romance fiction, and hundreds of worn copies of Clancy, Crichton, Grisham, Ludlum, Koontz, and King. On a shelf of hundreds of books there may only be one I want, but finding it is half the fun!
I went book hunting today and brought back five treasures for two dollars and fifty cents! Brave New World, Howard’s End, Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and The Inheritors by William Golding, who also wrote Lord of the Flies. I started reading The Inheritors, which is about cavemen facing new, more human rivals. Definitely against my worldview, but Golding’s portrayal of darkened humanity seeking light is beautiful.
I was to the third chapter at Starbucks, drinking a free drink, when a furious thunder shower hit. I stayed longer than I wanted to, till the storm blew over, then walked to CVS to pick up a battery for my recently acquired $10 camera.
My Suprema has been kind of a pain lately. I like the image it produces, but its tiny and useless LCD screen sucks up all the battery life. The battery died after only a few uses and I discovered at CVS that buying a new one would cost me more than half of what the camera is worth! While I was trying to think of a solution to my dilemma my eyes fell on a little Vivitar mini digital camera the store was selling, the exact model I had years ago that I loved so much. $9, no dumb battery-sucking features, a sturdier design, and it runs ten times longer on a cheap triple A!
I’m sad to say that I purchased it, and that my little blue Suprema is being retired. I miss you already little guy . . . NOT! Here are some test pics I’ve shot already. A little blurrier and more pixelated, but I can live with it.
Yoshi’s Cookies
My new favorite puzzle game. Dare I say it? More fun than Tetris!
Human Interest
My Grandpa recently passed away. After the funeral we were looking through shoeboxes full of his old photos and I couldn’t help noticing a response I kept having. I was fascinated by all the photos of people, wether I recognized them or not, but whenever I would come to a pile of nature shots, or vacation photos full of architecture and tourist attractions, I would impatiently flip through them until I encountered more human faces.
My photography teacher stressed this principle to me back in freshman year, but I was still surprised to discover it for myself: human interest is key. No matter how interesting you think a building or an animal or a tree is now, the only pictures that will count in the future will be of people. People are important to us. If we know them in the present, we will be fascinated by their younger selves. If we don’t know them, we will be filled with curiosity: who were they? What were they like. Photos we take of ourselves today will help inform people tomorrow of how we lived.
I was struck by this cultural aspect while looking at old picture of my Grandma’s father and his family who immigrated from Sweden. They were lively and loved sport; the girls played ukuleles, the boys wore their dapper American suits and coats proudly. I never had the chance to meet these descendants of mine, but by looking at their lives in photographic print, I have a connection to them that I would otherwise never have had.
In this digital age we have a great opportunity to capture our lives for the future. Digital cameras give us better quality and greater quantity, but there is now a much greater danger of losing our precious pictures to the ravages of time and constant upgrading technology. As long as we vigilantly watch our hard drives for signs of crashing and always, always copy our digital photos to new and better storage means, we should be fine, but I still think the best way to preserve memories is in a shoebox.
A Lo-Fi Afternoon
Enjoyed lunch with Kristin and Joy. Had dining common coffee.
Walked down Wade Hampton into Greenville. Flagrant copyright infringement!
The beauties of nature.
The beauties of gas station pump caps.
Walking past the cemetary. I need to smile more.
The King of the Hotdogians!
The Reedy River was a raging rapid!
I found out my camera only takes 24 pics before it runs out of space. Next time I’ll wipe it before I go on an adventure so I’ll have more room.