Lack of Cash…

This is both true in a metaphorical and literal sense. I’m broke.

Well, when I say that, I’m not really broke. I just have a very limited amount of money to play with until next fortnight. Yep, the 2nd of December. I got paid yesterday too!

You may be sitting there scratching your head and thinking ‘It’s only been one day since he got paid’. You’d be right. But money seems to go away from me quickly. I’ve got to pay rent, the money that I owed my brother, a frigging HUGE mobile bill (thanks to the imbeciles working at Telstra) and $700 worth of savings. The huge amount of cash put away is all part of a plan that I’ve started with one of my work colleagues – and once I’ve ‘saved’ the money I can’t touch it. Which is good, but sucks when I’ve got $100 left in the bank, a tank of petrol and a bid in for a Yashica MAT EM Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera on eBay.

Oh yeah, I’m thinking of getting another camera. Why? Because of what it shoots – square negatives. How cool is that? And at the moment it’s $50. If it gets much higher I won’t worry (especially since it doesn’t have a working light meter, but it’s in awesome condition). It looks like this:

How cool is that?

My most apparent lack of moolah also means that I can’t get any new film (which is going to be XP2, and lots of it). This means that I’ll be shooting a lot more 120 format film (which would be cool if I got the EM), and 35mm slide film. I won’t be able to get it developed though – but that’s ok (I’ll shoot five or so rolls and then send it up to Brisbane again in a month or two). And Fuji Velvia isn’t good for portraits – unless you cross process it.

Cross processing is simply processing a film in the wrong chemicals. So what you do is grab a roll of E-6 film (like my Velvia) and process it in C-41 chemicals. The results can be really freaky, and are super variable. Usually you get stronger blacks, and more subdued tones (but sometimes really strong ones). Do a search on Flickr and you’ll be surprised. I’ll definitely be experimenting with it in the future.

So all I have to do is keep on shooting (more pictures when the DVD from Brisbane gets here with all my Bronica shots from August until last week), and keep on not wasting money. That’s easier than it sounds with me.

And guess what? It’s my birthday tomorrow (the 19th for those people a day behind). I’m turning 24. Awesome.