Fall Break

Will these all go out on Sundays? No, probably not. That said, I had kicked around a few ideas earlier in the week that didn't bear fruit, but I did get an email from my film processing lab that my rolls of film had been developed, so I thought it would be fun to take a little photographic trip (or two). The title of this post comes from one of my favorite songs.

Backing up: About a year ago I saw a post from a photographer friend on how much he and his partner were enjoying shooting half-frame pictures using a Kodak Ektar, a cheap little retro camera that you can pick up for ~$50 new. I ordered one, a case for it, and a roll of film with 36 exposures, which really means 72 images, since they are half-frame shots. I figured I would get back in the habit of shooting film and it would encourage me to get out and take pics more in a way that the highly advanced digital camera almost all of us carry around almost all the time doesn't.

It turns out 72 pictures is a lot of pictures to take.

Another thing that has changed since I stopped taking pictures with a full-fledged film camera is that the security scanning devices at airports have become more exacting, and that specifically the CT scanners that many airports use will ruin pretty much any undeveloped film that passes through them. So I found myself ahead of a mid-October trip trying to use up as many of the pics on my initial roll as I could so I could start fresh when I got to my destination with a new roll. The easiest way to do this was to cruise around Long Beach looking for interesting Halloween decoration displays like

and

and

So when I got on a plane bound for Pittsburgh, I had an empty camera and a plan: I would have a roll of film sent to my mom's, take pictures on my trip, and mail off the roll before flying home from Rochester, NY. I traveled by train between Pittsburgh and Rochester, so no need to worry about security ruining my film, as no terrorist can be bothered to so much as threaten rail travel in the US. They may actually not even know it's still a thing.

In Pittsburgh most of the photos I took that turned out were either of the cemetery near Squirrel Hill that I walked through with my mom, or the defunct steel mill that I visited, also with my mom.

The steel mill tour was over two hours long and...maybe a little too thorough. Fascinating as it was, I think we probably could have covered the same info less than half the time. I was also getting tense about my upcoming overnight train trip, which seemed fun when I planned it, but in my planning I had somehow missed that it included a train change and two hour layover in Cleveland at 2am. This ended up being fine and I had a great trip, but also something like 80% of my fellow Amtrakers were Amish, and everyone else seemed to be wearing sweats or pajamas.

In Rochester I got to have a friend show me around the city, which is the historical home of the Kodak corporation, which still has the Kodak signage on a beautiful old building, though you can't make it out here because half-frame photos do not offer a lot of detail at distance:

I love both Pittsburgh and Rochester for similar reasons: they're once-bustling towns whose primary industry and glory have long passed, and they're just trying to keep going on what they've got, surrounded by reminders of how good things used to be. I'm sure there's a greater metaphor for something here, but I can't think what it could be. Anyway, here are some more pictures of Rochester:

Finally, I became obsessed with this building behind my hotel that apparently used to have a revolving restaurant and observation deck atop it. If I ever won the lottery, I would absolutely use some of that money to return to the citizens of upstate New York their birthright of being able to drink wondrous cocktails while slowly rotating and taking in the panarama of the surrounding metropolis.

As you can see in the above photo, I chose to stay at the Downtown Rochester Wyndham on the advice of the friend I was visiting, who said it was a five minute walk to their place. It was, and it was perfectly fine for my purposes, but I have to say, I have never before stayed in a hotel where I think I might have been the only guest in the entire place. I never saw another traveler, and the electric eye on the front doors were sometimes turned completely off, meaning I had to go around to a side entrance. The thermostats were all also cranked to ungodly temps. When I checked in, the vents in my room were still blowing hot air in spite of the display reading 83 degrees. The following morning, when I asked a question of the teenager working the front desk, who was wearing a jacket and beanie and sitting directly in front of a space heater, I happened to clock its LED as she checked something on the computer.

It read 95.