blow out!

This is the big issue with the little Pen-EE camera: although it's incredibly easy to use, its fixed shutter speed will turn against you in really bright or low light situations, especially when you have film loaded that just won't work with a 1/60 exposure in a given situation. Take the first three photos, which I shot at mid-day on a beach. Even at f22, the 1/60 exposure with TMax400 gave me a negative back about as translucent as a piece of cardboard. I did some pretty extensive Photoshop work on those shots to salvage them from the land of massive overexposure, and what you see is what i got. Maybe I could have done a little better in the darkroom, seeing as how I'm still getting the grasp of burning and dodging digitally, but I think it's alright for what it is. 400 speed film is just too fast for a situation such as this, but when I have the camera in hand, i'd have to take what i could get and hope for the best. I usually try to keep 100 or 200ISO loaded in it now.

the last photo was taken under similar circumstances, probably TMax 400 as well, but I somehow managed to burn this one in better, so the image looks somewhat respectable. some of the open shade probably helped. this one was taken in 2001 at Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. When i went to LA for the first time in 1999 I stayed at the Youth Hostel there. I met this Navy guy who turned out to be a complete racist asshole who fetishised silly Japanese girls. I tried to crash his car a couple times by running a bunch of red lights. I also met some cool dudes at the hostel from Brazil and Japan. That was a long time ago. This shot is just an old couple and some drunk on a bench.

The first three photos are from 2003 i think and are of some good old friends of mine who I never get to see anymore. Sometimes i wonder if i'll ever see them again. One lives in LA still (I think) while the other lives in Beijing. We drove up north past Malibu on the 1 to this beach with tide pools. I remember it was very beautiful, but we didn't get in the water. We just hung out on the beach and smoked cigarettes and laid around in the sun slowly soaking in life before we went back to Silverlake or wherever it was i was staying. I wish i had taken better pictures.