Balls of Fury

Watching the Olympics tonight made me realize that I had some old photos in the archives that document the holiest of holy Olympic competitions…PING PONG! While fierce young guns duked it out under the midday heat, a grizzled veteran re-entered the fray, returning to the sport he had forsaken so many years ago. The mama was on hand to officiate the proceedings, and the rocks were slobbery as Zorro maintained order.

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Griffith Park

Wait, those hipsteresque boarders existed before Instagram? YES, and these black beauties come courtesy of a re-purposed Kodak Six-20 dating back to the 1940’s. After a brief stint as the focal point (pun intended) of my camera display at the old apartment, and an even briefer fall from said display when it slipped and destroyed my helpless Kindle, I noticed that the little black box might have had some life left in it. A far cry from current DSLR’s overflowing with useless features, the Kodak likes to keep it simple, like really simple, like choose between 5-10 feet or infinity simple. But it was so different and intriguing I had try. After a little digging on the internet, I figured out how to snip/cut/file down a 120 roll to make it fit into the 620 brownie, and from there I took went into the field at Griffith Park. I had long been yearning to re-visit the iconic L.A. landmark , and the resurrected brownie proved the perfect incentive to finally check it off my list. While I was at it, I brought along the Yashica to polish off a roll that had been sitting lonely for a while, and as a backup because I had little faith that any of the 8 shots from the brownie would make-it. It was an awesome day, made even more amazing when I pulled the film from the tank to see gorgeous 6×9 brownie boxes smiling back at me.

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1600mm

“The 800mm f/5.6 is the photography equivalent of a D cup – not a necessity, but wherever you go with it, you’ll make lots of new friends”

So how many new friends would there be if you doubled up to 1600mm? With a newly rented behemoth, Jehad and I hit the streets to find out with some less-than-inconspicuous street shooting. Making the attached 5D look like a cheap point-and-shoot, the fully manual “telescope” proved a tricky beast to tame, but with everything dialed in we simply sat back and waited…2 blocks away from our subjects.

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