I have reached a point where long reads, novels, fiction or nonfiction, just don’t work for me anymore. I can do short stories, but poetry is what really can capture my attention.

Went to my favorite bookstore two weekends ago and saw this title, and couldn’t resist picking it up. One of the best I’ve come across in a while. Rita Dove is well known, was the poet laureate, but I had never read her stuff before. I know I will return to it, because it needs to be read more than once.

You wanted to know, Scott, so there you go. As my one commenter, you should have your request honored.

Picked up two rolls worth of processed film negatives Friday and got them scanned in earlier today. These were shot on different film and with my trusty Olympus OM1, some using the 50mm and some the 135mm. The film was a 200 ISO, shot at box speed, and I am digging the results.

I normally like to travel light when I go out to photograph, so carrying two cameras is not something I like to do on a normal excursion. Yesterday I took my OM1, which is more compact than a normal SLR, and I also took my Pen f digital camera with just a wrist strap and small 50mm manual lens, the Pen in a small sling bag that I have. I was able to interchange them as needed pretty seamlessly, so I’m going to continue that process for a bit.

Still no idea when the next zine will happen, or what it will look like.

Shot some film for a change recently. Been a couple of years since I pretty much had given up on film. Friend gave me a Pentax K1000 that had belonged to her father in law, so I bought a couple of rolls of Kodak Tri-X and decided to shoot at 200 ISO instead of the box speed 400, based on a recommendation from a pro photographer I used to follow on line.

Frankly, I didn’t notice much difference, and it cost 4.00 more per roll to get it processed. Maybe if you are going to print from negatives in a darkroom you can see a difference, but to scan negatives to jpegs and edit digitally, not worth the extra cost. And there is very good film for half the cost of Tri-X out there right now.

Here is my favorite from the two rolls. Digital still works better for me day to day. With the cost of film and processing, it’s more of a luxury item right now.

There were three months in between the first and second issues of the zine, and it felt after the second one came out that a quarterly timeframe seemed about right. That means that the third should be coming in early September. I should therefore be working on it now, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Though I have plenty of images and potential words to fill a third that would be similar to the first two, there seems to be a shift happening in my focus and what I am photographing right now. I first thought that this shift might be reflected in the fourth issue, but now I seem inclined to include some of this in the third.

The third issue will come when it feels right and not on some contrived time schedule. How silly to have ever thought otherwise.

I picked up fifteen copies of Issue 2 at the printer on Friday. There are design changes in evidence, photos and words are edge to edge, words are overlaying photos instead of being on blank white paper.

I will probably make an effort to reduce the text size some in the next issue to try and give a little bit more room at the edges of pages.

Overall I am very pleased.