Sunday, March 05, 2006

SUCCESS!

Just to warn y'all, this is gonna be a doozy of a post. I've been a bad blogger this weekend and I need to make up for it.

Finally! I finished my photo assignment! This weekend was pretty much a disaster as far as that went. My assignment was the same one that I didn't do the other day, it should be a couple posts down from this one. Yesterday afternoon when the weather wasn't so bad I went walking towards my town hall to find something to take 36 shots of. I found this really cool carousel with wooden horses and I started shooting that. Well, I didn't realize when I started that the carousel was actually RUNNING that day. I take like 3 shots and then I hear this loud buzzing noise and the stupid thing starts to move.

So, I'd sit on the bench and watch the carousel go around. I was probably creeping out the parents that were there. I was trying to make it really obvious that I was NOT photographing their children, but I still got some weird looks. When the carousel would stop, I'd scurry up to it, take between 1 and 3 shots, and then scurry back to the bench when the buzzer sounded. What fun! To add even more fun to the afternoon, I ruined 3 rolls of film.

Roll one: already in my camera when I started shooting. It was really dark so I decided to switch to a higher speed film. I hadn't taken any shots, so I was just going to rewind it and use it some other time. Well, I was winding it the wrong way and didn't realize it, so when I opened up the camera to take it out, I exposed about 3/4 of the roll.

Roll two: After I exposed roll one, I put in a roll of 3200 speed. By that time the sun had come out and seemed like it was going to stay there for a long time, and as hard as I tried I just couldn't make the light meter happy. So I decided to switch back to the 400 speed. This time I was careful about which direction I was winding the film - so careful that I wound it completely back into the canister. Mom told me that you can buy these little itty bitter tweezer things that can retrieve the film, so I might have to ask Terry if she has a pair. I do NOT want to have to throw away a completely unused roll of 3200 speed film. Anyway, then I moved on to...

Roll three: Seemed to be going really well. I actually pulled out the manual for my camera to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that I was doing it right. I loaded it fine, started shooting fine, albeit very slowly, and it seemed like the third time was going to be the charm. Until I looked down at the camera and realized I had put the ISO setting on 3200 for 400 speed film. Um, yeah, definitely not going to work. Totally undevelopable.

Totally discouraged and ready to start a bonfire with the camera, I decided to go food shopping for my dinner party.

My host parents were out of town this weekend and they told me I could have friends over for dinner if I wanted. So Emily, Leslie, and Sarah all came over. We made this delicious salad, and yes that is avocado! I'd never had it before last night, but I thought it was pretty good. We were going to have fettuccini alfredo afterwards, but we were so stuffed from the salad that we just moved right on to dessert. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of our dessert. It's really a shame, because it was just so classy that I'd love for you all to see it. We took brownie mix, added eggs and water, mixed it up, and (if you guessed "cooked it" you'd be wrong) spooned it into 4 bowls. Then we watched Pretty Woman and ate our brownie batter right from the bowl.

Mmmm.

It was a really good evening and it made me feel so much better after my disaster of a day. Those girls are so awesome and I'm really happy we were able to do something like that. It's such an amazing validation to know that hey, maybe I CAN cook after all. Not serious cooking, but I have a much larger repetoire that I did before I came to Paris. I've become much more resourceful and I like it.

This morning I woke up before my alarm went off and noticed that the sun was shining. I literally vaulted out of bed, threw on some clothes, and ran back to the carousel to do my assignment.

It was closed. There was a big metal gate around it.

I was angry.

I walked up the road a little bit and I found these guys: a postman on a bicycle giving a bootylicious ballerina her letter. I thought they were kinda funky and pretty cool, so I decided to use them as my subject. I took 19 pictures and then my camera died. I don't think it suffered much, so that was good. But I had no extra batteries.

I was angry.

I came back home and frantically emailed my prof. She sent me back a few places that might be open on Sundays, and thankfully I was able to find one of them. It was on the Champs-Elysée so I definitely paid more than I would've liked to, but it meant I could go back and finish my assignment. And now it's done! I feel much better now. And on the way home, since I had my digital, I took a few shots of the trees outside my house. I think this is a good sign, don't you?

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