Mardi Gras 2018

Although I've been visiting New Orleans since "before the storm," I'd never been to Mardi Gras before. I decided this was the year to do it, since it's also the 300th anniversary of the founding of New Orleans. Thanks to some friends who are Mardi Gras veterans (and now, locals) I was even given a chance to march in one of the oldest parades on Mardi Gras day itself with bagpipers Kilts of Many Colors. Since I was going to be spending my time either trying to catch (and dodge!) beads or marching, I decided to bring only my smallest camera - a 110 from Lomography called the "Baby Diana." Everyone seemed amused at the tiny camera, but the tiny negatives are extremely lo-fi...and a pain to scan!

National Cathedral: Space, Light & Sound event

Artomatic was amazing, as always. Met some great artists, saw some really original pieces, and learned a lot about presenting my work and even (yikes!) networking and talking to people about photography. Now that I'm back to real life, I'm going to get back to the scanning mines. These are from the Washington National Cathedral's February program called "Seeing Deeper." For one night they removed all the chairs and lit up the Gothic interior with colored, changing lights. I read up on low-light photography before I went, but I was mostly just winging it. The only shots that came out were from my Diana+, which I used with a long exposure trigger and a light tripod. I tried metering with an iPhone app, but with the lights changing and the stark contrasts I was mostly left to guessing. Even with high-speed film and shooting on the longest exposure, nothing came out from my Pentax; I'm guessing I should have used the "bulb" exposure and held it open as long as I did for these - about 5 to 7 seconds.