[alt-photo] changing the topic--sort of

[Christina Anderson]

Dear All,

I was so excited to see a bunch of emails this morning, and then to have it be a fight, bummer.  We've lost some good alt list members so let's try to keep our cool???

SO, I'll share what I have been up to and maybe change the topic, only sort of because it relates to digital.

First of all, on June 17 my husband and I were caught in the middle of a tornado on the highway traveling to MN. I mean, in the MIDDLE.  We lived, the car lived. Others did not fare too well in that bout of 39 tornadoes that day in and around Wadena MN (3 died).  It gave me quite the perspective on life. I think the reason we may not have been taken up into it is our car was packed with all our stuff for the summer (go Mercury Montego) because a car next to us was taken up and thrown 100 ft. away. 

Second, off of the personal and onto photography, in defense of digital, I was on a mission to photograph my grandmother's childhood home whose disposition this year is coming into question. In the span of 8 days and 127 hours of work I was able to take 2000 images, cull to 1300 (photograph twice a day, go to my hotel room at night and edit), put 500 images of every object in the house in a full-color magazine, upload to the web to Magcloud.com and will get, in 5 business days, a 96-page catalog of household contents.  This would not have been possible without digital. And my Nikon 14mm rectilinear which rocks.

Third, and the fun alt part--I now have 500 personal images of the place for me, out of which I will do an alt project in gum and/or platinum. So the fact that HP is going to give Epson a run for their money is great news for me!! Because my Epson 3800 is still not figured out for pt/pd negs unless I were to use all inks.

And fourth, to end on a bit of comedy to lighten your all's days up (oh hell, why not just share all my dirty laundry), it was 103 degrees in VA when I was photographing and I managed, in that kind of heat (above body temp hence no noticeable "cool draft" as in indicator) to walk down main street, walk into the restaurant, with my flowy silky skirt tucked into my undies/panties (thank God it was not a thong and thank God they were pink), showing FULL butt.  A nice waitress came running over to inform me.  SO this is NOT in defense of digital, because if there is anyone out there who took a cell phone image of me walking down main street and posted it to the Internet, I will find you :)

Chris



Christina Z. Anderson
christinaZanderson.com