swordvixen

[swordvixen]

Mt. Charleston in Nevada.

Summer 2007.

[swordvixen]

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Summer 2007

[swordvixen]

This cross-posted on FB with my comment over there about technicolor medievalism.

As I said there, "Give me a KCD2-alike aesthetic set in Northern Italy and I'll quit my job to run it."

cartoon by @couldbeworse-comic

[swordvixen]

Spaces That No Longer Exist

Spaces that no longer exist. Photographed May 2005 in the South of England.

[swordvixen]

[swordvixen]

[swordvixen]

APX 100 on the go

Gerolstein

Bacharach

Düsseldorf

[swordvixen]

Toy camera+Ortho film+sepia tone+places that have hardly changed in 150 years. That's all you need to recreate the look of early photography.

[swordvixen]

[swordvixen]

Pasting what I posed in Bsky here, too. The lady I spoke to told me "we are getting a lot of calls about this." IT IS WORKING. CALL. JUST FUCKING CALL.

If you find it difficult to find the words, you can use this as a script:

"Hi, my name is _____ and I would like to file a formal complaint. I'm calling about a recent change to Visa's payment processing. I am being blocked from making legal purchases on (Steam, Itch.io, etc., whatever you use). I am an adult with money, and I should be able to spend my money wherever I please. It is ridiculous that your company is barring me from making legal purchases with my own money. I am going to stop using Visa if this isn’t rescinded and fixed. I am very displeased as a customer, and will be taking my business elsewhere if this is not remedied in a timely manner."

That's basically what I said. Feel free to spice it up!

[swordvixen]

Bacharach and Altenberg on Optik Oldschool Opticolour 200, shot with the Graflex Century Graphic. It looks like 1950s postcards!

[swordvixen]

Just to clarify, there's a bill that would STOP credit card companies from controlling who's allowed to spend money on porn or "risque" (read: queer) content. If you don't think big business should be able to tell you what to spend your own damn money on, call your senators and reps to let them know! It's the Fair Access to Banking Act, H.R.987 in the House, S.410 in the Senate.

[swordvixen]

Nevada

Beyond the gutter where the last drunk lays,

Beyond the last broken bottle,

Beyond the last broken heart,

Who gave up twenty years ago;

Beyond the last tortured neon tube,

Beyond the last stolen car,

Beyond the last condemned hotel,

Where Elvis used to shit;

Beyond the last cigarette machine,

Beyond the noxious stench of stale beer,

Beyond the worn carpet on the drum riser,

Where no-name bands play;

Let me raise up a shrill song of joy,

To the silver-dollar moon

And the green desert pool

And the joshua tree.

My mother worked as a costumer in Las Vegas from the mid 2000s to the late 2010s. And for six months in 2007 I lived in Las Vegas too, though I got out of that city as often as I could because I didn't like the vibe. I loved to go for long drives in the desert, to ghost towns in the hills like Rhyolite. Years later in Seattle, a friend would show me the movie "Six String Samurai" and I immediately recognized my old haunt.

One time my husband (then-boyfriend) Kobi came to visit, and we went to the half-abandoned silver mining town of Tonopah to stay with an artist friend of mine (whose roommate was the late Stalking Cat, who cooked a mean chili and introduced me to Sriracha sauce).

Their landlord, an affable huckster, took Kobi and I out to his desert hot spring, where we watched the sun set and howled at coyotes under a full moon.

One time a local friend in Las Vegas rode with me out to Red Rock Canyon. I thought he was flirting with me but it was much stranger than that.

We got to talking about a little bit of everything. Then he must have picked up on the "old soul" vibes I've been told I have and brought up the vampire subculture. I said I was aware of that subculture but didn't know much about it.

He spoke a word that died on the edge of my ear. I said "What?" He said, "Oh, it was an identifier."

I'm no vampire, for sure.

I might just have a little bit of desert fox in me, though.

[swordvixen]

Commission for @frankenfran !

[swordvixen]

Agfa APX 100

It's good. It's cheap. I don't care if it's actually Kentmere 100, I can get a roll of this for €7 at the local drug store and it's everywhere. This roll rode with me for about a week.

Lützenkirchen

Leichlingen

Cologne's fashionable Belgian Quarter

[swordvixen]

[swordvixen]

End of an Era

The very last roll of film I had from my student days in London. I bought this roll of Ilford HP5 in 2004. Apart from exposing 2 additional stops this roll shot perfectly. Ilford quality!