Our second Friday Saturday night film was Little Red, a Wisconsin's Own entry.

The film started out in Milwaukee, with some very familiar sights for me. However, it quickly moved to Florida, where 11 year-old Ruth..."Red" has run away for a secret vacation to enjoy the beaches of Daytona and then see the wild horses of Cumberland Island. While there (in fact, from before her flight even leaves Milwaukee) she catches the eye of creepy Lou (played by Mark Metcalf, best known to me as "The Master" from season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who stalks her for the rest of the movie.

It. Was. So. Uncomfortable. Even when nothing was actually happening, I was gripping the arms of my chair going "oh no, oh no, oh no..." You know what happens in Little Red Riding Hood: whether she gets rescued at the end or not, someone has usually been eaten by the wolf first. And you know how this kind of thing plays out in real life, so waves of dread where washing over me the whole time.

Lucky for Red, she is befriended by another, slightly older, local surfer girl named Kayla. Kayla joins her on her quest for Cumberland Island, and helps her to dodge Lou. The camaraderie between the two girls is believable and sweet, and provided a few moments of respite from the tension, here and there.

Metcalf's Lou is quite the wolf, and the way he played it made my skin crawl. Again, even when nothing was actually really happening yet, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. And when things were, I wanted to hit him with a frying pan.

The colors of the Florida scenes were wonderfully saturated. Of *course* just about everything Red owned was, well, red. Several scenes in particular made me want to be there in person, to see the ocean and the Spanish Moss.

Trying to avoid spoilers, but the ending was one that I really didn't seem coming, and yet it was an ending the satisfied me.

It was an interesting choice to watch immediately after 7 Cajas, as I was still carrying around the tension from that first film. As a pair, it did not give us the most uplifting night of cinema ever, but it certainly kept us at the edge of our seats.

I'm starting to sift through my photos and pick out what I might want to print for the WisCon art show. Some of these might work, but I'd love second opinions.

Go take a look!

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Happy Santa Lucia Day! 10% all day in both stores with the coupon code: STLUCIA10.

In addition, buy two or more prints from Irving Place Photography and get the shipping free!

Irving Place Photography

The Floating Market

Go take a look!

Go take a look!

Use coupon code FBTW10 for 10% off any order at Irving Place Photography or The Floating Market, now through Monday!

Additionally, if you buy two or more prints from Irving Place Photography, shipping will be free, now through Christmas. (Etsy will still charge the shipping, but I will refund the charge.)

Starting on Friday, buy any two prints and get the shipping for free!

More Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales from the Female Photographers of Etsy can be found here.

Go take a look!

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I love all the lines on this one.

Go take a look!

My "Red Gym" photo has a nice inclusion on the Photogrunt blog. There are some other very nice pictures included. Why not take a look?

Go take a look!

Go take a look!

As blogged by T.

Go take a look! Week 10 is coming soon!

Go take a look! The other diptychs are pretty sweet, too.

It's a Treasury! It's a Tarot reading!

Cicada this time. Nice way to end the work week.

My MTA cufflinks are included in a cool Earth Day treasury (expires Saturday, just before midnight).

"Queen of Pentacles" was accepted at Craftgawker.

Like the butterfly...

My photo, "Glow," is now featured in the March 2010 issue of Broadsheets.

1. I am bound and determined to sell these hair sticks today. They are on sale right now for $5 off the regular price, and they are totally charming.

2. Starting today and for the next seven days, I have a tile ad up on Craft Cult. I'm hoping it does some good.

3. I have a wonderfully creepy treasury, "The Unsettling Toy Box" on Etsy at the moment.

4. This weekend, I expect to finish an art project I have been working on since December. I'll post pictures as soon as I do.

Happy Friday! What are you up to?

I've been a busy, busy bee with 6 new listings and 2 renewals. (This was after finishing painting a mural at a friend's house--more on that later.)

New:

Guitar, Fine Art Photograph, 8x10 Glossy Print, unframed

At the Terrace, Fine Art Photograph, 8x10 Glossy Print, unframed

Vine-wrapped Window, Fine Art Photograph, 6.5x4.5 Glossy Print, unframed

Malus, Fine Art Photograph, 6.5x4.5 Glossy Print, unframed

Cloudy Day at the Midway, Fine Art Photograph, 6.5x4.5 Glossy Print, unframed

They say the owl was a bakers daughter... Fine Art Photograph, 4.5x6.5 Matte Print, unframed

Renewed:

Night Nude, Fine Art Photograph, 7.5x5 Glossy Print, unframed

Queen of Pentacles, Fine Art Photograph, 5x7 Glossy Print, unframed

As of this afternoon, I have a new scanner. I am very, very excited by this, as it means I can finally start scanning some of the many, many prints I have available. It also means I can restart my stalled project with the family photo albums. The old scanner just couldn't handle it any more.

To celebrate, I now have a new print up at Irving Place Photography: Red Gym.

I also have a treasury for the next few days: Forward!, a tribute to spring, Daylight Savings Time, and Wisconsin.

Koppa's has a website! And a fan page, too, it seems.

This was totally my place, back in my actual Irving Place days. Right across the street, which made it perfect for transforming pocket change into candy. I specifically remember these wonderful pink (strawberry) taffy lollipops that they had at the register for a while. $0.05 each, and totally wonderful. I have never found anything just like them since, so they have become legendary in my memory. (Along with the veggie sub from the long-defunct, Mad Town Subs.)

They were also the perfect place for that gallon of milk when we ran out right before dinner, and for the Sunday Journal. I also remember them having really excellent elephant ears in the bakery case.

Speaking of the old hood, one of these days I need to get over there and stop at Comet Cafe, which used to be a Chinese restaurant (Edie's? Eddie's? something like that) when I knew it. (Right next to the Constant Reader Bookshop, whose painted sign I once thought said "Out of Paint" and which I found puzzling, until I became a better reader and could distinguish print from paint.)

I may as well finish my tour down memory lane with a mental stop at Abu's Jerusalem of the Gold, at which I first tasted tahini.

I should get over there some time this summer.

This was another shot from the Verona Hometown USA carnival, same day as the "Flight" photo. The name of this particular ride is the Zipper, and I have ridden it once. By myself. And that was quite enough. (That ride was next to the music tent, which gave me insight in to the length of the ride: the band was doing the last chorus or so of one song when the ride started. Then they played "I Want You to Want Me" by Cheap Trick, and I sang along at the top of my lungs. Then they started up a 3rd song before the ride ended. It was a long, long ride.)

Both the ride and this photo make me think of the Tower card in a tarot deck, hence the name.

Someday, I'd love to have enough appropriate photos to build an entire tarot deck, though so far, I've only got two of the Major Arcana.

I can! I haz!

Both The Floating Market and Irving Place Photography have fan pages. Of course, right now they only have two fans, and one of them is me! Go on and keep us from getting lonely by ourselves.

This is another shot from the Troll series. It reminded me of a woodblock print. There was actually a specific image that I remember from years ago, but I haven't been able to find it, even after much searching. I wonder if it may have been an ad? It was a standard-looking samurai/kabuki actor portrait, only the figure in the portrait was looking angrily (and possibly cross-eyed) at a fly. I don't think I'm imagining it, but it may well have been a modern parody.

I love the intensity of the stare.

I am really drawn to cheesy local festivals and carnival rides.The slightly bored carnies, the clusters of giggling teens, the wafting smell of cotton candy and funnel cakes, and the sound of the Cheap Trick cover band in the beer tent...

Besides the thrill of the ride itself, there is something about the thought "gee, I hope they put it together right" while flying through the air at great speed that gets the heart pumping. This photo captures that for me.

(Shot at Verona Hometown U.S.A. Fest, 1999.)

Most of my buttons are done as singles, but these pinwheels demanded to be made ina sete of four. Perhaps this was to echo those four segments (which should not be confused with the fallout trefoil, though it did remind me of that).

Spin, little pinwheels, spin!

"Ophelia, you're breaking my heart!"

This is one of my favorite photos, and also from one of my favorite photo shoots. Did I mention how grateful I am that I have such obliging friends as fabulous models? This was my first "put the model in the water" shoot. Happily, we had a warm September day for the work, and the water was not at all uncomfortable.

Earlier in the day, we had wandered around in a graveyard, doing a mad scene. The photos turned out all right, but none were exactly what I was looking to achieve. We then trekked over to Lake Wingra Park, where an obliging willow tree and the warm, shallow water provided the perfect backdrop.

I always find this photo to be beautiful and haunting...and just slightly creepy.

I am really not a "car person". I'm not someone who can tell you year, make, and model at a glance. (Well, except for the models with really distinctive body types, and even then I'm not going to be able to tell you a year.) Still, I do appreciate the lines of a well-designed automobile. There was something about this car that caught my eye.

This is also an early image for me, circa summer of 1998. It may have been within a roll or two of "Derelict". If you look closely, you can see a wee, unintentional self-portrait in the chrome.

If I recall correctly, this was taken on Thanksgiving of 1998 or 1999. I was using a Cmeha Smena 8m, a Soviet Russian camera that I picked up for super cheap. (I think this was before the "Lomography" craze had hit big...I hadn't heard of it, at least. I picked up a Holga at the same time.) It is considered a "toy" camera, and it is pretty limited in what it an do, but the lens produces some very cool effects. Frankly, I wish that processing and printing from film hadn't become so much more difficult, because this kind of thing makes me want to shoot a few more rolls and hit the darkroom.

The shadows are from my sister and I, as we were out in a local nature preserve walking the dog. The title comes from a line in L. M. Montgomery's Emily Climbs.

Nice. I've got 6 new photos up:

Cicada

Tall as Our Shadows

Tower

Chevelle

Palette

Climbing the Walls

Enjoys!

This was totally a lucky shot from my very first roll of film in an SLR. Sweet timing, that's what I say to that.

I'm particularly fond of his shadow.

This shot is the result of a happy accident plus some digital manipulation. I'd tried to get a good shot of a group of people staring down at the camera in an ominous way. The actual result, when I made the print, was pretty lackluster. Only, there was one tiny bit of a face in the corner which really drew my attention. I loved the way the light and shadows played together for in a highly creepy way.

I made that bit of the image the basis for a really cool pen and ink drawing (which I should find and scan one of these days). Once I actually had a scanner of my own, I made a very high resolution scan of that part of the picture, than started working with it in Photoshop to sharpen the contrasts a bit more and build on the scary anonymity of it. I must say, I'm really proud of how it turned out.

Have I mentioned how much I love my obliging friends? This is the result of a collaboration with the fabulous Anandi. I gave her a Project Runway style challenge, with a Floating Market twist. Assemble a costume for a Bridge Troll using only items that could be found in the trash of the Dig and Save bins. The modern samurai feel came in as a why to indicate troll as honorable warrior, rather than scary monster. (And we tried to do the whole thing in a respectful, rather than icky, way.)

I think she pulled it off quite well, and J., our model was quite game for climbing around and under an assortment of bridges, even wading out in the water a few times. I was extremely happy with how this shoot turned out, and look forward to trying it again sometime.

"I'm not Lion"

Expires Friday, 1/15/01 at 5:45 PM CST

This is another very early image for me, which got me into playing with low-light, long exposure shots. I think this was a 30-60 second exposure (guess who failed to write this info down?), and the negative it super-thick. It is also another instance of "gosh, I'm glad I have obliging friends" because not everyone is going to let you wrap them in Christmas lights and hold very stil.

Actually, the "hold very still" thing only sort of applies here: about halfway through the exposure, she turned her head to the side without thinking about it. Talk about a happy accident! I love the way that motion totally obscured the face. I used it again with other models later, but this one gave me the idea.

This was one of my earliest shots, and one of my very favorites. I shot it in the summer of 1998, during my very first college photo class, using an old Nikon I'd borrowed from my dad. The camera was completely manual, with only a 50mm lens and a broken light meter. In a way, it was totally perfect, because it made me have to really think about what I was doing, and the limits of the 50mm made me frame my subjects with care. (I love my digital camera, 28-80 lens, my built-in flash and light meter...but it is easy to just snap snap snap when you don't have those limits in place.)

For this shot, I climbed into the cab of the rusting wreck of a truck that was sitting in a vacant lot near my apartment. I was nervous that I'd end up with tetanus or something, but I got the shot that I wanted. The truck is long gone, and even the lot has been built up, but I'll always remember it.

I took this photo in the spring of 2000 while on a road trip. I was in a phase of taking photos of my shadow. I really liked how it turned out, particularly with the textures of the ground below.

I actually used this photo as the basis for a graphic design project that involved making a pop-up book. I should dig that out and take some pictures. If I do, I'll post them here.

I've gotten my Movable Type updated, for the first time in years. Lots and lots of changes since I first installed the old version, so I have a bit of a learning curve. I'm also going to be tweaking the design a bit. The old one was nice, which I why I kept it so long, but it was also getting a bit stale.

This started out as a personal journal blog. Then it became more of a place where I reviewed movies I'd seen, shows I'd attended, restaurants at which I'd eaten. Then it became a photo blog. Now is is moving in a new direction once more, something that will have elements of those, and a bit more.

This time around it is still going to be heavily an art blog. I have two Etsy shops—Irving Place Photography and The Floating Market—which I will be featuring. I'm also going to try to document more of the creative processed behind them. I'm also going to throw in some reports and reviews of interesting goings-on around Madison and on the net, particularly as they relate to creative endeavors.

Hello, 2010, good to meet you.