In my last post I displayed a photo of the “two Sarah’s” – Sarah Ellis and Model Sarah – wrapped in black and white fabric. Today I’m putting up a few more photos of them, but without the wrapping. I spent a good deal of time over the last few days scanning my film of the Sarah’s and then working on the images to prepare them for web posting. You can see more photos on my website at http://www.art2view.com/DaveRudin/content.cgi?content/GALLERIES__Art_Nudes/Ohio .

This is far as I’ve gotten so far with tackling my big backlog of film, but I’m continuing to move through it. The next ones from my trip to Ohio in April that I’ll be dealing with will be photos from studio sessions with models Jackeller, Nemesis, Gaea and Jacqueline Chantelle. I’ve also been working on organizing my work from a trip to Maine and Canada last year, so hopefully I’ll be able to show some of those before long, too.

In other photo news, today was the first day of the annual PhotoPlus exhibit at the Javits Center here in New York. This is one of the times when the photographic equipment manufacturers and dealers get together to put there wares on display. It’s geared toward professionals, but non-pros can attend to. To be honest with you, the show for me has lost some of its luster from when I first started attending a number of years ago. Part of that, for me personally, is that as the dealers are showing more and more for digital photography, the less and less interest I have.

One thing I do need to look for is a new camera bag, so maybe I’ll see something interest in that regard. My current bag, which I’ve had since I bought my medium format SLR system a dozen years ago, is literally coming apart at the seams. Much of it has just been the wear and tear over the years, but it was made worse by my trip to Tibet in August. The internal airline flights within China only permitted a checked bag weight of 44 pounds (20 kilos), and since I was over the limit, I tried to stuff as much as I could into my carry-on bag and camera bag to make my suitcase lighter. Well, the suitcase made the limit. Unfortunately, the weight was too much for the camera bag because the shoulder strap snapped! Luckily the bag did not fall to the ground as I had the waist belt attached, but I was forced to use the handle on top to carry the bag – and the weight was so great that the seams attaching the handle section on top to the rest of the bag began to come apart.

I did eventually get my stuff home safely, but by now I think the bag is probably beyond repair. The reason I haven’t gotten a new one yet is that I have looked around but have not been able to find one nearly as good as what I now have – and unfortunately it is no longer produced.

I normally go to this show every year but had to miss it last year due to the surgery on my foot that I’d had shortly before. I just passed the first anniversary of my surgery but, sad to say, my foot is starting to hurt again quite a bit and, as before, I don’t know how long I can stay because I don’t know how long I can stand.

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