I was originally thinking of titling this blog entry “XX,” but then I thought that some folks might interpret that to be the Roman numeral for ’20.’ (Oddly enough, if I were to use the title “XXX,” then some might take it to mean something other than the Roman numeral for ’30’ – and that might draw the wrong kind of clientele for something like this blog – but I digress.) So, I’ve decided to settle on “Double X.”

In this case, that’s short for Double Ex – or ‘double exposure.’ I have wanted to work with the creative possibilities of in-camera double exposures for some time, and now and then I’d make a photo using the idea. It was all random and haphazard, though, and nothing was ever consistent. Sometimes I’d go out to a photo shoot with making a series of double exposures in mind but I’d just plain forget. Finally, at Prince Edward Island in Canada last summer, I remembered.

These photos here are images of Rachel on the island’s beautiful rocky coastline. One shows her ‘inside’ a large rock covered with barnacles (or barnacly-type things) and the other two show her as part of a stratified rock formation. One of the things I’ve tried to do was to show her as being a part of the rock, as if encased in it. I think these turned out fairly well, though I’ll try to hone my skills at this (if I can remember, that is).

These photos were made with my Pentax 67 camera, but I also made some double exposures on the island with my new Holga – though most of the were unintentional! Still, the results were somewhat interesting and I’ll try to post them sometime in the future.

I grew up near Coney Island, the beach and boardwalk area known for its fun & games and cheap thrills. (The Cyclone, the famous roller coaster, was down the block.) I still live within an hour’s walk from there, but since my family moved away, I don’t go that often any more.

The area has been in the news lately as the Astroland amusement park has been sold to a real estate developer who wants to tear it down and build a year-round indoor entertainment complex with hotels and condominiums. (The community is against the condo idea.) At any rate, this summer has been declared to be the last summer of Astroland being where it is now and of Coney Island as it is now.

With this in mind, I’ve thought of the idea of making a series of photos of Coney Island this summer. The Holga is my camera of choice for this and almost seems made for a place like Coney Island. After all, both are cheap and meant for having fun.

I thought of beginning this project yesterday as it was the day of the annual Mermaid Parade, and I figured that there’d be plenty of colorful characters about. On the other hand, I’d hurt my back the day before and could have used this an excuse to stay home and watch TV. (I wrote about photographic inertia in an earlier posting.)

When I woke up and got out of bed, my back was still hurting – but I decided to head off to Coney Island anyway with my Holga and several rolls of 120 film. I also had not been doing much long walking without a cane since my foot surgery last October and this would be a good opportunity to start becoming active again.

In the end, I shot three rolls of film with the Holga. I already know that I messed up one picture. I took a photo of a retro model who was posing with two cohorts on the boardwalk for a bunch of photographers, and if I’m not mistaken, I took a photo of something else before advancing the film. (With the Holga, one does not need to advance the film to cock the shutter.)

I found this to be a major problem with the Holga when I first began using it last year – I didn’t always advance the film after each shot and before taking the next one I had to wonder if I had or hadn’t. It’s therefore easy to make unintentional double exposures – but I must admit that sometimes these are even more interesting than the single images! I’ll post some of those sometime down the road.

It’ll be a while until I develop the B&W film that I shot, but for now, here are some of the photos I made with my pocket digital camera, showing some parade participants along with the Coney Island scenery. The girl with the green hair recognized the Holga for what it is, and I told her that it’s my ‘real camera,’ with the digital just being for fun.

One of the things I love about Japan is how they manage to blend the traditional with the modern. Most of Japanese society is, of course, very modern, but they continue to hang on to what came before. One of these things is the kimono.

The great majority of Japanese women venture outside wearing modern, western-style clothing. Still, now and then, one does see someone wearing a kimono. Sometimes it will be a group of women, perhaps all dressed up to attend a special event. Such sightings are not terribly unusual, but it is definitely not too common.

Of course, when I see this, I try to get a decent photo or two if I can. I usually use my little digital camera for this as it has autofocus to help do things quickly and it can capture the colors that my B&W film can’t. It has flash, too, for dark or nighttime scenes. The photos you see here were made in Tokyo and Kyoto in the spring of 2005.

Kimonos come in a variety of patterns, from simple solid colors to very ornate designs. I’ve been told that elaborate wedding kimonos can cost thousands of dollars, but something like that is obviously not seen often on the street.

What I do find to be a bit unusual, as you can see from the photo at the bottom here, is that many (or most) of the mannequins used to display kimonos in stores and windows actually have western features!

I’m sitting here at home in New York writing my regular Sunday blog entry, so you’d think that everything is normal. Well, it isn’t.

This weekend I was supposed to be in Las Vegas.

I usually go to Vegas to visit family several times a year, mostly for long weekends, and so it started on Friday evening with a trip to Kennedy Airport. When I checked in with America West/US Airways, I was told that the plane was late coming and in would be late going out. That’s nothing new, and eventually boarding of the plane began (albeit an hour late) – but that‘s when the trouble really began.

First, we couldn’t leave the gate because a British Airways 747 was sitting right behind us. Finally that moved, but we didn’t get too far. At one point, the pilot told us that we were next to get on the take-off line. (That’s right. We were first on line to get in line.) He said that it was all due to thunderstorms ranging from New Orleans to west of Toronto and all flights from the east coast going west were affected.

After sitting there without moving for a very long time, the pilot decided to return to the gate to allow people to get off if they’d given up. Eventually, it all became academic. After more than two hours sitting on the plane, we were all kicked off. The flight had been cancelled.

Now, I’ve been kicked off of my fair share of subway trains, but never before from an airplane – and things continued to get worse. A US Airways employee gave out a phone number to call to book another flight. I thought that if I could book a seat on the 8 am flight, I might still be able to make a weekend trip worthwhile, but first I just wanted to get home and so I took a cab back.