from the archives: lomo test shots.

I have no idea what the kids are listening to these days; I barely even know what my peers are listening to.  My daily soundtrack skews heavily towards college radio/indie rock circa 1992 through 2000 or so, with very few exceptions (oh, Explosions in the Sky, how I love you so).  It’s like I’m that old lady who can’t stop talking about dancing the jitterbug back in the day.  It would be no surprise, then, that I’ve discovered Fleet Foxes nearly three years after their debut EP and full length albums came out — no surprise, except for the fact that in early 2009, I was actually at one of their shows, and managed to miss their entire set.   I don’t exactly regret the reasons why that happened — a bottle of Bowmore figures prominently in this anecdote — but now that all of their upcoming shows have sold out and they’re all over the place, I feel like I missed out on a certain early moment in their fame.  Ah well.

I bring this up because their new album is coming out soon, and they’ve released this video for one of the tracks, Grown Ocean, and it’s just …. lovely.  Both the track and the video.   The video reminded me of my college friends’ super-8 shenanigans, the way that grainy filmstock can capture such wonder in the everyday, even if that everyday was just a lot of hanging out, a lot of being in the company of people with whom you feel absolutely at home with.   Seeing the video has also made me realize that I don’t get out of the city enough, that I haven’t taken a roadtrip in ages, that I haven’t seen towns and landscapes roll past me from the window of a train or car or whathaveyou, in what feels like forever.

And so I was going through my older photos while listening to some Fleet Foxes tracks the other night, and was reminded of this test roll on my then-newly-purchased Lomo LC-A, the photos taken on a long leisurely walk with Daniel (human) and Riley (dog) in Prospect Park back in September 2009.   And even though it was just a walk through a park, in New York City of all places, not at all pastoral or particularly wild, there’s something particularly …. damp … about the photos, like they could almost be (except for the particularly Northeastern vegetation) somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.   And that there’s a hidden meadow somewhere beyond the trees, where you’ll come across five be’flannelled guys with long beards singing churchlike harmonies under misty, grey skies.   That’s what I imagine and hear when I see these photos.

Also, these photos — taken with Kodak Gold 200 — make an excellent case for underexposure, which I really ought to experiment with much more than I do.  Sometimes proper metering just gets in the way, you know what I mean?