From the Eye of a Fish

Although I am not a trained photographer, I am definitely a wannabe photographer. I always have a camera in my bag, and much to the dismay of those around me, I take pictures of anything and everything. For the longest time, I was one of few without a digital camera; I held out until a couple of years ago, when I gave into convention as the prices got lower and the quality of pictures got much better. Upon the discovery of the above camera however, I've reverted back to my obsession with film, and have spent the better part of Saturday dragging my boyfriend around NYC in the bitter cold, taking the pictures that you see below.

As you can probably tell, the lens is curved so that everything in the picture looks like it is contained in a bubble, or a fish bowl. My first roll was a bit of an experiment, as I wasn't sure what I was going to get, and you obviously don't see your results until you finish your roll! An interesting feature was that the camera lets you take multiple shots on the same exposure (top left), which is very neat. I used ISO 100 film on these pictures, which turned out to be problematic when it got dark in the late afternoon. Buying ISO 400+ film should solve that. Another issue for the long term is that the negatives cannot be uploaded online or on one's computer very easily. The photo CDs that I have gotten in the past have been disappointing to say the least. Another option is looking into getting scanners that handle negatives - Canon and Epson are the two best known, but they are a bit pricey...

Angel Babies!

Although I am not wildy crazy about fish (I prefer the furry, 4 legged type of pets), my boyfriend is fish crazy - he has an 80 gallon tank in our apartment, plus a 20 gallon "hospital" tank to sequester the sickies. I heard the bad news that we may have to get another tank, because the hospital tank became a love nest turned fish fry nursery, as two of the Angelfish had babies! Hundreds of them! This was after about the 10th try - at first, the parent fish would confuse the eggs with food and eat them all; then there were water issues and they died off, etc. It's too complicated/geeky for me to understand and explain - I am sure he thinks I am the same way with knitting, hehe. It's been about two weeks since they have hatched, and so far, so good. It takes about 6-8 weeks for the little speckles to actually look like respectable mini-angels. So right now it's too early to tell whether my boyfriend can quit his day job and be a full-time fish peddler - we'll see what happens.