high-rise in the sunshine

You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

"Life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness."

We all love that movie, we all love that book. My friend & I took a step further and decided to recreate some of the aspects of it in photographs. I had absolutely marvelous time lomoshooting her! You can tell that I tried to focus on details this time. Her room has always been somehow magical to me - I am so happy we made it work, I'm more than happy with how those turned out. I used my Praktica & the new Helios lens I'm so crazy about these days. The film used was Kodak Colorplus 200. Definitely fair results, although due to the fact that I was working under hard lighting conditions, with shutter speed basically always 1/15s or 1/8s, without a tripod, I do see some of unintentional hand movements here and there. Pardon me! :)

On the other hand, I had the most amazing time in Gdynia this weekend! The weather was perfect, sunny, yet a little bit windy. I'll gladly show you some of my snaps next week. For now, I gotta say arrivederci! If you enjoy that post, please drop me a comment, I love reading your thoughts on my work!

Things to be happy about.

When buying preowned books I always look for the previous owner's comments somewhere on margins of the pages. 14,000 things to be happy about, which I bought few years ago for like 5$ on ebay, is no exception. Overall, I bought it in a pretty good condition , but some of the things mentioned in the book were underlined, some even a few times, but then thoroughly, angrily perhaps, covered with pen. I did my best to read them anyway. The one bearing most marks is "Avoiding people who make you feel guilty." Double underlined, then crossed out, multiple times.

It's been laying on my shelf for quite a long time, but I still have a soft spot for that book. I thought I would take a brief look into it again and tell you some of my faves among those 14,000 things one should be happy about.

the feel of rug under bare feet, tall people, chew face or smash mouth (kiss), eating all your snacks before the movie even starts, seeing old people holding hands, food that means love, that vacation feeling, taking a walk when the world is too much, looking back on the past with as much pleasure as you get from looking forward to the future, carrying cups of coffee out to the porch to enjoy the morning sunshine, just one day of looking terrific, showing a child how much fun life can be, a whisper impossible to resist (underlined two times), reading outside on a blanket wearing a big sweater in the autumn sun, nocturnal drinking expeditions, remembering people's names long after they've forgotten yours, making colored chalk drawings on the pavement, our lives being what our thoughts make them, lessening the impact of a horror movie by filtering it through one's fingers, getting what you want and what you need at the same time, carrying 10 books home from the library, being taken to the zoo, ancient ruins, surviving a summer job, shooting a whole roll of film in one day, controlling the largest empire on the Monopoly board, writing poetry that no one will see, blouses with Peter Pan collars, sitting down and really thinking out an attitude of yours that you are not sure of, talking to yourself, the Greek alphabet: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega, and my favourite (you know I could go on the whole day) the sound of sneakers squeaking against the floor during basketball games.

Why is that my fave? Probably because of how silly it even sounds, no one would ever think that this is something worth being happy about, but now I know. I love that sound, I really do. It reminds me of the times when I used to play, it reminds me of some teenage drama series, of achieving something like the best player of the game title, of being wild and a fighter. Never before had I though that hearing that sound made me happy, but now it truly does and I often hear it in my head.

These are just a few examples. Honestly, it's impossible to read the whole book at once, I come back to it from time to time, pick a random page and even more random line and see what's hiding there for me. Some of the things listed are pretty doable, or shall I say, easy to get to experience, others pose more symbolical associations. You can find a bunch of meals, cities, sayings, slogans, song or movie titles among the pages. Some are personal, some universal. Wouldn't it be amazing to try to capture some of those "things" on film?

"Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have."

Thank you so much for all the beautiful words you've said under the previous post, using that new Helios lens is a real blast, it really makes magic happen and I am so so glad you share this opinion! Thanks for all that positive feedback! ♥

lover of the light

A dream of togetherness  | Turned into a brighter mess  |  A faint sign my spoken best  | Now, now

I love clouds, especially cirrus and cumulus, but there is this special place in my heart for a completely cloudless, blue sky. When looking at it, you've got this perfect sense of clarity and peacefulness, with the wind making the sun's heavy and warm touch a little more bearable. I love days like that. I'm really not into the heat kind of days, unless I'm spending them by the Mediterranean Sea, which this year, sadly, won't happen. At that point, I have a bunch of vacay dreams. The first group is Maldives, Thailand, RPA and Japan, so therefore locations that are one hundred percent unreachable for me right now. A girl can dream though, right? The second kind is vacation in Santorini, Greece. With all the delicious food, sapphire waters and candy-colored houses carved into cliffs! That will totally happen one day. I have no doubts about it.

Summer is about to end, so I invited my girls over to my garden, so we talked a little, drank some more, and I had to face the fact that it was the time for me to finally bake something. For the first time in my life. I knew that AJ, who has a knack for it, will bring some delicious cake, so I decided to make the simplest lemon muffins that exist! I could buy the ready-made, powder ones, but as always I approach everything very seriously, I decided to do everything from scratch. Fortunately, everything went my way and it looks like I haven't poisoned anyone. :) We had mineral water with cucumber, my lemon muffins, two kinds of black raspberries cake, Carlo Rossi wine, fresh watermelon and Au Revoir Simone's "The Lucky One" playing in the background. It's got to be all that one needs to fully enjoy a summer picnic. I shot two rolls of film in one day! :) I'm sure it will be insanely tough for me to do the pic selection once I get them on a cd. (I always write the posts before I actually get the pictures, with analogue photography, you already have to wait a long time, so I'd hate to just waste it.) (edit: it was indeed tough, I hope I did the pictures justice and picked the right ones to get your imagination going, the rest of them will be either on my flickr or facebook, check the buttons that appear at the top of the page for the links, cheers!)

I would like to thank you because I did not expect it to be so soon that there will be people who will want to comment on my posts and photos. Considering that this blog was, from the start, just some place for my sorrows to be dragged into the daylight and now it's become more of a happy place, where you guys can really get to know me, despite our differences and various outlooks on life, I'm really happy about that! Most of you have your own blogs, and some are into analogue photography themselves, so being in that community really gives me motivation and a lot of inspiring photographs to look at, at daily basis. I'm having an absolute blast with my Praktica, shooting one roll after another. My new Helios lens is pure magic, you can probably tell just by looking at the pictures I featured in this post, that Helios 44-2 has some crazy bokeh going on. On Saturday, I'm going to Gdynia for a weekend and I have already made a list of places to visit, most of which are pretty hipsterish caffes, oh me. Having written that, I wish you all a great week, see you soon! Bye! :)

still not a wine type of a girl  |  a snap of myself that AJ took

Cafe L'Art de Vivre

I'm a sucker for visuals. I'm a sucker for pretty places and their pretty logos. And delicious beverages I'm about to drink in a moment. Half of my friends, or generally people I hang out with, think I'm weird for taking pictures of food or coffees I'm having. The other half just thinks I'm a hipster and rarely mentions the fact. Anyway, I feel like everyone, at some point, judges me for it. And what's more pointless than taking pictures of food? Caring about other people's opinions, because you know what? Most of the time they don't really judge you, because they don't care enough to do that. And even if they did, they would forget about it in a second. The rest is in your head. So I'd say, chill out, have fun, if you love that sandwich you've just made yourself and you want a snap of it, then do it & enjoy it. (Alright, that doesn't apply to people constantly whining that they need to lose some kgs, being constantly on a diet, but posting food pictures to their Instagram every five minutes. That will most likely drive me nuts.)

I THINK EVERYTHING IN LIFE IS ART. WHAT YOU DO. HOW YOU DRESS. THE WAY YOU LOVE SOMEONE, AND HOW YOU TALK. YOUR SMILE AND YOUR PERSONALITY. WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN, AND ALL YOUR DREAMS. THE WAY YOU DRINK YOUR TEA. HOW YOU DECORATE YOUR HOME. OR PARTY. YOUR GROCERY LIST. THE FOOD YOU MAKE. HOW YOUR WRITING LOOKS. AND THE WAY YOU FEEL. LIFE IS ART. —HELENA BONHAM CARTER

I finally started to socialize again! Honestly, that little break I had was the best idea ever. I still do enjoy some "me" time, for example every morning, with a coffee in my hand and on Tuesdays with a new fresh episode of Teen Wolf. I know the title might be a turn off, but considerating the fact that "teen" for American television means in their twenties, seeing a lot of shirtless guys on that show is actually not such a guilty pleasure. Oh come on, I obviously watch for the plot. Yup, and the plot's other name is Daniel Sharman.

Let's just take a moment to appreciate the fact that I finally got the full roll of perfectly exposed pictures! Yuhu! Now just let me to work on my hands so they don't shake too much when I'm photographing. Again, too much coffee. 24 out of 24, some not in their best focus, but seriously I couldn't care less. You should have seen my little happy dance when I looked at the negative. Score. A big one, at least for me. These are the first pictures that I post which are made with my new camera, Praktica MTL 3. I definitely love it. It's easy for beginners, a little heavier than my tank-like Zenit though. First time photographing with Agfa Vista Plus 200, too! A lot of lucky firsts lately.

Cafe L'Art de Vivre // Św. Wojciecha 2, 10-038 Olsztyn