What an amazingly gorgeous day it was! Although the photo above is from a week ago, today’s weather was just about the same. It was still a bit on the cool side because of the wind, but it was incredibly nice.
My day started off with a stroll through Wilburton Park behind my apartment. The sun was shining through the trees. The smell of fresh flowers was wafting over from the botanical gardens. Birds were chirping. The leaves were rustling in the wind. Abso-freaking-lutely relaxing.
It was about lunch time when I finished my walk, so, after dropping off a roll of film at Rainbow Photo, I moseyed on over to Gilbert’s Main Street Bagel Deli in Old Bellevue. Gilbert’s has a nice selection of sandwiches, soups, and breakfast items. I opted for the turkey and swiss bagel sandwich – not too heavy, very tasty. While I ate, I flipped through this week’s copy of Seattle Weekly and listened to the live jazz duo that was playing in the deli. Live music at lunch time. How’s that for atmosphere?
I still had time to kill before my film was ready, so I grabbed a coffee and took a nice leisurely stroll around Downtown Park. There were droves of families and dogs at the park this afternoon. A little kid try to push his dad on the swings. A mom chased her daughter around a picnic table trying to take a picture of her. Hyper little dogs were running circles around bewildered big dogs. It was the perfect park setting filled with photo ops. However, I opted to leave my camera in my bag. No snapping this afternoon. I just wanted to chill and watch everyone do their thing.
I considered spending the entire afternoon walking at the park, but I was really excited to take a look at my film. I shot a roll of Velvia 100F over the last week and was really excited to see how it would cross process. Normally I get blue or green tints with my other cross processed films (Kodak Ektachrome and Elitechrome go blue, Fujifilm Provia and Velvia 50 go green). I had seen xpro’d Velvia 100F photos on Flickr and saw the red tints they all had, and I knew I had to try it. When I looked at the index print at the lab, I was floored by how crazy wacky red everything was. I’ll be uploading some of my xpro’d Velvia 100F over the next few days. You’ll know it’s them by the insane amount of red in the photos.
Once I was done ogling my photos, I migrated over to Crossroads Mall to get some bubble tea and chill out at Half Price Books. I spent 3 hours browsing through various photography books and ended up purchasing a big book of Martin Parr photos. I really love Martin Parr’s photos. Raw. Relentless. Funny. Scary. Gross. Odd. Honest. Playful. There are so many ways to describe his work. His website has lots of great samples. Definitely worth checking out.
I capped off the relaxing day with dinner with Scott and Tim at Kaosamai in Fremont. It’s a relatively small place, but the food is really good, and the prices are just about right. My phad thai was super tasty and only cost me $8.
As great as this day was, what really amazes me is that I didn’t snap a single photo today. I had cameras with me all day, but they never left my bag. It was just one of those days where I didn’t need to photograph anything. I’ll probably make up for it tomorrow and fire off a few hundred shots. :)
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