So six months ago Bene and I went to the seaside. Which was absolutely great as it meant spending some time with one of my favorite people while doing some of the things I love the most in life. Like driving my car in the desert highway, eating out at my favorite grill restaurant, drinking some of the finest beers on my windy balcony while staring at a huge red moon reflecting on the dark sea at night, and then watching Clerks for the nth time and drinking some more icy Bud or Viru. And smoking too many cigarettes in between. As you can see from my shadow on her shoulderblade in the picture above. 

As I mentioned in this post, we only spent 20 hours there. Getting there at around 10pm, we could only go to the beach the next morning. The weather was just perfect for testing out some of my [then] newest toys, the Diana Mini and the Russia Day. So we hanged out a bit snapping some pics, bought some food and then went chilling out at the beach. 

I didn't take many pictures as I wished as it was such a fleeting visit, but I think you get the idea of how nice a place it is! Also, I've spent so much time here that I'm sort of used to its beauty.

I used Lomography x-pro slide 200 and [obviously] cross processed it. I really liked the film, even if my 1hour lab must use the oldest chemicals ever, as these pictures don't look cross-processed at all.

Wait a second: did they really cross-process it? I guess they did, I don't think they even know the difference between C-41 and E6!

I'm not much of a fan of the Diana, I guess it depends on the impossibility to process 120 around here,  and I now have mixed feelings about the Diana Mini.

I really love its size, its look, its weight, and the half frame format really comes in handy when you want to "pack light" and get 72 frames out of a 36 exposures roll. I would love to try the square format too, but my camera seems to be stuck on the half frame mode. 

The half frame mode can be quite tricky too. This picture above wasn't meant to be vertical at all, but I forgot about the hf-thing, so here it is, a sliced graffiti. My bad '-_-

It took me so long to get this roll processed because 72 shots can be too much sometimes. I guess I'm more of a 12 exposures-girl. That's the main reason to such a useless picture.

Occasionally this camera yelds strong vignetting... which I love!

Ok, maybe this is a bit too hardcore a vignette, but I like it anyway!

Bene aka my favorite model. This picture makes me wonder why we don't go there more often. I mean, that's some nice chilling out... gotta go back there asap, I guess. Weekends in the city: screw you.

We don't have skies that blue so often, 'round here. I took this pictures on a hot, early August sunday morning. We went to the city centre, we had breakfast at some pavement cafè, we looked at the shop windows, at the people and the dogs passing by, and slowly reached what I guess you could easily call my city's most famous castle.

As we're all quite artsy people, we decided to visit the castle, which also happens to be my city's Museum of Ancient Art. I'm more into 19th and 20th century art, but I've also developed an interest in Christian religious art throughout the centuries since I was in junior high. There were some paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari, who was a 16th century artist coming from the place I spent my childhood in, so I'm always glad whenever I have the possibility to take a look at some of his work.

I was particularly impressed by a series of Vanitas paintings, most likely my favorite theme in art [I didn't mean to sound macabre]. I especially loved an almost black and white triptych from circa 1500, just a dark, gray piece, plain oil on canvas, but I've never seen anything like dating so old. I was stunned. Unfortunately, I didn't have a pen with me [which happens something like, one in a million days], so I couldn't take note of all the paintings I wanted to do a little research on: I guess I'll just have to visit the museum again - which is something I love doing!

Also, there were a few amazing stained glass works from the Middle Age from Germany. Amazing indeed, if you're any like me, they teminded me of some German Expressionist woodcuts [another of my art-favorites].

My Konica Pop [the red one] never fails me. I love it to bits. All these pictures were taken on a Lomography CN 400, which yelds quite vivid colors, add the wonderful Konica Pop's lens, et voila, colors will just pop out of your pictures! Sure the sun did help a lot, you know, everything looks perfect on sunday morning, and the city feels so much better in August. We should have summer on sundays all year long!

Last summer in July Marti and I packed up our stuff and went to the seaside. We spent there three weeks or so and had the greatest time. We always were at the bathouse, sunbathing, photo-snapping and joking with the guys. Nights were filled with friends, laughs and alcohol. A tablecloth-theft also occurred, and the same night we also accidentally stole a violet plant. But having no vase to put it in, we decided to plant it into a plastic cup. We didn't notice there was still some Negroni in it. We found the poor thing dead the morning after in our bedroom.

Going home was always quite adventurous, being wasted most of the time. We've spent whole nights chatting in the bedroom we shared in the attic, once safe and sound-ly at home. Dirty laundry and shoes on the floor, smeared make-up on our faces and sand all over the mattress. I've never seen a room that messy ever before.

Gine came for some days, John came for some days too, and we had lots of fun, met amazing people, and we both lost it all in the end. Everyone did loose a lot, and I guess we're all to blame. But time goes by, and I don't care anymore. 

I don't regret a thing, I never do, it was fun back then, now it's gone. Oh well.

All pictures taken by me on Holga 135BC on Fuji Velvia 100 cross-processed

[except photo #3 taken by Marti]