Category: photos

What the World Eats

Over the weekend N showed me a fascinating series of photos by Peter Menzel. (See part one and part two here.)

For the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats Menzel and author-journalist Faith D’Alusio traveled the globe and visited families in over 20 countries. They asked the families to purchase a weeks worth of typical groceries and took their portraits surrounded by the food. The authors include information on the families’ favorite foods and the cost of the groceries. I liked the online excepts enough that I think I’m going to buy the book.

I enjoyed the photos and found it riveting to see what families around the world ate. I liked seeing all the packaged foods that the Japanese family had and the vast quantities of beer displayed by the German family. But seeing the sacks of grain and few vegetables that feed the families in Mali and Chad made me feel a bit sick to my stomach about how I waste so much food. I’m pretty bad about letting leftovers go uneaten or buying vegetables but then forgetting about them until it’s too late. My casual wastefulness now seems quite obscene and I’m going to try and do better.

Smiling in his sleep

Sometimes I need to wake up E from a nap in order to get to an appointment on time. I don’t like doing it–waking him on purpose just squanders the increasingly rare gift of toddler-free time. And sometimes he gets confused at being woken up and looks stricken and cries.

So last week when I had to wake him up early I decided to at least get a picture out of it.

E’s Second Haircut

Yesterday afternoon I took E to get a haircut. It was only the second time he’s been to have one and well, he flipped out. He cried and cried and stood up out of the little car he was sitting in and tried to escape. The cut ended up being shorter than I would have liked but I can’t really blame the stylist since E was such a difficult customer.

Thankfully E got over the trauma pretty quickly and since then has been rockin’ his new look. This morning at breakfast he was being pretty sassy.


My New Holga

N gave me this Holga camera kit as a Christmas gift which I was really excited about.

The Holga is basically the cheapest medium format camera you can get. You can get just the camera for under $40. The main reason they’re so cheap is because they’re made entirely out of plastic, including the lens. The Holga was created in China during the early 1980s for the purpose of providing an inexpensive camera for the masses. But since then it’s grown into kind of a cult-item. The hipster rhetoric behind them can get kind of silly (apparently it will “make you see beauty when you thought it had disappeared forever”) but but they do take interesting, otherworldly pictures.

These are from the first roll I shot. There were some light leaks onto the film because one of the foam blocks that cushions the film spool came loose and got wrapped up inside the film. (Apparently the Holga’s cheap reputation is well deserved.)




All hype aside, the Holga is really a just a cheap toy camera. But it’s a very fun cheap toy camera. Pick one up if you want to explore lo-fi film photography.

Feeling Better

E seemed to be feeling better this morning AND he just went down for a nap without a lot of fuss (woot, woot!)

I did end up taking him to the doctor yesterday and she said his ears did have some fluid in them. I felt guilty that I didn’t take him in sooner, but E hadn’t had any cold symptoms so I thought his crankiness was just due to teething.

It seems to have worked itself out, though. The doctor said there was a good chance that it was viral and that antibiotics wouldn’t have helped any way. She did write me a scrip for some but also okayed waiting a few days to see if the infection got better on its own. I prefer not putting E on antibiotics unless it’s certain they’re necessary. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

How I Met Your Mother

N. found this photo from the study abroad trip to Korea we went on back in the summer of 1999. It cracks me up: I like the sassy thumbs-up N’s flashing but I’m not sure why I’m making that weird smirk.

It’s funny; it wasn’t until the last night of the trip that we even really talked to each other. We had even been in the same Korean classes the year before the trip but we still barely knew each other. For most of the trip I was pining after one guy and spending all of my free time hanging out with another, neither of whom was N. (Yeah, I was just a touch boy-crazy at the time.) N seemed cool but was kind of intimidating at the time.

Details of how we got together will have to wait for another time; today I don’t really feel like typing a long post. For right now let’s just say that things managed to work out in the end.