Last Sunday, I flew to Oakland, California with some colleagues from work to attend a workshop at UC-Berkeley. It's been about 30 years since I was last in California, and that too, was a work trip. I have a friend on Flickr (Therese Brown) that used to live in El Cerrito, just N of Berkeley, and she gave me a "Film Is Not Dead" T-shirt from Looking Glass Photo (LGP) about a decade ago. In advance of the trip, I promised myself that I would visit LGP and wear the T-shirt if I had the time during my 3 days in Berkeley. The store used to be much closer to campus, but now is about a 3 mile walk. So, on Tuesday afternoon, I had an opportunity to do just that. The nice thing about going anywhere today, is that one can look on Google maps and see just about anything. A place that is new to me, is much more familiar after looking at street view, etc., to plan a route. I walked through some interesting neighborhoods and really enjoyed seeing green and flowers, and considering how mucked up our spring weather has been in Michigan this year, visiting California could not have come at a better time!
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| Lots of Film... |
I did bring a couple of film cameras - my Minolta XG-M and Olympus Trip 35, along with my digital Fuji X-100S. I'll have some photos up after I process the film.
Arriving at the store at
1035 Ashby Avenue, I was a bit sweaty from the long walk in the warm, sunny afternoon. I was immediately impressed at how many people were working there, and the store's size was much larger than I anticipated. A real, full-service store with photo paper, chemicals, FILM, darkroom accessories, and all of the other digital and types of equipment one might need. It looked like they have a darkroom, too. A couple of women that work there were immediately making comments about my old LGP t-shirt, as it has not been available for some time. I didn't mind being a photo geek at all. I bought some film, a Looking Glass Photo coffee mug, and a tripod mount for a cellphone. It was fun stepping into a store that had everything that a photographer may need, and especially catered to the analog community. If you need a Holga, they had plenty of them in stock, too. There are also used film cameras and lenses for sale, along with all of the cool digi gadgets you might like to see.
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| Kodak Ektar and Portra films |
Last Sunday, I flew to Oakland, California with some colleagues from work to attend a workshop at UC-Berkeley. It's been about 30 years since I was last in California, and that too, was a work trip. I have a friend on Flickr (Therese Brown) that used to live in El Cerrito, just N of Berkeley, and she gave me a "Film Is Not Dead" T-shirt from Looking Glass Photo (LGP) about a decade ago. In advance of the trip, I promised myself that I would visit LGP and wear the T-shirt if I had the time during my 3 days in Berkeley. The store used to be much closer to campus, but now is about a 3 mile walk. So, on Tuesday afternoon, I had an opportunity to do just that. The nice thing about going anywhere today, is that one can look on Google maps and see just about anything. A place that is new to me, is much more familiar after looking at street view, etc., to plan a route. I walked through some interesting neighborhoods and really enjoyed seeing green and flowers, and considering how mucked up our spring weather has been in Michigan this year, visiting California could not have come at a better time!
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