Started the car yesterday and saw that the air-conditioning, once again, was not working. The air coming out was actually hot. Six weeks ago I had spent $400 fixing the air conditioner in the car after it stopped working. Through a series of long drawn out events i will not get into here I had the work done not in Toronto where I live but up at Wasaga beach where my mother lives.

So at a moments notice I had to make an appointment to take the car in two hours away from my house. Fortunately, there is no one here, so that I can actually get a lot of work done.

Also, the sky is a beautiful dark blue, something I haven’t seen in a long time, as I’ve been trapped inside in a windowless office frantically writing my final thesis.

Of course, the downside is, because they missed something last time, it’s another $400. I’m not actually that certain the car is even worth $800, but we need it to be air-conditioned as it’s medically necessary.

I’ve just downloaded a trial version of Adobe Lightroom 3 and I must say I am quite impressed with its noise reduction capabilities. A few months ago I had made the decision to switch permanently from my room to Apple’s Aperture application. I can see now that the decision was quite premature. The image that I’ve posted below this shows the before and after of a photograph I took at night with the iPhone. Before I used Lightroom’s noise reduction, and after I applied the lightroom’s noise reduction.

Note the images still not perfect, or at least it does not look like it was shot with an expensive camera on a tripod etc. It still does have the appearance of having been taken by a small hand-held camera. It just doesn’t look as though someone took a potato gun full of dyed potatoes and shot it at the frame.

I think I will be purchasing an upgrade to the software very very soon.

Click on image to view full size.

There are just two things standing in my way at this point. The first thing is that I really can’t afford the film, if it’s still available. And the second thing is that I really don’t have the time. I do want to do this project so I will very likely find a way somehow.

I have a show coming up at the end of July and I hope to make some work for that as part of this project. If I am in fact going to do that, I’m going to have to work fairly quickly to shoot, edit, and print the images. I plan to use black-and-white film which should be the cheaper faster way to do it, I can buy the developer nd get into a darkroom and use my contact printer to make prints. It shouldn’t take me too long to get back into the groove. I used to be a good black and white printer.

I could, instead of using the  8 by 10 inch camera, use the Linhoff or Arca Swiss 4 x 5″ camera to shoot the images. Then I could scan them on a high-resolution  4 x 5″ scanner and make prints using the archival inks that I have for my 24 inch printer. I have some 4 x 5″ film in the freezer that should work for that project.

I will however consider the smaller film format a copout, or expedient compromise. I really do want to try to do this project with the larger format film and equipment

It has been a long time since I’ve made a purely photographic project and I’m quite excited by the prospect and plan to actually do this in addition to everything else I have to do.

I will post some images from that project here within a week or so if I actually go ahead with it.

Now on train back to Toronto.

Science library to the right, nuclear reactor to the left with the particle accelerator behind it.

Win win with science.