lowfi
journal:
this is the core of the digicam/lofi/camcorder appeal. everything in our world got so polished & perfect & flat; the pressure to look like a glossy magazine life got to be so much that these frankly shitty early devices became irresistible. you literally cannot produce perfect glossed over documentation with a 2004 point & shoot digital camera. it is actually impossible. so the pressure to attempt to do so is lifted entirely. it’s a liberation from the confines of perfection.
I could have decided not to lug my little $40 camcorder to a whole new continent & then up several mountains on my trek along the inca trail, but I couldn’t bear the thought of having no low quality shaky video documenting my trip. the camcorder remains undefeated, even after a tumble onto incan stonework.
something I always liked to do when I lived in brooklyn was go to coney island in the winter. this beach-town is almost totally abandoned during the colder months as the theme parks & boardwalk shops wait for summer to return before unlocking their gates & opening their doors. on my recent weekend in nyc I spent a very cold morning (28 degrees fahrenheit) walking along the boardwalk with my camcorder & making friends with the suspicious seagulls.
exploring the lowest point in north america — badwater basin in death valley national park.
spent a saturday wandering around death valley – my favourite national park.
located on the southwestern edge of ireland’s burren region in county clare, the cliffs of moher run roughly 9 miles along the coast. at their highest they rise more than 700 feet from the atlantic ocean below.
camcorder video diary
the cliffs were formed between 313-326 million years ago as a result of a river dumping silt, sand, and clay along an ancient delta. this sediment was collected over millions of years & compacted & lithified into sedimentary strata now exposed as the cliff face. the punishing atlantic ocean waves are now eroding the cliffs, causing them to collapse under their own weight.
you may recognize the cliffs of moher from their supporting role as the “cliffs of insanity” in the 1987 epic the princess bride.
I arrived in the early afternoon to an otherworldly view of the atlantic & the infamous cliffs shrouded in sea mist & swept by gusts of cold salt air. the cattle and sheep of the surrounding countryside didn’t seem to notice the bluster, & continued their lunchtime grazing without incident.
the cliffs now see over 1.5 million visitors per year.
spent a saturday driving route 66 from victorville to daggett with my handheld camcorder & my vintage lubitel 2 medium format film camera. I am fascinated by places like daggett, an almost ghost town with a rich california mining history.
a sunday afternoon at the beach with my lowfi handheld camcorder. I wanted to shoot a test roll on my recently acquired vintage pentax auto 110 super, which was billed as the worlds smallest SLR when it was released in the mid 1980s. here’s hoping the shots turn out.
