I went to see Alice Cooper last night. It was a fun concert. He is still a great showman. I was about 25 feet from the stage in the center. I got four guitar picks thrown by the guitarists, but I only kept one. The people around me really wanted those picks. Nita Strauss does great hair whips. I caught a lot of them. Ryan Roxie and Tommy Hendriksen rocked on their guitars. Chuck Garric played a mean bass, and Glenn Sobel was fantastic on the drums. I assume Alice’s daughter, Calico, played the Pirate, but I can’t say for sure. Alice had a boa constrictor close to the same size as my Blue. Cold Ethyl had the same hair as Sia. Hmmm! Alice lost his head, of course. Here are some photos from the show. Click on the photos to enlarge them.
The last frame #24 on the roll of film affected by light leaks in the film canister.
I bought some Cine Film re-engineered for 35mm to be developed by standard C41 process. This is a high speed tungsten film normally used for cinematography. I had put the roll of film in my Canon F1 intending to shoot film along with digital of the fashion show at Gears & Glamour. However, since the fashion show was in the dark, and I hadn’t worked with the film before, I didn’t want to push it beyond its recommended ISO 800 until I had used it. Since this film is best used indoors or at night under tungsten street lighting, I only took a few shots in the well lighted prep area at Gears & Glamour, a few more at the West Side Chorale’s winter concert, and then decided to use it outdoors with a 600 mm lens. I knew the color would be off in daylight, but I wanted to see how well I could hand hold a 600 mm lens with high speed film.
I got a surprise when I got to the end of the roll of film. I noticed the advance didn’t stop, and when I tried rewinding the film, the knob turned freely. I advanced the film a couple more times to see it would stop — it didn’t, so I took the camera into the darkroom, opened it in the dark and carefully felt by the take-up spool, and discovered the film had not been secured to the spool in the canister. I took out the canister, and as carefully as I could opened it up with a can opener. I carefully pulled the film out of the camera, but when the last of it popped off the take-up spool, the coiled mess of film slipped from my hands and fell to the floor. Remember, I’m in total darkness, so I bent down, felt around at my feet, found the pile of film, gently picked it up, found an end to the film, found the spool from the canister and rewound the film back onto the spool. I put the spool back in the canister and forced the end cap back onto the canister. When I got the negatives back, the canister didn’t seal back up tightly around the edges after opening it (I had suspected as much), so the last frames on the roll had light leaks. This was a mystery, because the last frames should be on the inside of the spool and the first frames on the outside where they would be affected by light leaks in the seal around the outer edge of the end cap. Then I remembered dropping the film, so I must have rolled it back on the spool reverse of how the photos were taken.
The lead photo is frame 24, the last image taken, and the effect of the light leaks from being on the outer edge in the canister are pretty interesting. The rest of the images, shown in order taken, were not affected by the leaks on the edge of the canister.
Frame 1 at Gears & Glamour with no effect from the light leak in the canister
Frame 8 at the Winter Concert
Frame 12 of coyotes on the other side of the river.
Frame 18 of a Blue Heron on a sandbar in the river.
We went to A Lenten Penitential Prayer Concert. A Dedication to Our Lady of Sorrows presented by the Albuquerque All City Women’s Catholic Liturgical Choir at St. Thérèse and the Infant Jesus Catholic Church last night. The concert included a service with the Stations of the Cross — the first time I’ve attended a service with the stations of the the cross. After the concert I was talking to Father Vincent who gave me the history of the church. Built in 1954, St. Thérèse and the Infant Jesus Catholic Church just happens to be one of four shrines in the world for Thérèse of Lisieux. The full name of the of the church is the Shrine of the Little Flower, St. Thérèse and the Infant Jesus Catholic Church.
I learned that they have some of the bones of St. Thérèse in the marble under the statue in the first photo, in marble at the main alter, and a bone fragment in a small gold reliquary the priest takes out of its nook to venerate St. Thérèse. They also have rare statues of her, and various other relics such as her choir robe. One of the first priests at the church was French and he designed the stained glass and statuary — he had the stained glass made in France and the statues carved by craftsmen in the Italian Alps. Father Vincent said the Church cost over $3 million dollars to build in 1954, and he was estimating it would cost about $18 million to build today. I looked around at the quality of the construction, the marble, stained glass and statuary, and told him that from my experience with construction costs, I thought it would cost around $30 million to build church like it today.
St. Thérèse was a French Carmelite nun who died of tuberculosis at the age of 24 in 1897. known as “The Little Flower”, Roman Catholics love her for what’s considered the simplicity and practicality of her approach to a spiritual life. St. Thérèse was beatified in 1923, and canonized in 1925. She was named co-patron of France with Joan of Arc in 1944, and Pope John Paul II made her the 33rd Doctor of the Church in 1997. A collection of her autobiographical manuscripts called “The Story of a Soul” became very popular in the early 1900’s, which ended up making her one of the most popular saints in the 20th century.
Coheed & Cambria, Between The Buried & Me and Russian Circles played tonight at the Sunshine Theater, and these white mannequins were among the gear in the staging area behind the theater.
Off Center & Not Even 