California/.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 9:09PM Tweet Last weekend we took a trip to California to celebrate my great grandmas 95th birthday, and also meet up with Sarah Jane and Riz for their engagement session. We arrived there friday night, picked up our rental cars, and drove the long windy drive to my grand-parents beach house. This beach house has been in my family for over 30 years. It is a little piece of heaven. Fresh air, a misty fog (kind of like the last scene in the movie Pride & Predjudice where Mr. Darcy walks through the field to tell Elizabeth that he loves her), the rhythmic sound of the waves and the sunny skies and warm weather even in mid February. There is nothing like falling asleep and waking up to the sound of the ocean!
The first day Casey and I completed a six mile run on the beach. That has always been one of my goals: to run that far all while enjoying the salty thick air of the beach and the sunny skies. Although amazingly fun, the run was definitely harder than I expected! Since the tide was up so high it was difficult to find any hard sand to run on so our feet sank atleast 2 inches with every stride. I also got blasted with a huge wave when this really cute (and huge) dog came up to greet me. Oh well, I didn't need brand-new beautiful clean running shoes anyway :)
While we were driving up the coast, we discovered an amazing little town called, Capitola. For all the many times I have been to the beach house, I have never once been there. We stumbled upon it while picking up some things for Jane & Riz's shoot. We stopped at this cute little antique store and I asked the owner if they had any old cameras. She didn't have any but she pulled out a map of over 40 antique shops and circled one which she said usually has a great stash of cameras. We drove down to the shop and found a cabinet full of cameras. As we were looking we realized we owned almost all of the cameras in the case. We did find a few gems which I posted below:
~Danielle K.
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BELOW: We usually have to deal with having too much camera gear when we travel and overweight luggage is pretty much the norm, however, for this trip we packed 4 books, 4 vintage cameras, 7 packs of Polaroid film, our regular camera gear: 5 lenses, 5d, 7d, mark IV, CF cards, batteries, AND the vintage typewriter in case... our bags were WELL over 50 pounds, however, with some clever switching, swapping, and winking at TSA workers, we got it all onboard with no extra baggage fees :) :) :)
Books, directions, map, reading material.
BELOW: A cool map we found at the house of the San Francisco area
BELOW: view from the window right after we woke up. The ocean tide was REALLY high this season, usually there is about 300m of sand before you hit water. Later that day we went running down the coast, and in some places the water came all the way up to the hillside.
BELOW: A Polaroid Casey snapped out the window of the beach house in the morning.
BELOW: view from our bedroom window. Thinking of getting a massive print of this photo and hang it outside my window here in Seattle, hehe.
BELOW: While en-route, our Instax camera must have got pretty banged up because all the photos had these crazy streaks and dots on them. Definitely adds a cool effects. Its funny how sometimes we spend hours making digital photos look aged, when really, its as easy as dropping your film camera a couple times and voila, instant vintage effect.
When we first entered the shop we found a small cabinet in a corner that was literally packed to the brim full of vintage cameras. The glass door was pretty dusty and it was also locked, so we couldnt really get a good view of what was inside. After we called the clerk over to open up the door and help, we peaked inside and saw this beauty.... Although we have a whole lot of Polaroid cameras, we hadnt seen one like this. We thought it was cool because the front chromed part kinda of looks like a vintage car from the 50's. It was only $12, so we grabbed it and were about to head out when we stumbled opon another cabinet in the far back of the store.....
....in the back, we stumbled upon this in a brightly lit glass cabinet. We asked to check it out and the owner came over to help us unlock the glass slider, however, he had about 100 keys on a small key ring and spend the next 20 min trying to find the right one. By this point, we pretty much knew we had to buy the camera to, first of all, make his efforts worth while, and secondly, to have a decent excuse for us to buy yet another vintage camera :)
While rummaging through one of the antique shops cupboards, I discovered a really cool map of Japan from the 1930's. I knew this would be the perfect gift for Casey's brother who loves Japan (and is also going to be living there all next year in a exchange program).
Reader Comments (4)
Wpw! Great finds! I really like the polaroid camera...very, very pretty!
Completely inspired by this post to, a) take a trip where I haven't been before, b) to type things out, even though it's easier to print them, c) go buy some maps!
When do we get to hang out guys? =)
These are awesome! Great vintage cameras! Maybe it's time for me to break out and clean up the Polaroid Land Camera I have sitting in the closet...
i love your life. it's nice. good job.