21 Sept 2013

Tacoma Micro-Type-Out


Equipped with coffee and tea from Tully's, longtime friend and typewriter pen pal Andrew and I walked to Fireman's Park in downtown Tacoma for a sudden micro-type-out. We caught up on some correspondence, enjoying the perfect weather--while it lasted.


Fireman's Park is by the waterside overlooking the Port, under the shadow of old city hall.


Mt Tahoma (Ranier) is framed perfectly by the Port of Tacoma bridge in this (mediocre) photograph.


My type-in-companion was my green Lettera 22. His device of choice was a Smith-Corona Skyriter. He typed a letter, whereas I didn't really write any correspondence. I rambled on about birds, typewriters, and the weather. This was my first time typing in public for any reasonable length of time. A dozen or so people walked by without so much as a second glance. You can be weird here and still not be noticed. XD

The clouds started to roll in during our time there and within a few hours it was raining, hard (for Tacoma at least). One lightning strike even graced the occasion. Of course we happened to be caught in the rain with Ned (typewriter dog) taking pizza back to the apartment! It was fun.

Black and white photographs don't have the use of colour to distract the eye from compositional error. You can see that some of my photos are hits, whilst others are glaring misses.

6 comments:

  1. Black and white certainly deserves a comeback, along with a lot of other "obsolete" ideas. I don't have to preach the advantages to this group, so I'll just reinforce our good feelings about your efforts. Great work! Thanks!
    == Michael Höhne

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  2. Wish I could have been there. We should make a regular thing of it somewhere. Have you thought about NaNoWriMo? There will be write-ins around it.

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  3. B&W holds surprises and makes a Lettera look better than it normally does - which is pretty good to start off with. If you like, a grad filter can beef up the sky (and the mountain), you can improvise with a scrap of yellow cellophane close to the lens. Excellent typecast reporting.

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    1. The weathered wood table also helps, but you're right. The Lettera can be admired simply because of it's lines. Probably why they were a boring tan at first--they didn't need flashy colour.

      There's a setting in my camera for emphasizing blue in a black and white, but I hadn't thought of it at the time. I'll try the cellophane idea though.

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  4. Looks like a very pleasing place to type. B & W makes it all look much more dramatic.

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