light up the darkness

 
what would you do with a pack of twenty five sparklers?

bake a cake?
throw a party?
stand in snow with a wind chill for three hours whilst trying to put film in an old camera at the same time as trying to light sparklers, all in the dark of night?

well, we thought we might brave the wind chill.

i forgot to close the shutter after putting the lens cap on in the last picture... we only found out it was still open when we got home. we will do it again, maybe in the summer (before the mosquitoes...), for sparklers make for magical pictures.

light up the darkness.

love,
r&y

ps. a music video from the past...

  

vacancy: living room available

my brother in law, the future insanely successful lawyer, stayed with us for a few weeks in december. best. roomate. ever. not only did he do the dishes regularly, provide animated entertainment for the 45 minute train ride into school each morning (for me and my fellow subway travellers...), and humoured me by watching my favourite movies with me, but he also proved very handy at minute projects that tyler loves to do and i am not patient enough to love, yet...  (above: test pictures taken with the mamiya 645 kodak portra 400)

and then my sister came in january. we found our dream home in a deserted town in michigan. do not be so easily repulsed. this house was once a gorgeous mansion, and so it will be again one day, when we're done with it... taking a peak in the windows, you can see beautiful stained glass windows, hard wood floors, and even lace curtains.  we do believe it was meant, and left, for us. (below: pictures taken with the canon a1)

however, we now have a vacancy in our living room. accepting all applicants for any amount of time you'd like to stay. air mattress very comfy and lots of blankets and food available.

we like visitors...

love,
r&y

ps. we're thinking about moving home this way. we think it might be easier than packing everything in boxes...

the best thing in the whole wide world...

a snail mail letter.

and then i got another one only a few days later.

i love you more than life. i miss you so much it gives me a stomach ache, too. i'm mooving back just as fast as i can.

love,

auntie holly.

ps. i hope you're checking your mailbox...

saturday night dances

i hear most people's first dance memory was composed of an awkward intimate moment dancing with a longstanding crush (at arms length...). or something. at my first dance, with my sister, i watched in open mouth shock as she transformed into a convulsing, twisting, blur of pulsing movement with her friends. it changed my life forever. i had no idea music could do that...

i miss dances. a lot. it was a workout, a release, a cleanse, an excuse to dress up and crazify your makeup and wardrobe, and, to be honest, probably my most favourite activity. ever. what is better than to let music take over and move till you can't breathe and everything's a blur.

kinda sounds like taking drugs. i wouldn't know.

my mother shoulda put me in dance lessons. i would have rocked this world out of existence. instead, i'll have to rock my living room without breaking anything...

thanks maya for this video. reminds me of several people i used to like to dance with, and little of me... and, of course, thom yorke is a dream...

love,
r&y

where there is a sea, there are pirates

we found our very own pirate ship about forty-five minutes from our house.  that basically makes us pirates. we can't imagine how pirates sailed into lake ontario... but trapped by a manmade stone wall, we imagine these pirates, realizing their ship could not escape, abandoned ship and hitch hiked home on the QEW.

we parked in a snow drift along the lake, stood in the cold for an hour to take pictures (these with our canon a-1, others on a roll that we've lost...), and we spent another hour pushing our car out of the snow drift. and by we, i mean i sat in the car trying not to spin out while tyler pushed...

the long exposure made the full moon as bright as the sun.  but i promise it was night. and cold.

love,

r&y

here's another story about where this ship came from. but i'm pretty sure mine story is the correct one.

sittin' pretty, what a lovely display

i like when tyler takes pictures of me. he makes me look pretty on film...
these were taken on our mamiya 645 with kodak portra 400.

despite the minor heart palpitations i am having due to the accumulation of final reports and the ever daunting board exam approaching a whole lot faster than i would like it to, i find solace in this song. tyler says it sounds like a song in a musical.

good thing i love musicals.

speaking of which, i have a major crush on gene kelly and it's because of this musical. watch it before you die, or you won't die happy.

even ty loved it.

another reason why we will be together forever and ever.
love,
r&y

those skinny jeans don't belong in toronto...

here's our first pictures taken on our new mamiya 645 with kodak portra nc.

and here's our new favourite band. not only do they make great music, and their show leaves a permasmile on your face for days (still counting...), and even when your car gets broken into and your laptop stolen, you can watch this video (on an old laptop...) and feel better. and after you meet them, you want to drop out of hygiene school, start writing music, and be a rockstar. but also, did you notice they're all wearing ctr rings? find them here and go to their show. it'll change your life.

love,

r&y

these vagabond shoes are longing to stray...

we kept finding ourselves in central park. when the sidewalks got too hard, the museums too full, the stores too expensive, and the people too unavoidable, central park was where we went. new york wouldn't be new york without that park. the people would have gone crazy and moved to the rocky mountains ages ago...

love,
r&y

8 seconds of new york city caught on film...

hard to be still in a city that's always moving. we tried to catch it all on film. 8 seconds at a time.

love,
r&y

when we have a digital, we'll do long exposure timelapses, like this...