The other night, I scanned in my 35mm film from Costa Rica. My 120 film will have to wait because my scanner only accommodates 35mm. A lot of the photos came out grainier than I expected. The Ilford film we used is a bit different than the Kodak Tri-X I am used to using. I think we used 400 ISO Ilford film, which is the same ISO as my Kodak film, but it came out with more grain. Considering both types and how the photos came out, I think I still prefer the Kodak Tri-X film. The details and how it reads highlights/shadows is more appealing. In my fridge, I have at least a dozen film rolls of various types in a drawer waiting to be used. I gave my Holga away as a birthday present and I really want to get a new one sometime, because I have two rolls of 120 film sitting idle in that drawer that I had forgotten about and also I really want to try out color film in a Holga. If I had money to play with, I would spend a lot of it on camera/darkroom supplies. There is so much more I wish I could fiddle with and do. Money, money, money must be funny in a rich man’s world.

Here are a few of the photos I scanned in:

Here is Franny and Dustin – my constant companions at the photo studio throughout my time in Costa Rica. I miss being auntie to Franny. She would follow me around the photo studio whenever she wasn’t being told to go to her bed.

The middle boy is André. He really captured my heart. Behind him is Los Guido. The other two went to the woodshop class, we never had them in the photo studio, but I saw them several times over the course of the summer.

This is Isaac. He was a bit camera shy! He is the one that called me mommy and bonita (Spanish for beautiful/lovely).

A man waiting by the water truck, people watching. On this day, we helped deliver water to homes in Los Guido. They went almost a week without water and the government came in with these water trucks after the community protested using bonfires.

People watching and waiting for water. The middle girls are Americans that we had in our photo studio for my last week there.

Water buckets waiting to be filled almost to the brim. All of us were very sore in our shoulders after carrying water. A full bucket is quite heavy!  The cracked dirt seems to reflect the lack of potable water for the community.

I am not quite sure what I like about this photo. Perhaps it is the sharpness or the balance. A few of the photos that I scanned in came out hazy or “flat.” This one came our fairly well.

We drank Coca-Cola frequently since there were neighborhood stores everywhere. It was really nice to get a coke for about 70 cents.  The bottles were marked with the dates 1995 and 2002, so they have been reused for quite a while! I really think that Coca-Cola needs to return the recycled glass bottle business in the United States. Would it not be a lot easier on the environment? Less plastic manufacturing and less waste pollution. Not to mention a really cold glass bottle of Coca-Cola is a lot more refreshing than a drink from a plastic one.

Here is a view of the contemporary art museum in San José. It is northeast of downtown right by the national park. I really liked it, especially since the interior is so different from the city. It is spacious and clean compared to the crammed, dirty city. There was a piece of work in there that used plants in tubes and it was cool to see how the plants decayed over time.