Darwin is a beautiful 35mm Canon AE-1, which I got half of for my 18th birthday (making him just over 10 years in my possession). As you can see in my dot-faced user picture, Darwin is not digital. Darwin does not have auto-focus.

However, as I've used the camera for the past ten years, and quite a bit, too, I am familiar and comfortable with him. Beyond that , having studied photography helps a little, too. So I metered the light in the room before blindfolding myself and starting in. However, focus is such a touchy thing- with a manual camera, there is some amount of science you can apply, knowing your lens well, and estimating the distance between yourself and that which you are photographing. The images still end up softer, or focused on something unintended.

And yet, there's something I like a lot about this.

The first image is Celina. It's my favorite of the whole roll. She is also blindfolded, lifting her chin upwards, and in profile. I like the light behind her, the green and brown of the wall and the wood, and the softness of the whole thing out of focus.

The second image is Celina, Starfive, and Oliver. This is the most "in focus" of the images I took. I positioned myself in the doorway of my diningroom. A lot of the images I took on this roll, I was sneaking around as much as possible, taking advantage of the fact that we were in my house.

The third image is Oliver's shoulder, but mostly the piles of paper and bottles on the cabinet and windowsill behind him. The light is good in this photograph, and the angle is interesting.

The fourth image is the corner of the aforementioned cabinet. Strangely, it is perfectly in focus, and with warm light and good shadows surrounding it. Somewhere in the blurry foreground is a hand.