@alanastorm
of a certain age; clocky broad; after much consternation, a writer found in TRANSPlants, Pile Press, Lilac Peril, and PDX Makes zines i use this machine to share work and I try to not discourse in public. https://gliff.org https://linktr.ee/alanaxstorm
And gear talk can get so toxic and tedious so quickly, but also gear matters? Or at least understanding it does. [this thread brought to you by me psyching myself up to go ask some questions about old camera metering systems in facebook groups and reddit]
and the people who write that software are making aesthetic choices about what a "portrait mode" photograph should look like, and that's not always going to line up with what a lens does.
like -- one of the things that works for me in this photo of mimete is how the subject is both in and out of focus (SLR, wide open lens, narrows depth of field). There's some natural depth of field games you can play using a phone, but most of it comes from post processing software.
thinking a lot about what makes a photograph "good" again (annoying), and how much of that comes down to making something that defies whatever the default camera of the era is (iPhone, Kodak Brownie, etc.)
Image of a synth performer at a keyboard about to rip into something new. She.
Scans are back from last monthβs Waverly show. More at www.instagram.com/p/DVuoLYeEau...
A womanβs hand with lavender nails grasping of an Minolta light meter
Cleaned the corrosion (hey, now, hey now now) off the terminals and this old friend came back to life.
low key rereading most of the trans lit I read during the first few years and I'm grateful for the reminder on how much I've changed
Image of two near identical Polaroid pictures, shot side by side. The image is looking out a window from a dark room, with the edge of the curtain illuminated and a second house visible through the window.
Shot on the left was taken with the light sensor completely covered, shot on the right as normal, both without the flash. Exposure seems unchanged -- unsure if that's normal camera operation, or if the light sensor has gone bad.
can't read every book, can't research every sad withdrawn "man" who killed himself
stop making yourself feel bad. β‘Μ
light, and rare these days, two drink hangover and a drizzling morning
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiS7...
Jan 2026 β’ I Lived Here β’ Portland, OR 1994 - 1999 β’ by Sierra Tierra β’ Issue #1
1994 rent: I paid $200/month and had 2 roommates. The apartment had water stains but plenty of light, and I had no furniture except a used dresser and a mattress on the floor. Megan moved into the attic after returning to Portland from her travels. One day she took us to Joanne's Fabrics in far NE Portland so we could make curtains. I grew up in a normal, furnished house in a city yet it did not occur to me to furnish this place. Putting a single piece of material on a dowel and hanging it on the window - people came over to see such a wonder of modern living! My first car was a 1971 Volvo. I bought that for $450 dollars. So old it had a manual choke like a lawnmower. That lasted 2 months until it broke down on the highway coming home from work one day. Megan's friend Jeff, whom she met while driving cross-country, (the 2nd time after a summer playing professional Irish gigs back east) came to live with us and that was the most fun I'd ever had in my life. When I think back to when my mind was empty of anything β’ I felt the utmost friendship other than pleasure lide it was November, 1995.
Perfect container concept for a zine. Annoyed both that I didn't think of and execute on it first, and annoyed my obvious choice is already taken.
Meet my polycule: Three MyCharts and a weird proprietary thing (it/its) from the plastic surgery clinic.
The old world is dying and my eyebrow waxer has extended his Greece vacation to βnot coming backβ.
Adjacent to your point and the discussion: Are there any particular books/works of outsider queer literature that you're thinking of here? (asking with "I want things to read" energy)
Image of a board screwed to a metal plate showing a power line with a cord coming off it on stark black and white, there is a gold pattern lines across the image and the image is on a white painted background on the board
now seems like a good time to post my new piece
Binding Spell Against The Internet #1: Fiber To The Home
IR photograph, screen print of XY display, ink transfer onto acrylic
Hello! I am a trans journalist looking to speak with trans kids and parents of trans kids across the US who have been impacted by the clinic closures---please get in touch or share!
Image of the sunlight streaming into the coffee shop in Powell's books, the room in shadows
Image of the reflection of two women in a room bathed in red light
blurry image of cotton seed like flowers with a rail road crossing in the background
blurry photo of a generic yellow flower in the grass
Even with a 640 ASA these cameras really want you to use the flash or be in direct sunlight. I haven't been able to dig up much on exposure other than shutter speeds in the 1/3 β 1/200 seconds range, and f-stops in the f/14.6 - f/45 range. Still zeroing in on what the lightness/darkness slider does.
Image of a Polaroid Spirit 600 Camera
Image of a Polaroid OneStep camera
Picked these both up for a song ages ago, during that lull when no one was producing Polaroid film and thrifts were selling them for $5 β $10. Ran some film through them last week. The OneStep appears to be in full working order, but the flash system on the Spirit seems done for.
a woman singing into a microphone while a second adjusts her synths in the background sw0rdswall0wer and Gwyniver at the Musicians Union, Feb. 13, 2026
Which is to say, a good couple of weeks to take this website off my phone.
I have a distinct memory of being eight and hearing an adult on TV say the administration believed that the Grenada invasion was needed, in part, to boost the confidence of the US military after Vietnam. The long death throes of empire β and who knows what horrible thing comes out the other end.
Each trip I take back into the past sheds maybe half the rawness about lost time -- but it never seems to leave. She's maybe twenty five feet away but it may have well as been 2,500 miles.
I wish I knew how to be accountable to this feeling, or to just let it go.
(Pride 2001; Rochester, NY)
I am but a lowly street photographer, I'm not sure if @magicariot.com has them for sale or not.
I mean, I get it. Every scan is an enlargement you're not selling, the affluent hobbyist class will probably pay for it so why not. But also -- see above.
Price: Single Frame: $60
lol. lmao even.
I don't regret reading it but there's probably better accounts of the period.
Not a lot of new (for me) insight into Mapplethorpe, although what Morrisroe cast as uncouth social climbing Smith remembers as being motivated by a fear and anxiety about the ability to support both himself and her, which is an uncomfortably familiar feeling.
Smith was never one of my figures -- I knew her work by way Merchant, Springsteen, and the shadow her mystique and marketing cast on the cis women of my generation. Another figure from the 70s whose response to the caste her sex and gender placed her in was an attempt to transcend or ignore both.
Audiobook case for Just written and read by Patti Smith
Finished Just Kids -- pretty by the numbers as celebrity memoirs go. A woman in her early sixties looking back at her twenties more with remembrance than inquisition. Smith reads the audio book with a restrained, matter of fact, and almost dissociative tone.