my life, my thoughts, my world.

Nobody ever shoots a full roll of film and loves every single frame, but on my most recent outing I came pretty close on two rolls. When you only bring three rolls of 120 film and a square format Mamiya C3 to shoot the pace slows down a lot, after all you’ve only got twelve exposures per roll. Keeping things flowing is important, but you definitely do not want to go off releasing the shutter when you are not within a hair of certainty that the resulting negative will contain the image you desire.

For my last shoot of the semester break, I only ended up shooting the two rolls of black and white film I brought – Kodak Tri-X Pan 320, and Ilford Delta 3200. The roll of Kodak Portra 400, the best color negative film in existence for portraiture as far as I am concerned, I had with me will have to wait for another time. Having never shot with this particular girl before I was unsure how things would go, but it was evident from the start that if nothing else we would at least have a good time. When I took my film out of the tanks and held the negatives up to the light, I knew I had some winners.

Joe has been a good friend of mine since the mid-90′s when our families both lived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. When he asked if I would take a few photos of him and Miriam after their wedding of course I said yes. I wish them all the best in their future together.

Words I heard many times as a private, and probably told my privates a dozen times as a sergeant, still hold true today. You either give it all you have, or stay at home. With my first attempt at the Houston-to-Austin MS150 cycling benefit for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society coming up in 104 days, it is time to put in extra training effort. What does that even mean? Hours of intensity training on my mag trainer to build endurance, and at least a 80 miles of actual road riding every week.

My personal goals are as follows:

• Complete each day of the MS150 in less than six hours, including stops.
• Raise the remaining $575 of my $1000 fundraising goal before I start the ride

Completing the first goal is entirely up to me, and I think it is well within my grasp. The second goal is going to take some help from anyone who feels like donating to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society is something they’d like to do. If you’re one of those people, the following link will take you to my donation page and you can help me with my goals while also helping those who have been touched by a terrible illness: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/ajmartinez

On the trainer