The new lense is out for fashion week, after that it will be for sale for a $1.

Check it.

-Paul Palandjian

Turn camera into a nostalgia machine!

As technology speeds past us it’s perhaps not surprising that we retain an affection for analogue clunkiness. Hipsters have shown a taste for taking everything from the crackle of vinyl to tatty Barbour jackets and dragging them back into fashion. It’s this trend for thrift-store artiness that’s responsible for one of last year’s biggest-selling iPhone apps, the Hipstamatic. For just £1.19 it lets the iPhone’s digital camera produce pictures that look something like your parents’ 1972 holiday snaps.

The app itself recreates the look of an old square-frame camera and takes Polaroid-style pictures. With the swipe of a finger you can change its virtual lenses and film formats to create a variety of over-saturated or discoloured effects.

Excerpted from the Checker Board Foundation’s film series of famous architects and their lifes work, this footage displays his most recent residential masterpiece, Woodstock Farm. Located in Woodstock, Vermont, the master architect who as dubbed by Steven Holl as the “poet of place” shows his sensitivity to his New England routes and his unique blend of purity, warmth and vision with respect to context of place. I am interviewed about my experience of working with Rick and our successful tribute to the New England family farm. Recently selected for the 2010 Architectural Record – Record Houses of the Year Award, it is the fourth such award for Rick Joy, and my first. Special mention must be made to Erik Tobiason and Tucker Johnson of Colby and Tobiason Builders whose skill and craftsmanship is clear evidence of their elite status among the world of luxury home builders. Jason Eaton and Mark Johnson of Chippers Inc. Land Enhancement Specialists are enlisted to commence a 10 year program for forestry, wildlife, recreation and agriculture as we have placed the land into protection under the Vermont State Current Use program. The home and barn and future buildings planned for the property will be completely “off the grid” while embracing geothermal, solar, hydro-electric and wind technologies.

-Paul Palandjian

Woodstock Farm Interview

The photos below were created using Hipstamatic on the iPhone, and there are many more out there, like Camera Bag and Lo Mob.

– Hipstamatic
– Camera Bag
– Lo Mob

If Bannik became angry, watch out! Bathers were known to have lost their skin and had their bodies wrapped around the stove for loud singing, talking or swearing in the bath–or simply for being a stranger. You were wise not to lie or boast, and certainly not to have sexual intercourse in the bath! Red hot rocks and boiling water have also been known to be thrown by a displeased Bannik.

To protect yourself from the Bannik, etiquette required making the sign of the cross before entering the bania, wishing your comrades a good bath and, when leaving, wishing the Bannik a hearty goodbye. Since the Bannik liked a clean room and bathed at least once a week, cleaning and heating the bania were duties that could not be neglected. The Bannik could control the quality of steam and could transform harmless steam into deadly coal gas if he wasn’t satisfied.The third or fourth round of bathing was always reserved for the Bannik who liked to bathe alone in the dark. Soap, lye, and birch twigs were left behind for him. And a little extra because the Bannik sometimes invited his forest friends to join him–sometimes the Devil himself.

You knew when the Bannik had his friends in by the purring noise of their conversation. This was never a time to enter a bania alone. However, if you were curious and wanted to see the bania spirit, you had to go alone. You would step in with one leg and at the same time take your cross off your neck and put it under the heel of your left foot which symbolized your denial of God.

The Bannik might then reveal himself. From time to time, Bannik expected a sacrifice. After an old bania had been burned down and before a new one could be erected, a black chicken had to be choked and buried under the building site. Then, to assuage the rascal, salt was thrown over the stove during the first heating of the bania.The bania also housed benevolent supernatural forces. Witches and sorcerers gathered in the bania to estahlish a link with these superior powers and here, surrounded by the magic forces of the bania, evil could be extracted from the body and the future prophesied.

The magical attributes of the sweat bath were the reason that the critical stages of a Russian’s life–birth, adulthood, marriage, and death–were conducted in the bania. The moment a person moved from the known to the unknown, they were vulnerable to evil forces that could enter and consume the Russian soul. With proper ritual, the bania’s powers could be summoned to protect the Russian during life’s crucial transitions.

Luke shows his humility while keeping his crazy good skill under wraps.