New Roll / Pride (Patreon)

Hello! Here is a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 from a propack my friend gave me, shot through my Fujica GW690i. It expired in 2019, so I metered/shot it at ISO 50, and got these (more or less perfect) results. It is available here on Drive and here on Flickr.

The shots are half from a ferry ride from Anacortes to San Juan Island I took a few weeks ago with some friends of mine, and half from Fort Nisqually, a living-history site located in Point Defiance. (The shot above is genuinely one of my favorites of the year.)

...

This past weekend was Pride, and it was my first time getting to experience Seattle's version of it. I needed it to a degree I couldn't fathom.

Friday was Trans Pride, which is a variety of booths and performances in Volunteer Park. Unusually dour weather for June dampened turnout, and a masks-required policy prevented me from being able to socialize normally or shoot photos like I had hoped to, so I didn't stick around too long. I understand the point of such requirements, to be sure! But I struggle to understand and communicate with people without being able to see their lips, so it makes me much more awkward and introverted.

Later that night I went to a local raucously loud gay bar with a bunch of my friends, and that was more the vibe I was hoping for, tbh. I don't often do gay bars, but it was nice to actually go out, be loud, watch dancers, and feel as though I was actively participating in queer life.

The next day, my wife and I put on slutty clothing and went out to Capitol Hill's Pride, which was most of Broadway covered in (mostly small!) vendors and performers. I saw a few friends, shot a ton of photos for my slide-film project I'm pursuing, and she bought some cute earrings. We then went to a trans friend's place to have drinks and chat, and I blasted through more slide with my new-to-me Nikon SB-26 Speedlight (flash) assisting as the sun set.

(The SB-26 was a fun get—it's an old enough design it doesn't work with modern digital cameras, but it was a high-end TTL strobe meant for professional film cameras. Its general worthlessness to modern photographers meant I picked it up for like $40 shipped and now have an incredibly nice flash designed to work perfectly with my F4.)

Next day was the parade, which was led off by dozens upon dozens of Dykes on Bikes roaring up and down the street to raucous applause, although the loudest reaction was reserved for the trans man who stopped his bike, stood atop it in the center lane, and did his testosterone injection in the middle of the street. Everyone went absolutely insane.

Even more great, it was shockingly non-corporate-oriented, especially compared to the previous Pride events I'd attended in Houston and Reno; the main organizations that led and ended the parade were either local labor unions, non-profits, or advocacy groups. After watching large companies (including ones I'd worked with closely!) drop LGBT people like we were cancerous in the wake of the Trump election, I didn't really want to see pinkwashing in the form of fancy floats and matching corporate pride shirts. I wanted to see happy queer people celebrating themselves, not their jobs. That was most of what I saw, and it felt incredible.

Even when there was corporate stuff, it was pretty overshadowed. Local news affiliate KIRO 7's pride van was followed directly behind by a group of what appeared to have been "unsanctioned" marchers with less-corporate-friendly cardboard signs (lots of promises of death before detransition) and Palestinian flags, which ruled (and also got a huge reaction from the crowd).

Personally, my wife held my leash, I did violently loud makeup and wore too-short shorts, and we were obnoxiously queer all day; it was great.

I have spent most of my publicly-out life worried about my optics. I have lived as a (very niche!) public figure for a very embattled minority basically since the moment I chose my new name. I have worried constantly about being a bad representative. I fret endlessly about striking the right balance between publicly alluding to the acts of queerness, but not alienating an audience/car companies too much and thereby blowing my career up—or worse, harming public opinion of trans people.

Getting to celebrate a Pride where the PR of queerness wasn't at the forefront of everyone's mind helped liberate me from those worries. I wanted to actually feel proud of having come out and built a life with my community, and fuck the people who don't like us. Yeah, my career is a mess, my future is uncertain, the laws are getting worse by the day, but we're still fucking here. Isn't that what matters?

I shot five rolls of slide and mailed them off to a friend who offered to do development/scanning for free to help with my project, so we'll find out in a few weeks how they came out.

Hope you're all doing okay. Happy pride!

Vicki <3