Picked up a few books this month. A few of these I’ve wanted for many years. The Jim Marshall book I’d only heard of recently. There’s also a documentary of the same title , but I believe due to Covid the release date was pushed back to sometime this year.

The Vivian Maier book on her street photography is a stunner. Every single photograph is incredible. Her story is incredible. If you’ve never heard of her I highly recommend watching Finding Vivian Maier . I first watched this documentary in one of my photo classes at UNCG.

The Blake Little books I’ve wanted for a long time. There are a couple more I’m missing but they’re sold out. We got to meet Blake last year, or maybe it was 2019. A beautiful and kind man. Very talented. Both Work and Manifest are full of naturally rugged, handsome gay men in their respective environments. His Gay Rodeo photos I was not aware were in book format until I had placed the order for the other two. Had to grab a copy.

And, of course, The Americans by Robert Frank. It’s a classic and I’m happy to have finally purchased a copy. Will enjoy flipping through this one over and over.

I had a photo walk scheduled this past weekend with a couple local photographers but the weather had other plans. I was pretty bummed, but I’ve had the idea of making a camera strap for a while. A week prior I had already ordered a couple Horween CXL leather strips but I needed a few other things. So off to Tandy Leather we go! Went. We went, past tense.

Having a local Tandy is handy (heh.) I still needed some antique rivets and a rivet setter. Also fully planned on using round rings, but they had these nice triangular ones that fit the strip perfect. The strips I ordered were both ¹⁄₂” in width but I got one 4.5-5oz and one 7oz thickness. The difference is definitely noticeable.

We actually bought a lot of stuff from Tandy Leather months ago so I had a lot of the tools we needed already.

Lessons Learned:

• No need to bevel the top of a nicely finished strip like this
• No need to burnish the edges I was told (but isn’t a terrible idea)
• Leather bumpers would be nice to silence the triangle rings

Going to try my hand at the 7oz strip next and see if I can do better.

This may work out as a nice little side project. There are so many combinations of things you can make. Shoulder pads, wrist straps, adjustable, with buckles of you’d like. This was my first venture into leathercrafting and I quite enjoyed it.