A lightweight 35mm film enabler. The Canon Rebel Ti turns film shooting into muscle memory—quiet, quick, and always ready. It takes Canon EF glass, meters smartly, and advances in a snappy burst when you need it. Reliable. Nimble. Consistently clean in its own way. I got mine used for $30 and it's one of my best cameras!
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Origin Story
Rockin’ Rene never did things halfway. She screamed when she laughed, stomped when she danced, and took photographs like she was trying to pin lightning to paper. Mid-2000s Cincinnati, every basement, every hole-in-the-wall club—you could bet Rene was there with her Canon Rebel TI slung around her neck, snapping away.
The Rebel was her baby. Black tape across the battery door, stickers peeling off the strap, half the buttons rubbed smooth from use. That camera saw it all—sweaty punks hanging from rafters, kids thrashing like their lives depended on it, cigarette smoke curling into the strobes. Rene lived fast, sure, but she had a steady hand behind the lens.
She didn’t have a fixed address, not really. Some nights a friend’s couch, some nights a squat, but mostly she kept to the streets. “More honest that way,” she told people, as if she’d chosen the concrete. What mattered wasn’t a bed but the scene—the shows, the people, the noise.
The night she died, she’d just finished a roll at a downtown club, last frame a mirror shot of herself in the bathroom. Grinning, wild hair, chipped eyeliner, camera blocking half her face. That was the one that stuck. That was the one that caught more than just an image.
She was walking back to her camp when it happened. Wrong corner, wrong guy. A mugging, fast and mean, no drama to it. Her life ended right there on the wet pavement, but the last flash from that mirror shot had already tethered her spirit to the Rebel TI. While her body was left behind, Rene herself clicked into the film advance lever, the shutter, the viewfinder.
And that’s where she stayed.
When I—Lightkeeper J—first crossed paths with her Rebel, I didn’t even know she was inside it. The camera hummed, sure, but lots of old cameras hum. It wasn’t until I developed the first roll that I saw her: faint outlines of safety pins and leather jackets in the margins of shots, spray-painted anarchy signs ghosting through images of my backyard. Annie was in one photo, but her collar had turned into a spiked choker. That’s when I knew I wasn’t alone.
Rene’s still wild, even on this side of things. She adds grit to every photo—grain, blur, colors too hot to be real. Sometimes the pictures reek of stale beer and hairspray. And she talks fast, like her spirit never came down off the energy of the show. She’s impatient, always telling me to shoot more, waste the roll, stop waiting for the perfect frame. “Life doesn’t sit still, Lightkeeper,” she says. “Don’t you dare try to freeze it.”
There’s a sweetness under it all, though. She loves being remembered. Loves that somebody still clicks the shutter for her. Every so often, if I catch her in a good mood, she’ll slip herself right into the picture. Just a flash of her—reflection in a window, a figure in a crowd. Smiling crooked, tongue sticking out, forever mid-mosh.
That’s Rockin’ Rene. The punk of Spirit Craft Studio. Gone too soon, but never gone quiet. Every photo she touches carries the echo of an old show poster: ONE NIGHT ONLY—NO FUTURE, NO FEAR.
And she means it.
Fueled By Coffee
(And Your Kind Support)
I run this cozy little ad-free corner of the internet for the joy of it.
I chase light, not clicks. I make photos. If this place brings a smile to your face please know: your support keeps film in the camera, coffee in the cup, and the adventures rolling.
Click on the coffee cup to toss in a few coins, if you like.
No pressure.
Either way, thank you for being a part of the collective
and helping my vision grow.
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