Pinhole and Pixel

I was able to get out last Monday to take some pinhole photos, one of which is my contribution to the 2011 Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.

It was a very overcast morning, threatening rain, and I only had about an hour to make some photos. I was in Salamanca, N.Y., my hometown, to visit family. I went out Sunday morning to scout locations, but it started to rain, hard, and I had other things to do.

So I went back Monday morning (which happened to be my birthday) and made some photos. The exposures were made with my 4x5 pinhole camera. The subject was the long-abandoned Erie railroad station. Oddly, as I scouted the area a train came by, only about 20 cars, and the engineer blew his horn and waved. Just like when I was a kid.

I made my photos and drew my Canon G9 to take some Reconstructions. That’s what I call them … taking a series of images and then putting them back together.

I know, first I say I love the simplicity of pinhole photos and then follow it up with an image that is made up of more than 70 individual images. Yin/Yang. I’m a complicated guy.

So, here they are, my selected pinhole photo that I uploaded to the WWPPD web site, and my Reconstruction. I hope both will be appreciated, or commented upon, and at best, purchased in the form of a print.

Happy Birthday to me.
 

f256 and be there

For the past six years I've been immersing myself in the world of pinhole photography. I like the "old school" technique, the fact that it really makes you think about what you are doing. And then there’s the simplicity of it.

It's all about composition and exposure time. Not much else. No focusing, no aperture selection. It's analog at its best.

I've made a few cameras and converted a few others - with mixed success. But I have rarely seen a pinhole photo made with a digital camera that's worth its silver, or pixel, I should say. Usually they’re taken with some sort of body cap converted to a pinhole. I tried my hand at making one myself the other day, thinking that the ones commercially available had too large an aperture. So I made a cap with approximately an f256 opening. And guess what? Things still look lousy.

The nature of pinhole photography, some say the beauty, is in the dream-like, fuzzy images. I don't buy that personally. I at least want to know what I'm looking at.

And so the journey continues. In fact, it continues next week. This Sunday, also known as Easter, is the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. This is the 10th anniversary of the event, always held the last Sunday in April. Due to it also being Easter, the organizers have extended the event from April 23 to May 1.

In a nutshell, you make some pinhole photos and select one, just one, and upload it to their site so it can be posted in a gallery. That's it, no prizes, no commendations, just pure photography. Last year, 3,449 images were presented, from all over the world.

So if you're a photographer, and even if you're not, just do it. Get out and make some pictures. Go Old School with me.

I've been participating since 2007. Here was my submission for that year.

2007 - Burgers On The Grill

Contests and Grants and Fellowships, Oh, My!

Over the years I have watched many of them judged and I have to say, it's hit or miss at best. So much seems to be determined by the judges' moods or maybe what they had for breakfast or lunch. It's a crapshoot.

With that said, it's still nice to get an award. I have a folder full of certificates for first, second, and third places and honorable mentions for my photography and editing when I was in the newspaper business. I have a plaque for hosting a conference. I have two trophies that I cherish: One for being the offensive coordinator of my son's 7th grade football team in Alabama, and another for being an assistant coach for my daughter's 7th grade recreational softball team. The football team won one game. The girls won the championship. It doesn't matter.

And I have three, yes, three trophies for winning the fantasy football league that I have been the Commissioner of for 22 years. "In Your Face," I say to other BFL owners who probably will never read this.

But I have never received a Blue Ribbon, until this week.  I got one for winning "Best in Show" at the local pinhole photography competition sponsored by the Dunham Tavern Museum in Cleveland (see the photo below). 

OK, It wasn't a national contest, or a regional, or a state. And very few people in the area probably even knew about it. At best, there were maybe five entries in the adult category. My biz partner, Al, and I went to see the show on Monday. But the barn housing the show wasn't open and the docent on duty didn't have the key. And it was pouring rain. So we went back this afternoon.

I kind of associate Blue Ribbons with livestock competitions. That's all right with me. I know the endless, thankless hours required to raise a Blue Ribbon steer, or cow, or pig, or chicken.

But it's a resume builder, and I'm doing a Happy Dance.
Pinhole photo of the abandoned U.S. Coast Guard station at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river. This was my entry, 

Devotion

I stated  that this blog would not discuss Religion or Politics. So, with this entry, I skirt the issue.

While leaving an estate sale this morning I passed this yard (photo above). I didn't have my camera with me, but I went to my truck, and got my trusty Canon G9 to make the photo.

Simply said, I love personal, artistic, statements. Cutouts of people bending over do not count.

When I moved North from Alabama ten years ago, I re-discovered the world of lawn ornamentation.

In the South, it is called "Folk Art." In the North it is "Lawn Ornaments." But the difference I am skirting, is that in the North, the more personal statements are often based on the Catholic religion. Passion is good.

Most commonly, it is a tribute to the Mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary. And the ones I see most commonly include a half-sunken bathtub surrounding the statue of Mary.

But this person went the extra yard. They constructed a box, with a real roof, and a front of plexiglass. This took some thought, and labor. It took love and devotion.

These tributes exist throughout our society, no matter what your beliefs are.

A couple of years ago I photographed the Virgin Mary statue in the back yard of my mother-in-law in Michigan. I made the photo with my 4x5 pinhole camera and later on decided to add color to it, via Photoshop.

My point is, if there is one, is that personal expression of your beliefs, on your property, is ART. Nothing more?

Thinking inside the box

About a year ago I started building pinhole cameras, experimenting with old cigar boxes.

My first camera is designed to accept a roll-film back made for Graflex-type cameras. That's still a work in progress, as I'm having trouble with the film back not working properly. More on that as it develops...

The next project I tackled (shown here) was with a different style cigar box. This one has a 55mm focal length and instead of using film, it takes photo paper about 5 x 7 inches in size. I drilled a 1-inch hole in the middle of the top of the box. The aperture is made with a thin piece of copper and has a diameter of .0135 inches. I made the hole with the smallest micro drill I had. I know that it should be a little smaller than that for the focal length, but it's a baseline for me to work from.

The shutter is cut from a piece of plastic, actually an old mud flap for a car, fastened with a simple machine screw and nut. Inside the camera, I put two slightly raised strips of plastic at each end of the bottom so the paper could be inserted under the lip to hold it in place.

Why I decided to test it on one of the colder days of winter I have no idea. I have an old changing bag I purchased at an estate sale so I could make multiple exposures in the field. I wasn't very picky about the location. I just wanted a good place to work. In this case I had an iron railing to brace the box against, and a bench to set the changing bag on.

So I would load a piece of paper in the bag, take it out of the bag, make the exposure, put it back in the bag, close it, take out the paper and put in a new sheet, repeat. Unfortunately, the paper I cut wasn't uniform so it wasn't always a tight fit.

I made exposures of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 seconds as a test. By the third exposure my fingers were so cold I couldn't feel which was the light-sensitive side of the paper. But I guessed correctly since they were all arranged facing the same way.

Back home, I set up a makeshift darkroom and processed the paper. It turned out that 2 to 4 seconds was about right for this overcast day. I expected it to be longer, but then again I had no idea of the real exposure value of the paper.

I picked the most properly exposed negative and made a contact print while it was still wet. The results were not great, but better than I expected. There is a bright spot toward one of the upper corners, caused by a hole in the top of the box that I had overlooked. There was either a little light leak in one corner, or it was caused by improper handling of the paper.

It's not a great photo, but it was terrific fun and a great learning experience. My ultimate goal is to be able to build reliable cameras that others can use, whether from found objects or built from scratch. Baby steps.

Cigar box prototype #2. 4 seconds on paper at Huntington Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks in Bay VIllage, OH.