Georgia likes baked goods

Georgia at the Rocking Horse Bakery, Winthrop

My friend, Georgia was a good enough sport to sit for this pinhole portrait. I can't remember how long I made her sit still, but I think it was about 2-3 minutes. Taken with my Zero Image pinhole when I was in Winthrop, WA a couple weekends ago with my mother.

Georgia is a big fan of baked goods which is why this post has the title it does.

Lower Crab Creek Road

Lower Crab Creek

Shot with the G9 and then altered in Lightroom.

My photo for Worldwide Pinhole Day

Lower Crab Creek Road, Washington State 4/27/14

Worldwide Pinhole Day was a great success (I only speak for myself since I have no idea how anyone else feels about it). We drove to Eastern Washington and took photos along the Lower Crab Creek Road, which is located in the Channeled Scablands. If you've never seen the Scablands and you live in Washington, you should change that right away. They are beautiful, geological wonders that were created by the great Missoula floods which took place in the range of 13,000 - 18,000 years ago.

The weather was incredibly beautiful on Sunday. Blue skies and big poofy clouds that created interesting plays of light and shadow on the landscape. I took the image above using my Zero Image pinhole camera and TMAX 400 film. You can see the piece in the Pinhole Day gallery. It looks surprisingly good for an online gallery. If you go there and then search for photos from Washington State, you can see works by other pinholes, including my friend, Karen Howard.

Wander around the gallery site a bit and you might get the inspiration to join us next year for Pinhole Day.

Petzval lens

I recently got a Petzval lens through a Lomography Kickstarter project and this is an example of a film test I ran. I used the lens on my Nikon FE2, a film camera. I originally tried to meter through my camera but wound up with extremely underexposed negs (basically I developed blank film). Finally, I broke out my handheld light meter and was able to get some good exposures. The film I used for this roll expired in 2007 but I guess refrigerating it all those years helped keep it usable. It was one of my last rolls of Agfa 400 (sadly, the film division of Agfa went bankrupt a few years ago so I was forced to find a different film brand to rely on).

This is a photo of a stuffed quail, nicknamed "Papa Quail." A number of years ago, this quail and his brood of adolescent chicks walked through our front door thinking it was part of their habitat. When they tried to fly out the windows, all hell broke loose. By the time we heard the commotion coming from the living room, Papa Quail was in his last death throws. We managed to get all but one of the chicks out of the house before there was more death (they were EVERYWHERE - in baskets, behind the couch, above the closet). We froze Papa until quail hunting season was open (I should state, I would NEVER shoot a quail...I love them too much and shooting them seems to be pretty stupid and wasteful) so we could get a license and get the taxidermist to stuff him. The license was about $125 and then there was the taxidermy costs so it wasn't cheap. The taxidermist did a pretty lousy job. He managed to mess up the top knot on Papa's head so he made some wanker-looking top knot with an extra couple feathers. Oh well, what can you do? At least I can look at Papa and think about the crazy circumstances that brought him to my living room to sit in the same spot on a piece of wood for eternity.

Museum of Glass Pinhole

Museum of Glass - Tacoma

Yesterday, I took advantage of the nice weather to run over to Tacoma to test my pinhole camera. The Zero Image had been scratching my negatives but I was blaming it on the lab that processes my color film (I haven't been shooting a ton of black and white, which I process myself, so I hadn't realized the problem was my camera). (Sorry, lab processor, for thinking you had dirty film spools.) I added a little gaffer's tape to the contact points between the camera and the film and, voilá, problem solved. This means I'm ready for Worldwide Pinhole Day on Sunday. Hurray!

Pinholes and rain

Double sunflowers

Just a reminder that all the rain we've had here in the Pacific NW brings beautiful flowers and that Worldwide Pinhole Day is on April 27, 2014. This pair of photos was taken last summer with my Zero Image pinhole camera. I'm finally getting around to developing a number of exposed rolls of film. This set of pinholes was included in one of the rolls.

Get out and take your pinholes next Sunday!!

Goat head with shadows

It's been too long since I've posted. It's not for lack of time. More for lack of feeling inspired to write anything. I'm not writing much today either. Just posting a photo I was messing around with...

A mini-pinhole

These are a couple film canister pinholes I took a bunch of years ago in Portland, OR. I was taking a self-portrait of myself and the fellow on the right asked me what I was doing. When I told him I was taking a pinhole shot, he volunteered to "sit" for a portrait. I taped the canister to the railing and exposed for probably about 15 seconds. I used lith film since it was easy to load in the darkroom and easy to tray develop. Because it's lith film, there are lots of little black and white marks in the negative. I removed some with Photoshop but it's really too thankless a job to clean up entirely. Plus, I consider it part of the aesthetic. The negatives were contact printed on silver gelatin paper. I scanned from the print.

Stumps of Alder Lake

This photo was taken with a Fujica 6x4.5 using Efke 100 at Alder Lake in Elbe, WA during last Thanksgiving.

Progression from negative to encaustic

I thought I'd post a 3-picture progression of how I progressed from a negative to a finished encaustic piece.

First, I scanned the 35mm black and white negative and made some adjustments in Lightroom.

I then printed the picture on lightweight paper (in this case, plain old copy paper) so that it would adhere more easily to the board.

I then did a little doodling and hand-coloring to change things up a bit. I used colored pencils, Pitt India ink pens and a Sharpie white poster paint marker.

Finally, I coated the picture with wax medium and fused it to a board that had also been coated with  medium. I then added oil paint, incised marks, some oil pastel, and metallic paint pigment that was mixed with water.

All I need to add now are a couple of eye-screws and wire to the back for hanging. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Zero Image pinholes

A while back I took a number of portraits of my friend Crysta. In addition to color film and digital shots, I also took some black and white photos of her. I subjected her to a couple pinhole images. Fortunately, she didn't need to sit long since it was outside on a sunny day (in the past I've forced people to sit still for 20 minutes for a pinhole that didn't turn out...brutal!). Now that I have an Epson Perfection V750 scanner, I can actually scan my larger negatives at a much higher quality (oh happy day!!).

In honor of my new scanner and Crysta, who said she was most interested in the pinholes, here they are.

This is part of a project I've been working at off and on...pinholes of people looking at books. Sometimes you can see the pages in motion. Sometimes less so.

Spider with dewdrops

Not much new here to report. I have some black and white negs that I need to contact sheet. I've got a few that are very abstract-like landscapes. Super-contrasty. Hoping the positives live up to the promise of the negatives.

This is an older digital photo. I quite like the little globes of dew.