After a flurry of testing to eliminate light leaks, the Manic Expression Cube seems to be trustworthy in the field. I loaded it with a “36” exposure roll of Lomography 100. As Corey Cannon has mentioned several times on the Lensless Podcast, six feet of film is a lot, especially in a camera that makes negatives that are only 24mm wide.
Right after loading it, I started with the late sun illuminating this plastic watering can.
Immediately thereafter, I caught this chair in the oblique light.
Aleksander Tylman from Łódź, Poland needed to have certificates signed by someone from the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day team in order to give his students academic credit for participating. He sent me PDF versions of the certificates with everything but the signature filled in. I don’t have a printer so printing, signing and scanning them was not an option. Just placing a scan of my signature on all the certificates seemed impersonal. So I signed my name 18 times on the back of a template for a Populist, scanned that and cut and pasted a unique signature on each PDF and sent them back to Aleksander. Of course, this had to be documented with a pinhole photograph.
This little camera was with me on Washington Island as well as the Evil Cube and then it kind of got ignored. I was doing a lot with medium format camera building and subsequent use of those cameras. I got into a bit of a fitness craze so when riding my bike I was into speed and endurance and didn’t want to stop to take pictures. I finally decided that stopping just once along the way and taking a picture, the film would eventually get used up.
The next day was a rare very heavy fog that lasted into the afternoon so I stopped three times. My first stop was Asylum Point.
Asylum Point ends in a little island.
It has a small lighthouse that was built by the Works Progress Administration but never was used for navigation. It’s connected to the point by this wooden foot bridge.
The bridge has been the victim of an ice shove and passage over it is forbidden.
Just behind me while taking these photographs were two motorcyclists in their 20s. They had never met each other before. Both of them had come out to look at the fog. They engaged in a lively conversation about the relative merits of their bikes and the accessories they used to enhance GoPro videos. One of them asked the other if he could take a picture of the two bikes together. I couldn’t stay out of this and asked if I could take one too. The guy who took the picture also took a picture of my camera. He didn’t take one of my bicycle.
Winnebago County Park is on my way back. The unique rising front capability of the Manic Expression Cube allowed me to lower the camera so the pitcher’s base was included in the frame but verticals of the backstop were parallel.
The scorekeeper's hut seemed like a good subject for the square format. I love the crazy pattern the chain link over the clapboards makes.
It was still foggy when I got to these catamarans waiting for Yacht Club classes in Menomonee Park. Looks like I had the camera tilted up a bit.
Between rides, the camera was usually sitting on the tripod out on the lanai. This was one of the last days we could have lunch out there.
One of the routes I use north of town goes through a nice little ranch-house neighborhood. In the back yards on one side of the street is a giant berm with light poles and watchtowers just visible over it. Behind it is The Oshkosh Correctional Facility, a medium security men’s prison.
The berm surrounds the prison except for a gate at the entrance. In Winnebago County, the only way to get up on a hill and look down on something is on a highway overpass. The only place you can see over the berm at all is this rather limited view where Snell Road crosses Highway 41.
In case you felt a twinge of regret when my bicycle wasn’t included in the picture-taking mentioned earlier, here it is at the end of a road that dead ends on the shore of Lake Butte des Morts. In Wisconsin there has to be “public access” to waterways every so often.
In the above photograph, I took special care that the camera was in the shade of a branch to prevent flare. For this one, I challenged diffraction by trying to see how near to the sun I could get without any additional psychedelia. To not over expose the brilliant reflection on the waves, I waved a black card away from and back over the opened shutter to make the shortest exposure my poor human hand could accomplish. Probably around a third of a second.
I was getting a little put off by this camera because of all the trouble with the light leaks through the moving shutter. Now that they seem to have been overcome and I’ve gotten a chance to use it in the field, I’m getting kind of fond of this camera. However, I’m not sure if I’m ready to give up 35mm in the traditional format. You may be seeing little negatives with mixed aspect ratio's from me for a while.
The Manic Expression Cube has a .17mm pinhole 24mm from a 24x24mm frame. The film is Lomography 100.
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