A spooky-looking Evil Cube

I have to admit when I go to get beer I try to find carton designs that would look cool on a camera. When I saw this Stone IPA, it just had to become an Evil Cube. When I was almost finished, I read the bottom of the carton. "Gargoyles are historically known as protectors against evil spirits. Since the beginning, our Stone Gargoyle has represented our ceaseless quest to create the most awesome beers imaginable." This thing is going to have a severe case of schizophrenia.

There's a lot of discussion in the pinhole community about the material pinholes get drilled in - tarnished silver foil, brass shim stock or plain old beverage cans. The latter gets disrespect for being the lowest quality but great honor for being universally available. They also come with printing on them, often matching the cardboard carton the cans came in. Hmmm. It took me three tries to get two pinholes about the right size 15mm apart in exactly the right place to match the design on the shutter. The first of this pair was exactly .30mm and perfectly circular, the second a little bigger and noticably oval. The first picture and the last three below are with the axial pinhole and the other three with the rising pinhole. Let's see if you can tell which is the optimal one and which the eccentric one.

The carton was one of a selection of a pumpkin lager and three IPAs for Sarah to choose from for her Halloween countdown camera. She picked Stone's more psychedelic Hazy IPA. Her Compact 45mm also has the pinhole drilled in one of the cans to match the shutter, but only one.

I experienced another processing error with this roll of film. My darkroom is in a cold corner in the basement. I have a small heater to bring it up to 20° C. The temperature is displayed with red LEDs. I didn't realize it was on until I got dark adapted but by then I had already unrolled the film. It's a very dim, very red light but it was enough to fog some of the negatives. Concerning those earlier errors, in the discussion about the counter window on 120 cameras, some folks favored red filters over the hole. This demonstrates why that's not the best solution for fast panchromatic film.

This month's Fox Valley Photography Group challenge is "high key." 

An historic door surrounded by modern utilities in the alley behind the Grand Opera House.

The merger of the poles behind it and the crane's cables and supports looked like an interesting composition. I really wanted to get the tracks in there. I seem to have a tendency to get the bottom of the frame higher than I want. I have to work on that.

This was suppose to include the entire reflection of the bridge. Another one framed higher than I wanted but it makes an interesting composition, albeit not the one I was going for.

Same story with Elwood and his reflection in the pond although maybe not as interesting a composition.

Oak leaves on the driveway in raking light.

I had to include something spooky.

The approximately .30mm pinholes are 6cm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Arista.edu 400 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.