Pinhole Resources

Sunday, March 24, 2024

More development night and the self-portrait theme.

When I went up to Photo Opp's Development Night, I took a second camera, the f130 Silver Dragon, loaded with Lomography 800, just in case opportunities arose. 
 
Billy Hintz operating the digitization station using a 3x5 foot light table to illuminate 35mm negatives.


Mark Ferrell, one of the trio of Photo Opp founders, master analog printer for major artists, agencies and magazines. During the summer of 1971 we worked within a block of each other in mid-town Manhattan. We had been conversing for quite a while when the beam from the western circular window moved to the corner where we were sitting. Since everyone's a photographer at these gatherings, they're usually cooperative when interesting lighting happens to fall upon them. 


In light of (ha ha) the Fox Valley Photography Group's self-portraiture theme this month, I took advantage of the spotlight for a sort of negative/positive portrait.



A little Abstract Renovationism.



Shortly after I opened the shutter, pointed at a few developers behind the battery of soux-vide cookers tempering the C-41 kits, they all walked off to wash their film. Trying to make the best of it, I went around the table in front of the darkroom tent for another selfie.






This still life just appeared next to me in the kitchen,



Time to get serious about the assignment. Since the weather had been so warm, it seemed a good time to retrieve the cast iron parts of the garden bench that has been eaten by rose vines for the last several years and restore it. Once I got all the materials together the weather changed and I had to rush before it got too cold to apply the finish. It was just about freezing with a sporty breeze when I did the final assembly. By the way, this was about as short an exposure as I can manage flipping a card away from the pinhole and back.



Another magical fantasy novel.



A reunion of pinhole cameras in their birthplace. I suppose if the media were covering the Pinhole Day workshop at Photo Opp, this might be the kind of thing they'd use. If you'd like to take pictures with one of them, come to Appleton on April 28.



Posing formally in the corner grilling ham and cheese sandwiches with a giant costoluto genovese tomato and the Henckels six inch chef's knife.



I do use other knives but this is my main instrument. 


I've used it before to illustrate one of my favorite passages from The Pencil of Nature:

"We have sufficient authority in the Dutch school of art, for taking as subjects of representation scenes of daily and familiar occurrence. A painter's eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable. A casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time withered oak, or a moss covered stone may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque imaginings."

Not really the cropping I had previsualized, but it's probably the most interesting portrait of the lot.

The Silver Dragon has hand drilled .23mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Lomography 800 was developed in Cinestill's Liquid Quart C-41Kit.





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