Neenah, Madison and back home.

I reloaded the EyePA 30 for a midweek Photo Opp photowalk, this time sponsored by the Neenah Public Library. The group was pretty small and about evenly divided between the Photo Opp regulars and library patrons wanting to learn how to take better pictures with their iPhones.

Unlike most of these events, the group stayed together as we walked down the extremely posh historic Wisconsin Avenue alongside the river. Lots of tempting scenes but even folks in these showcase homes get nervous about privacy when there's a tripod involved. This one with it's blue clapboards and red door dappled in the evening light was close enough to the sidewalk to fill the frame of my extremely wide angle camera and I couldn't help myself.

A sailboat on the quai similarly frame-filling, blue and dappled, but no red.

A directionally lit majestic oak and a photographer getting just the right angle of the dock.

Normally it would be very suspicious for an old man to approach two young girls for a photograph because they were nicely lit and the colors of their shirts sort of matched the landscape. These were participants in the photowalk and patiently waited while I struggled to level the tripod on a bit of a slope.

A final benediction back at the library from Richie the Librarian (no last name on his nametag and no staff directory on their website), who I didn't see take any pictures, and Mark Ferrell from Photo Opp, with crossed-body straps holding digital and analog cameras.

The following weeks were very eventful, some of which were documented with 35mm, but this camera sat idle. We decided to make a weekend of delivering a piece I had accepted into a photography show in Madison. The only pinhole in the exhibit but no media description or artist's statement to brag about it.

The 1873 Hotel Ruby Marie is nicely restored, just a few blocks from the Capitol, next to a stoplight on a triple intersection of major cross town thoroughfares and the railroad.

There's a balcony off the lobby overlooking the courtyard of the Up North Saloon below. You might think one of the rooms off it would be as noisy as the street, but we were in the bar for our complimentary drink about 9pm and it was empty except for one women conversing with the bartender.

Back home, in order to make having a scanner in the sun room more attractive and easy to use, my side of the couch has been reconfigured and the Buddha has moved across the room.

We planted a variety of pumpkins with larger vines than we expected which have completely covered everything else in the garden.

Despite hundreds of blossoms, there has only been one big pumpkin that we could find, which is beginning to ripen.

Another one beginning with it's flower still attached.

The EyePA 30 has two hand-drilled .23mm pinholes, one on the axis and one 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Lomography 400 developed in an Arista.edu liquid quart C-41 kit.

Technical Postscript.

I am very happy with the imaging qualities of Lomography color films and of course it's affordability, but the curl of a dried Lomo negative is one of the great forces of nature. The curl is in both dimensions. It's almost impossible to get them to stay in the carrier and not touch the scanner glass in multiple places if you do get it clamped in there. These were cut as soon as they weren't sticky and placed under heavy books for 24 hours. That helped with the transverse curl, but the long way is just as a powerful.

When I had a student for a second year in a summer middle school pinhole workshop, I asked her what she remembered. Her answer: "If there's a problem, the solution is more tape." That turns out to be right for this as well. There's only about a millimeter wide edge of the carrier, but it wasn't too hard to get it attached without extending the tape into the image. It was a lot easier than fighting with the curl and I only noticed one instance of Newton Rings from direct contact with the glass.