Escapism

For the last three weeks, we have had four 350-horsepower diesels idling outside the house, which you can feel, with periods of tremendous crashes and clashes of metal-on-metal-on-earth every ten minutes or so.

I made a few escapes with a roll of XPired XP2 in the Little Mutant. There was a regatta of Class A, C and E scows on Lake Winnebago. I arrived as they were launching them, the second time this has happened to me. All five crew members and a few support folks were crawling all over the deck when I started to extend the tripod, but only these two and some spectacular flare were left when the shutter opened.

On the port side of this photograph, launching that boat with the crew on board. One of them introduced herself as a photographer and inquired about the Little Mutant. She'd never done any kind of analogue photography. I gave her my card. Hi!

How I spent my summer vacation. The New York Times review of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt begins with an anecdote about what a commitment a 750-page novel is. I intended to illustrate the wear a paperback of that magnitude experiences after two reads, unaware of how skillfully that trompe l'oeil tear on the book's cover mimics the actual damage.

August 19th is World Photography Day, on which day in 1838, Daguerre first announced his success. He didn't tell anybody how to do it until the next winter, when the French Government paid him for it, faking Talbot into revealing his process first. To properly participate, I took the camera as I went to Oaks Chocolate.

As I was crossing the Jefferson Street Bridge, I saw a pedestrian limping toward me. I stopped at the cutout in front of the bridge house, but was waved forward with the comment that he was only going into the bridge house, which I was in front of. As I started to go, he said, "Where are you going?" I stopped again and told him Oaks Chocolate. 

"Bring me back a box!"

I told him I was a photographer and had done a project about bridge tenders' houses, and I'd get him the chocolate if he'd let me inside and take photographs. Those chocolates were really good but he couldn't do that. I started again,

"Have you heard the bridge is closing for a day next week?"

Again, we had a conversation about the former closure and repair of this bridge three years ago, and the upcoming long-term closure of the Main Street bridge. At some point, it was clear he just wanted to continue talking to someone, and I asked Jim if I could do his portrait.

I placed the camera in the out-of-the-way corner while I got the chocolate. The figure at the counter is a combination of me and the lady following me. They're her white socks.

A compelling sky with Ames Point, Monkey Island and some unusually clustered geese.

Jazzfest was occurring downtown. The 400 block of Main was closed with a stage at the bottom.

The group from the just-finished tribute to local notable John Harmon posing for photographers, including me.

From behind the stage, John Harmon himself at the piano.

The Democratic Party taking advantage of their location on the closed block, selling cheap hot dogs and brats. With jazz's history of diversity, acceptance of new ideas, and cooperation, the other party farther down the street is either entirely ignorant of jazz or, by policy, repelled by it. Their loss.

The Raulf Hotel gave me another excuse for the interesting skies.

The Little Mutant has .27mm pinholes, one on the axis, and one 10mm above the axis, 45mm from a 6x6cm frame.  The XP2 was semi-stand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

Cracking on - on Central Street.

After littering the block with Brobdingnagian equipment and supplies, they began to crack on with the new pipes under Central Street, digging a giant hole at the end of the block. The obvious choice for a camera was the Crackon, loaded with ancient Fuji NS160. Any color shift of the old film might reflect the surreal nature of the experience.

On Tuesday morning, we awoke to a giant dump truck in front of our house. I yielded to temptation and went out while the action was going on, since it was right there, it seemed to be empty, and I thought they usually don't leave these things overnight. (They left one across the street for the next weekend, though.)

The side view of the black truck down the block. It might have a license to kill and is marked with the sign of the beast. It wasn't empty. The driver and I had a nice conversation about photography and the terminology for some of the devices lying about, so I could look them up.

I didn't want to be a distraction, but thought an action shot would be OK when they were right in front of our house. Probably not too unusual for the old retired dudes on the block to be out watching them. It has to be mentioned that this was precisely the day Andy and Kristin arrived for a visit. They cleared our driveway just as they got to the corner.

When they leave for the night, they surround the hole with the machines and wrap them in orange mesh.

Someone left this tool lying on the track of one of the big excavators.

The loader was left halfway up a pile of gravel.

Stuff just left on the street by the contractor's trailer.

All these pipes are color coded. Green is supposed to be sewer and drain lines.

A trench box prepared for the pipe with a bed of gravel. Is that little pipe what they're replacing? Looks too small for a sewer even in 1929.

We were hoping this was the Tardis when it appeared under the magnolia.




The excavator operators' dexterity and lack of concern for bangs and crashes is impressive. All these giant trench boxes and pipes are moved in and out of the trenches with the bucket off, utilizing this great hook.

A hole protected for the night by a bucket resting on a trench box and the giant gravel bucket, which they just push and drag around to position it.

The Crackon has two hand-drilled .27mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. Still pushing my luck with a four-and-a-half-month-old Cinestill Liter Powder C41 kit.

The Crackon is reloaded with the last roll of the old Fuji and is documenting increasingly rare, interesting details in what is becoming a long, noisy, repetitive saga. They still have to pave the street when they're done.

The Eve of Destruction

"On November 12, 2024, the City of Oshkosh Common Council adopted a budget for the 2025 Capital Improvement Program, which included the reconstruction of the streets listed above."

So begins every communication with the city about the project going on in front of us, with the complete text of the resolution attached. Central Street was shaded by a leafy arch of maples, hickory and oak. On Saint Patrick's Day, signs appeared that the street was closed, and they cut down all the trees next to the street. Only our magnolia and the youthful crabapple next door were spared.

The project has been ongoing for months in the three blocks south of ours where Central Street jogs over a bit. Last Friday, they ominously started moving a plethora of massive equipment and supplies onto the boulevard of our block.

 

The first was this giant container, which also held several buckets for the backhoes.

Trench boxes, which are placed in the holes they dig to protect from collapses while people are working in them, come in a variety of sizes.

One twice as wide as the others.

One is twice the length.

Six trench shores, which are 5 by 10-foot, two-inch-thick sheets of steel, moved together in a single pile.

Looks like whatever is under that manhole cover is getting replaced. That's going to take a pretty big hole.

A stack of green pipes.

New hydrants and their connections in front of a pile of black pipes.

Existing manhole covers and grates have already been removed and presumably will be reused.

Lots of machines started showing up. A small loader with a big bucket.

A big digger. The sheer brutality of these things is impressive. They label the inventory numbers on with a welder.

A big loader currently configured as a forklift to move all this stuff around.

An attachment to pound the gravel down after they refilled a hole. It shook the whole house when they were right in front of us.

My favorite of the lot. A plant taking advantage of the dirt accumulating under the arm of one of these beasts. After a week of heavy use, the plant's still there.

Less inviting space underneath the machine.

One of the attachments is a wire brush, which looks like it's used on wet cement.

Surprisingly complex hydraulics needed for it.

So far we've been spared the above-ground hose as the source of all our water that the blocks south of us have had all summer.

The responsible party.

The film is a 220 format roll of very expired Portra 400 NC. Since that format has no backing paper with numbers, I've been writing down how many frames I've used so I don't waste effort taking pictures on the ending leader. When I got to 21, I had plans for the remaining three frames, which I thought I could remember and stopped writing them down. I immediately double-exposed the next frame.

My scheme of advancing one and a quarter rotations of the take-up spool for the first third of the roll, and reducing that to one rotation by the end, worked out pretty well. I got twenty-three frames, but this one was pretty tightly cropped on one side by the end of the roll.

I used the first frame to complete the story of a line of tomato blossoms I've been following because they had to be harvested, so we got to eat them instead of the residents of the garden.

Morton has two hand-drilled .25mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. My curiosity got the better of me, and this is the fourteenth roll developed in a four-month-old Cinestill Liter Powder C41 kit.

XPerimenting with XPired XP2

At Photo Opp's rummage sale, I picked up four more very old rolls of Ilford's C41 Black and White film, XP2. It's not really experimenting since I already know what the film is like, but who can pass up that title? I didn't really have any concept in mind, so investigating outdated film is a good excuse to play pinhole. Since I've been trying not to get in an extreme wide-angle pinhole rut, I picked the 45mm Crackon, pretty darn wide-angle at 67 degrees, but still narrow in pinhole land.

At the end of Ames Point, a monument to Richard Ames, who led the movement to restore Millers Bay and the north end of the park. His grandson was in Andy's Cub Scout Pack.

The Facebook group Cycling for those aged 70+ seemed to consist mostly of pictures of people with the right bike wearing the right outfit, covering 100K rides with their club. I posted a picture in my t-shirt and sandals with my 50-year-old Takara Standard road bike, mentioning I got it with Gerald Ford's stimulus check. It got 350 likes and 13 comments, way more than I've ever gotten with a post about pinhole. Arriving home from the grocery store the next day, I took a picture with my bulging backpack, a 12-pack on the rack and a bag of chips hanging on the handlebars. I posted that I didn't hear much about grocery shopping on that forum. That got 500 likes and 100 comments! Should I say something about rollin' pinholin'?

Tempted by a lily in dappled light that didn't quite hold still.

The giant hosta in the back corner.

Herbs from the garden to go into chicken salad.




The jam group I've been playing with is on hiatus for a month, so I brought the Marshall home. An attractive addition to any decor.




The line of little tomatoes I've been following. You can't really tell here that they're ripening.

The arbor, which was completely bare two months ago, now totally covered by both roses and morning glory vines.

 

A little courtyard with nice light next to the original Oshkosh B'Gosh headquarters.

William Waters began his architectural practice just about the time Oshkosh burned down, so he designed half the buildings downtown. He is being honored by the construction of a gazebo that mimics his later Columbian Exposition neoclassical style. His massive earlier neoromanesque Post Office, City Hall, Courthouse and a few others were on this street, but only parking lots remain. 

To get this roll finished, the arrangement that's been on my side table for at least a week, in its natural colors.

The Crackon has two .27mm hand-drilled pinholes, on the axis and 13mm above it, 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Super XP2 was semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.