Roadtrip: Thoughts on traveling with a pinhole camera.

The film I used on this trip was Portra 400 in the Evil Cube and Long John Pinhole, Lomography 100 in the Variable Cuboid and Kodak Gold 200 in The Populist. They are quite different and I got sick of messing with color balance to get them to look the same and gave up.

Rock and Rochester • Blue hills, blue water, and black humor • Art is what you can get away with in Western Pennsylvania • The other side of Lake Michigan It sure is hard not to overexpose Portra 400 on a sunny beach, even at f362. It’s hard to make long exposure decisions about film use during a quickly changing sunset. Some of the exposures were measured with Pinhole Assist, some guessed and some for as long as I could get away with leaving the camera with the shutter open. I'm continually amazed that I always get a usable negative, although that sometime takes a little work. When I said that the Classic View at Fallingwater was the only view, I mean by a few inches either way or something was obscured. Guess who people had to wait for during a 1 minute exposure? Eastman House was a great review of the history of photography, despite the limited gallery space. The current history exhibit was a survey with just the work of women photographers. Unlike some fields that included one of the greats in every era. It was cool to see a disassembled No. 1 Kodak that's set up much like the Variable Cuboid including just having sighting lines for viewfinding. It gave me an idea for a new shutter.

A full size tripod is a heavy thing to walk around with, dangerous in close quarters and possibly in someone else’s way but maybe a deterrent to muggers. I wish I could have tried to get pictures in five lanes of traffic at a dead stop. I have done it before. I momentarily thought about it but this time my attention was already fully engaged. Driving in stop-and-go traffic really takes concentration. This has nothing to do with pinhole, but it sure is nice to have 305 horsepower and brand new tires at your disposal when you need it. On the hotel parking forms, I never listed it’s make as Ford. It was always Mustang.

Museum benches are usually located in the middle of the gallery facing a significant art work, but the pinhole view in the other direction often yields a more interesting photograph. I try to avoid putting the camera on the floor because it's too noticeable. Also people tend to look where they're sitting in a public place, but they don't always look where they're walking, expecially in an art gallery. Once you do find a place to put the camera, getting multi-minute exposures is not all that hard when you’re looking around a gallery of paintings. It was weird to lose the New Glarus Populist. In a busy place like the Philly Art Museum steps, it was probably noticed soon because of the shiny bronze-colored tripod, especially since people often watch their feet when walking down a monumental stairway like that. I wonder what they made of it. Last year in Strasbourg I almost lost The Populist and tripod when they fell out of my jacket in a taxi. The driver found it and came running after us. It pays to tip. People do recognize them as cameras because they’re mounted on a tripod but I’m still stunned about how unextraordinary my pinhole cameras are. One assumes people at George Eastman house are interested in photography. We weren’t the only people photographing the Lake Michigan sunset. At Fallingwater they had to wait for me to take a picture with their SLR’s (only a minute). No one said anything. The concierge/desk clerk in Michigan who watched over the Populist never said “Wow, Pinhole! How’s that work?” He just cheerfully agreed. At the toll road service plaza, I looked among the phone accessories for a new tabletop tripod but no luck. Except at the Kodak Kathedral, I never looked to see if anyone had film. The Andy Warhol Museum had Polaroid film and cameras. I saw pinhole camera kits in several gift shops, usually in the children's section. The pinhole photography sure was fun. It makes you look really closely at things and the environment around them. The long exposures and limited frames of film make you really carefully consider whether and from where you want to take that picture.

We’re thinking of airplanes and trains again for our next adventure.

Roadtrip: Blue hills, blue water, and black humor.

The destination for our epic roadtrip was Andy and Kristin's new home in Weymouth, Massachussets. We spent an enjoyable time just hanging out watching YouTube, getting splendidly fed by Andy, visiting a few lovely parks, and one weird museum.

Cushioning Boston's bottom on the southeast is the Blue Hills Reservation, a really big nature preserve in the middle of such a megalopolis.

We went for a walk around Houghton's Pond.

Some rocks floating in the sky.

Leaf-peeping season was just beginning but occasionally we passed an autumnal scene, enhanced in this case by overexposure.

Our guides silhouetted against the lake with the Great Blue Hill and it's historic Public Broadcasting transmission tower in the background. As any good guide should, Andy provided us with the interesting trivia that the tower's location was the source of WGBH's call letters.

On Sunday morning, we drove down to the Cape to visit the illustrator Edward Gorey's home in Yarmouth Port. I read somewhere that an apt contemporary comparison of his oeuvre was to Tim Burton. In the last room on the tour, there was a small desk with some art materials to keep children busy. Andy and Kristin were the only ones south of 60 in the place so it seemed like a safe place to set the little tripod.

When I found myself alone with everyone else two rooms away, I took the opportunity for another view from on top a stack of brochures for the charitable organizations Gorey had left his estate to. The titles to the PBS series Mystery were playing in a continuous loop which gave an appropriate sound track to my surreptitious tripod use.

I first encountered Gorey's work when I processed his compilation Amphigorey in the cataloging department at the UW-Stout Library. It was one of those books where you turn over the title page to check that the call number has been recorded correctly on the next page (go look at a library book) and end up guiltily reading the whole book to see what outrageous thing is going to come next. This tree outside the house was particularly Gorey looking.

Kristin is a major horror movie fan, and Sarah just mined Steven King's stories for one of her contributions to the Haunted Hump Day festival, so references to King's works came up a lot on this trip.  Particularly the Overlook Hotel.  Here, with random application of a shaky tripod, I turn the vaguely disturbing Edward Gorey House into a royal horror show.

We followed with lunch at Longfellow's, a charming Cape Cod pub. I felt it was necessary to have fried seafood.

We stopped on our return for views of the tidal flats of Cape Cod Bay.

Next, Pennsylvania, or not.

From f295: Beantown and Back; my first travel series

F295 was an international discussion forum begun and administered by Tom Persinger. Originally just about pinhole photography, it expanded into all kinds of alternative methods.  I was the first member about a minute or two after I got a message announcing it on Gregg Kemp's legendary Pinhole Visions email list. I immediately posted the first picture. My basic format of pictures and text began there. It was active from 2004 until 2015 but it remains on-line. Recently it disappeared from the web for a few days, and that prompted me to decide to reprise some of my favorites here at Pinholica, for backup if no other reason. Where possible I'll upload the original image files and occasionaly edit for a typo or grammatical error.

The Roadtrip, Abroad and other travel posts with The Populist and a desk-top tripod on this blog began with this one on January 23, 2008.

Weekend before last I attended a conference at Boston College on "Immersive Education," using 3D virtual environments to teach. All taken with the Populist. (Yes, I know, I should have taken the Stereo Populist for this particular event.)

Outagamie County Regional Airport. Doesn't it look cold? United 7213 - On time

O'Hare. United 882. One hour late.

The excitement of business travel. Every hotel room in the United States looks exactly like this. Most have two beds though.

The conference took place at Boston College. We got there a little early and they got started late. This is the rotunda of Gossen Hall. Pretty fancy college the Jesuits run there. It was pretty dark and the place was deserted so I left the camera there while I went to the first demonstrations and came back and got it about half an hour later.

I did get to see my son's apartment while I was there. Don't be alarmed, it's actually a fairly decent place, it's just that his decorating style is a little post-apocalyptic. Of course when one of your parents comes to town, you can expect a free meal out. Here he and his girlfriend decide from all the possibilities. I'm standing behind him talking to his mother on his cell phone during most of the exposure.

The restaurant they picked has 85 kinds of beer on tap and 240 kinds of bottles. What do think that says about what he thinks about his dad? The food was good, though.

Here's one from a session on assessment and learning theory on Sunday. More of that fancy Jesuit college. On the panels of the barrel vaulted ceiling are quotes from Plato in Greek, Webster in English, and Virgil in Latin.

(Technical note. All the above on Walgreens Studio 35, the following on Kodak Gold.)

Another view of the lecture hall. Fancy, but cold. Notice most of the participants are wearing coats. It was like this all weekend. I'm not sure if this was Yankee economy or some kind of idea of penance.

Finally, on our way home. Sunset at Logan Airport.

United 545 from Logan and 5939 from O'Hare - on time.

I didn't include this in the original post: The Populist has a .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame.

Eastern wedding

No really, the real east coast this time. It was my son who got married, and literally right on the coast.

We went several days early to hang out and do some tourism with Gene and Laura (his godparents). We stayed in an AirBnB apartment just down the street from Andy and Kristin's apartment. It was a really great experience and I highly recommend it.  We got there first, so took the opportunity for a pinhole photograph.

The first day we spent in central Boston.  We started at the Boston Public Library.  This is the central courtyard.

We went there to look at the Sargent Gallery.  I love the little streak in the far end where somebody looked at their phone for a few minutes.

This is tourism after all, so after picking up Andy at work, we went to lunch at the bar that inspired the television program Cheers, the Bull and Finch.  There wasn't any room in the original bar, so we were seated in the replica of the set they've built up stairs. (n.b. in case this doesn't look familiar, the only thing that's a replica is the bar itself.)

Andy went off to help Kristin with final preparations for the ceremony, and we set off on the Freedom trail. Our first stop was the Granary Burying Ground, nestled among the skyscrapers at the edge of the financial district.. There are three signers of the declaration of independence buried there,  John Hancock, Sam Adams, and Robert Treat Paine.  For such a rich guy, I was surprised Hancock's tomb was pretty non-descript. This particular tombstone was from the 1670's

Laura is an extreme Larry Bird fan (her vanity license plate is CELT33), so we had to stop at the Quincy Market behind Faneuil Hall to see his bronzed shoes next to the sculpture of Red Auerbach. Since we were right there, we stopped at the other replica of the Cheers set, and again, the bar itself was the only thing recognizable.

We stopped at Paul Revere's House, surrounded by the mostly early 20th century North End.

I didn't take many other pictures.  Laura and Gene's daughter, four months older than Andy, was also with us and I took her portrait as we waited for an Uber to take us to Cohasset.

Cohasset is about as iconic a New England town as you can imagine.  We had lunch at the Red Lion Inn, built in 1704. The weather was terrible and we spent a bit of time in this little coffee shop and bakery across the street as we waited for the rain to subside.

Cohasset harbor is about as archtypically New England as the rest of the town. That's the location of the wedding right across the harbor.

The official wedding photographers were a real professional team.  While the owner of the studio was documenting Kristin's preparations, her assistant worked with Andy.  I've been sticking a camera right in his face since literally seconds after his birth, so he's really an experienced and cooperative model.

I was careful not to get in the way, but I got this shot of Sarah and Andy while they posed for the pros.  I was holding the tripod against a railing on a floating dock and I was initially a little dissapointed when I first saw it, but now I think it captures some of the surreal nature of the experience.

The dock had been liberally decorated by seagulls, so they decided to move us all down the shore a bit to the Yacht Club.  I'm not sure, but I think this limo was there just for that purpose.  I love how the reflection of the buildings across the street show how shiny it was.

And then I ran out of film.  I reloaded, but somehow didn't get the clicker engaged, and didn't get a chance to fix it in the hustle and bustle of the rest of the night.  I was allowed to get one exposure of the couple with the Evil Cube, but it's still in the camera, and I'll probably post it to Facebook as an individual photo when I get that roll developed.

All with the Populist.  .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame.