The Populist goes east.

For a visit to Andy and Kristin on the east coast, I loaded The original Populist.

When I got up the first thing I found was a message from JetBlue that our flight would be delayed. "Please arrive at the airport in time for your original flight because we're working hard to fix this." When our original time to leave came, they were still listing the same delay and the airplane was on it's way from Bermuda to Boston, from whence it would come here. We decided to go anyway. Better than rushing and worrying that a traffic jam in Milwaukee was going to make us late or they were going to pull off a miracle and we'd really have to rush.

Riding the shuttle from the Saver Lot.

Sunbeams in the main lobby.

Even after having lunch, we had plenty of time waiting at the gate.

The airplane got here exactly as late as they predicted.

Andy and Kristin went running, leaving Greyson with us. It was the first time ever out of his crate as they left on foot. He remained vigilant watching for their return.

Now he can relax.

A boy and his dog.

Most of their garden is gone, but there's still a few vegetables ripening.

Aubergines.

A red bell pepper and, validating TV chef Bobby Flay's opinion of green peppers, a few unripe ones.

A hopeful just starting to develop.

It was nice weather but not really warm enough to hang out under the gazebo.

Lunch at The Cottage Bar, on Columbian Square just down the road. It's characterized as an Irish Pub except with the requisite excess of televisions for an American bar.

A wine tasting at Bin Ends in Braintree. No one expressed any privacy concerns this time, but I don't think anyone noticed the camera.

Our major tourist day was at The Breakers in Newport to see what the richest people of their day could muster up for a vacation cottage.

The upper loggia was the only place on the tour that was bright enough and had benches to set the tripod on.

Just out side the gift shop exit, a nice patio to rest and review your photographs.

Lunch at the cafe in the Welcome Building.

The northeast facade with the kitchen added on as a separate wing. The previous mansion on this site burned to the ground.

The side facing the sea.

I got frustrated on the walk around the great lawn because there was absolutely no place but the ground to put the camera so I braced it against my forehead and tried a hand-held exposure.

The only nod to a formal garden outside the Music Room.

We went for a stroll on the Cliff Walk with views of Easton Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

The rocky cliffs for which the walk is named.

The Populist has a .15mm Gilder electron microscope aperture 24mm from a 24x36mm frame. The film is Kodak UltraMax 400 developed in an Arista.edu liquid quart C-41 kit.

Color and curl test with Ektar 100.

I am kind of ambivalent about film and just use anything available, of course with an eye toward affordability. After starting to do my own C-41 developing, I bought a couple boxes of 120 Lomography films and Kodak Gold 200 last fall. The imaging qualities are fine in my opinion but the curl of the negatives has been driving me crazy. After a conversation about film bases at a Photo Opp photowalk, I picked up a few rolls of Kodak's higher end films to see if they were more managable in the scanner, including a roll of Ektar 100.

Inventorying my supply of film a week or so ago, I discovered that roll and loaded it into The Little Mutant. I remember someone once describing the fine grain and color rendition of Ektar 100 in mythical terms. The tufted pillow and love seat seemed a nicely lit test of the film's subtlety.

The sun through the trees with it's reflection in Lake Winnebago is kind of an extreme test of latitude. Just barely any detail on the shadow side and some odd color shifting in those shadows. In one my early blog posts with Ektar 100, I noted that it doesn't like being underexposed.

Not quite as high contrast, a jumble of cuboids and rectangles behind Jensens Bar. The shadows look the right color.

What first got my attention was the gaudy green with the green license plate on this Honda Insight with "Hybrid" badging on the rear, and then noticed it was a collector plate. I probably knew about it at the time, but it seems weird that hybrids have been available for 20 years.

Across the river, I rode into Pioneer Marina's parking lot to check out all the sailboats and encountered this flaming hot rod. While I was getting the tripod set up, the owner of the Crown Vic next to it came out and offered to move his car out of my picture. He told me the roadster belonged to the marina's owner. Not too much of the original Model T left. The V8 is a Chevy. No mention of the cardboard camera.

This former paint store seemed an appropriate color film subject. Not sure if it was accidentally done with the rising pinhole instead of the one on the axis, but I like the whispy sky and the crazy jagged line across the middle of the compostion.

The camera sat idle for a while and then went with me to the Fox Valley Photography Group meeting at the Kaukana Public Library. All the lines, planes and angles caught my eye with variations of the stones and yellow reflective strips on the stairs to test the Ektar. 

Trying to think of where to take pictures that I hadn't been recently, the Paine Art Center's garden was one option. Considering the sunny day, I recalled that I've always wanted to get the morning sunbeams streaming into the north/eastern facing dining and breakfast rooms before the rest of the building got in the way. A quick check of The Photographer's Ephemeris showed they might still be there if I arrived right when they opened at 10:00. After some discussion at the front desk, and mentioning I only had a few minutes before the scene changed, the staff at the door trusted me that I had been given permission to use a tripod before the pandemic. I had forgotten that this was the slow Ektar in the camera and exposures were longer than I had anticipated. Forgetting to change the camera settings in Pinhole Assist led to one very underexposed negative of the dining room, but the sunbeams were still there after correcting and exposing another frame. Later one of the staff asked me if I got anything good. I replied that sunbeams in that dark room were a pretty good exposure challenge, but sometimes film will surprise you.

 



Just enough sunlight left in the breakfast room to make a highlight on the sculpture's shoulder and light up the glass compote.

Left with one frame when leaving the building, this column in the driveway seemed particularly 3D.



There really doesn't seem to be anything overwhelmingly different from the cheaper films in terms of color rendition. As usual these were edited with burning and dodging and color balance. Most of the time highlight and shadow detail could be preserved. As I had done with the Lomo and Gold 200 I was so frustrated with, I cut the negatives as soon as they weren't sticky and placed them under heavy books overnight. They, like the Portra films I'd used earlier, dried perfectly flat.

The Little Mutant has two hand-drilled .27mm pinholes, on the axis and 13mm above it, 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Ektar was developed in an Arista.edu Liquid Quart C41 kit.

August Adventures with Little Guinness.

Out of curiosity one day, I checked to see if Walgreens still carried film. They had two rolls so I purchased one to encourage them. In anticipation of adventures when Andy and Kristin visit, the speedy Kodak Ultra-Max 400 went into Little Guinness. 

Out to lunch at the Fox River Brewing Company.

A pleasant place to eat out on the riverside at the price of having to drink your beer in a plastic glass. Salmon Tacos and Fries.

Levon Bliss' "Microsculpture" was at the Paine Art Center. He takes focus stacking to a new extreme to get images of insect specimens, some of which are centuries old, with perfect depth of focus far sharper than you could get with a small aperture alone. 

Some selections from the Oxford University Natural History Collection, including one or two of the subjects of the photographs, were on display in the small side gallery.

"A Cabinet of Wonder" by Jennifer Angus was in the Gothic Gallery consisting of arrangements of insects and other biological specimens in bell jars and other theatrical arrangements.

In the Family Discovery Area in the basement were specimens encased in acrylic which you could look at with a pretty nice Leitz microscope.

Nothing about bugs in the dining room.

Along the driveway in front of the hedge.

After Vladimir Putin made doing his academic research impossible, my former colleague Karl Lowenstein retired early and founded Sturgeon Spirits, making a surprising variety of vodkas and gin. We visited for one of their signature cocktails in their tasting room with the production floor prominently featured behind the bar. This seems to be almost a requirement for craft distilleries and microbrewerys.

Out to lunch again, selecting pizza at Parm.

The flat bread for our appetizer getting baked in their fierce oven.

Red Pepper Hummus atop the flat bread.

Later afternoon stop at Fifth Ward Brewery.

Two flights to sample the latest brews.

The table on the lanai ready for Sarah's spectacular brunch.

The best Eggs Benedict anywhere in the world. As though to reflect this perfection, except for spotting out dust, this is a totally uncropped, unedited image. That doesn't happen often.

They're so good it's kind of a transcendent psychedelic experience.

This is where the fast film really pays off. It only took half a minute to make these exposures before digging into the Eggs Benedict.

A week later, on a trip to Madison to drop off a picture at a juried show, which I've already posted a few medium format pictures from, brunch just across the street from the gallery at Cento, a nice Italian restaurant.

As an alumnus of Catholic elementary and high schools, I couldn't pass up Eggs in Purgatory. Spicy enough to atone for venial sins and very tasty.

Stopped in to the Contemporary Art Museum.

The last time we were on the roof it was a quite nice restaurant. Now it's a sculpture garden where they show movies at night.

Overlooking State Street with the historic Orpheum Theatre across the street. Now mostly a live venue, it use to be a cinema with a restaurant and full bar available while you watched the latest movies before it became a trend at cineplexes.

The Contemporary Garden extends over the Overture Center with this ornate tower remaining from it's original life as the Capitol Theatre.

The transparent stairwell at the Contemporary.

A nostalgic stop at Soap Opera.

We've never gone on the official tour of the Capitol before. As we moved from room to room, all around the Rotunda and the Galleries, there were two very cheery Quinceañera photo shoots with matching attendents and their dates and associated relatives.

The elaborately decorated hearing room with fossiliferous, book-matched stone paneling. Plenty of time for an exposure as a five year old questioner took at least twenty seconds to consider every word of his inquiry about the fossils which the guide very patiently waited for and gave a serious answer.

Across the Rotunda from between the stairs.

We stayed at a restored historic hotel, The Ruby Marie. Like a lot of vintage buildings, the entrance is now facing the parking lot rather than the street.

I often wonder why the hotel air-conditioner industry can't somehow make a machine that won't be mistaken for a jet engine. Otherwise it was very nice.

Where Highway 151 turns from John Nolan Drive into Blair Street, as it intersects with Williamson Street, as they all cross the railroad track. This was probably a great place for a hotel in 1873. Lake Monona is just visible to the right.

Their little breakfast cafe is closed on weekends so complimentary breakfast is two doors down at The Come Back Inn, which I think deserves the sobriquet "Dive Bar."

A few weeks later U Club held a last-hurrah-unless-anyone-wants-to-keep-it-going soiree.

Because of all the latest catering event restrictions on campus, it was held at the Culver Convention Center instead of the cozy Pollock House, with Food Service refreshments instead of home made appetizers and a full bar. If this is as big a crowd as you can get on Friday with free beer, wine and hors d'ouvres, I think this might be one of those old collegiate traditions that could be out of date. I kind of miss it but it gets a little weird when I find myself in the middle of a university politics discussion again.

Little Guinness has a .17mm hand-drilled pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame (a square inch and a half). The UltraMax 400 was the ninth roll developed in an Arista.edu Liquid Quart C-41 kit.