ALT.

The opening for the ALT. show at Photo Opp was the weekend before last. My little contribution as a featured artist included two prints on the wall, nine books, and four trays full of stereo cards to view with my handmade stereoscopes.

I also displayed a few cameras. Hughie to show what a stereo camera was like, and Southside Sweetie to represent the classic Populist and not show favoritism to any Oshkosh chocolatier. The Diversity 30, the Psychedelic Gargoyle, and the Little Black Cube demonstrated the various angles of view of the Compact Series.

The opening was quite well attended.

The alt use of the light table as a bar always makes interesting illumination.

The hors d'ouevres were about the best I've had at an art opening in a long time.

Fox Valley Photo Group colleague and basement jam group drummer Mike Vanevenhoven's hand-colored cyanotype in the beam of the oculus window. 

A week later, in association with the exhibit, another Photowalk was scheduled at Photo Opp. I had offered to make cameras available to anyone who wished to try pinhole, but no one else was willing to challenge the hegemony of the Cult of Curved Glass. The plan called for the doors to the show to be opened at 3:30, and the walk to set off at 4:00. When I got there at the earlier time, a fairly large group had gathered in front. I went in to check on the display, and when I came back out, they were already gone! Graham Washatka and I were left alone to wait as additional photographers arrived.

There was a big soft portrait light in the corner, and I purposely had loaded Lomo 800 for just this possibility. 

Meghan Raebel had a piece in the show, and her two friends came with her to the photo walk. I forgot to warn her of the difficulty of holding a full smile for over a minute, but she pulled it off brilliantly.

I eventually went out walking by myself, and when I returned, documented Graham fulfilling his role of responsible board member. During the exposure, he continually scanned his eyes around the room, hoping for a spooky look, but it seemed to just average out, appearing like he was just looking straight ahead.

I asked Giles La Rock to demonstrate the use of a stereo viewer and again forgot to check for a stable pose. He seemed rock steady, but resting an elbow on something would have made a much different picture.

Although we conversed for some time, I forgot to get the name of this medium-format photographer, but I did check for a holdable pose

It was pretty neat sitting around chatting with people looking at my stuff (and their phones occasionally).

The EyePA 30 has two hand-drilled .23mm pinholes, one on the axis, and the other 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Lomography 800, developed in a brand-new Arista.edu C41 kit.

Vote Early

Last summer in my first post on the No Kings movement, I speculated that we might be at this a while. Although local organizations continue small gatherings all the time, the national movement designated October 17th as another nationwide event. In Oshkosh, Peaceful Patriots organized things in Opera Square.

Although inspired by general opposition to the frightful behavior of the current administration, a specific theme is promoted for each iteration. With very consequential midterms just weeks away, this time Early Voting was the big idea.

 

Everyone has their own way of drawing attention to the issues. This energetic participant "hooping for change" kept a hula hoop going around for several hours.

Another universal feature of protest rallies is trying to get passing motorists involved.

Costuming is another way to get people to notice your message.

A regular player in my photo essays of the movement, with her peace symbol, wore an elaborately crafted skirt this time.

It was a breezy day. A series of large flags were arrayed along the sundial, creating a colorful flapping wall, but maybe a little too energetic for pinhole.

Past professors of prints, petrology and plays pose powerfully, protesting a plethora of poor presidential policies and practices.

A young Goth and a greybeard were discussing political strategies as the light spread into diverse colors around them.

Dehydration and common small injuries are also enemies of the people.

This soap bubble generator added a bit of whimsy to the event. I'm stunned that the highlights on the bubbles created the foggy patch above it.

A sculptural representation of the motivator for the protest, connected to a picture of his late friend, blowing in the wind. How many years must some files exist, before they can be released?

The Badgersette has two .25mm pinholes, on the axis and 13mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm film plane. The film is Kodak Gold 200, developed in a seven-month-old Cinestill C-41 kit that's starting to show its age.

Field Test of the SmallRig CT-200

It's hard to exaggerate how much tripods contribute to what I photograph. The most limiting thing I face is how to get the camera stable and unmoving, where it needs to be, to get the image I'm previsualizing. Getting a new tripod, like the SmallRig CT-200 I recently acquired, for me is as exciting as any lens or new camera body you've ever gotten. The 90-degree angle of view EyePA 30 was chosen for a field test.

My pinhole practice is also defined by surveying the city from my bicycle. This thing is big. It reminds me of professional video tripods. At 2 kilograms, it's twice as heavy as my old Manfrotto. Collapsed, it's 60cm, compared to the Manfrotto's 45cm, so it sticks out the back of the bike rack more. The old tripod was already long enough that it took some care to swing my leg over it when getting on and off, so the extra length doesn't make much difference. The extra weight is noticeable, but not that hard. I'm not about to admit that I can't handle what would be one of the smaller hand weights at a gym. It's still less than your digital SLR. Getting it on the rack under the bungee cord didn't seem too different. 

In addition to massive strength, that extra weight gives you extra height: 185 cm. Very handy for keeping verticals parallel. In this kind of situation, I used to collapse the legs to the smallest base that they would balance on to pick up a few extra centimeters of height, which was not always exactly stable.

With one-story compositions, it can get high enough that there is no need for a rising pinhole to manage converging verticals.

It's always frustrating when there is a composition with interesting lighting behind a chain-link fence. With a narrow-angle camera, you can point through the links, but with a 90-degree angle of view, they'll still be in the corners. With the "lateral" center column that sticks out like a boom, and the long legs, I could just get the camera over the fence. Composing the image gets to be a little more guesswork like that, though.

Another example of not needing an off-axis rising pinhole and its resulting exposure gradient to keep the verticals parallel. In this case, less exposure at the top would have been a good thing.

Of course, there's no trouble when the camera needs to be a bit lower to frame the composition.

One tricky situation is to get a level view of an object sitting in the middle of a table. The lateral center column that extends out gives me access to the middle of the table. The problem is the tripod head has to be between the camera and the table. With this one, that means the pinhole is at minimum 130mm up. The head has additional adjustments to swing the camera upside down, getting the pinhole to 50mm off the table, with the camera sitting on its winders. With my square format cameras, I could just position it on its side if that was more convenient.

I have been known to stick a tripod into Elwood's pond, but it's less messy coming in from the edge with the extended center column. Upside down camera again for an almost water-level view of Elwood's quartz and amethyst mute, using the legs spread to a lower angle.

Looking straight down at the Chrysanthemums. It wouldn't be impossible with a tilted, leaning tripod, but this is really easy and really stable.

My old technique of a leaning tripod to get inside a Monstera Deliciosa for the reflections on this particular leaf would have likely disturbed the arrangement. Easy to come in from the side with that arm. The camera is stable, but even in the protected lanai on a calm day, a big sail like this is going to flutter a little. I would guess it was moving for about twenty-five percent of the exposure, but it always returned to this position between breezes.

Another deployment of the lateral center column to avoid putting the tripod in the kitchen sink.

In this case, the tripod was just in front of the love seat with the lateral column extended back over the couch, then the camera swiveled back in that direction.

Finally, using the new gear to get over myself.

I was initially a little freaked out by the size, weight and plethora of adjustments and locks, but I'm warming up to the freedom to put the camera where I need it. I still intend to do a detailed review, partially just because I want to photograph kind of a nice bit of product design.

The EyePA 30 has two, hand-drilled pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Kentmere 400 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

Old and new by available light

Each year Photo Opp holds a themed exhibition with a juried show and four featured artists. This year the theme is ALT., and they picked me! My submissions have not been selected for the juried show before. For the last two years, I submitted three pieces from the stereo solargraphic project, which didn't fit the themes very well. I'm included this time because pinhole is considered an alternate method, but I wanted to take it a bit further alt and show pinhole stereocards with my seven handmade stereo viewers. They don't take up much room, so I can put lots out. I even went so far as to edit some of the early stuff from the Stereo Populist.

About the time the invitation came there was a conversation on the Negative Influence podcast lamenting how much of photography was on electronic screens. People used to sit and look at albums of prints.  Hmmm.  That sounds like books. I had experience with print-on-demand projects as soon as it was available in 2003. Then an operating system upgrade killed my educator discount license to pre-subscription Adobe Creative Cloud, so making books became a tedious exercise without a specific page layout program. Recently I found Scribus, an open-source program that's probably equivalent to a late-90s version of PageMaker, which is quite a capable tool. Exhibiting a pile of books seemed like an alt process. I even redid the earlier ones with hard covers and premium inks.

Sharp-eyed regular readers may have noticed in the last post and in the first photograph above that the blue striped chairs have been reupholstered. One day when Sarah dropped into the furniture store about something else, they had a roll of very lush fabric they just happened to have left over. They put her in touch with their upholsterer. He even came and picked them up. It's really neat working with local craftspeople like this.

Just another sunbeam with the chairs in the background.

In a similar vein, I had learned the benefits of big fat frets and a straight neck from the renovation of my black solid-body Ventura guitar. The reason my hollowbody sunburst Ventura was hard to play was that it had very flat frets. Luthier Matt Hayes told me that, in the '60s, when this guitar was made, jazz players with a light right hand liked them so they could lower the action. I do not have a light right hand.

The pickups were chrome-covered humbuckers similar to the ones we replaced on the other Ventura, with the chrome worn off the bottom end. I suppose that looked pretty punk, but I didn't like it. After removing them, the cutouts in the body matched dog-eared P-90 pickups like those that would be on a very similar Epiphone Casino, popularized by the Beatles. Modern Seymour Duncan versions went into them. (Irrelevant note: The theme for the Fox Valley Photo Group this month is Bridges.)

The Fender Mini-Twin Tone was an impulse purchase at the counter at Heid Music, with the idea of marching in the streets leading protest songs. I installed strap buttons on it. Surprisingly beefy for a 1-watt amp with twin 3-inch speakers running off a 9-Volt battery. Haven't gotten up the nerve to take it down to Opera Square.

Some of this was driven by the most common feedback I got from my experience at the University open mics last year: "Could you turn your guitar down?" and "Do you ever play acoustic guitar?" Maybe the hollow body and the little amp would help with that? The Provost who organized these events got the job as Chancellor at my Alma Mater, Eau Claire, and no one has taken up the mantle. To stay motivated, I'm trying to work up a YouTube character or, leveraging my history degree, an educational performance: "Vietnam War protest singer covers the Little Red Songbook in the post-Ramones era."

After delivering the artwork to Photo Opp, we made an impulse decision to circumnavigate Lake Winnebago to visit Heritage Orchards and Polly's Pumpkin Patch. They include a diverse selection of pumpkins.

A very knobby green? blue? example.

Pale yellow.

Extremely warty.

They also have a petting zoo. Let's just say these animals are conditioned to expect a reward when someone approaches the fence.

While I adjusted the tripod and pointed the camera, there was a continuous discussion with the little horse as to whether the camera was food.

My favorite Manfrotto tripod suffered a fatal break of a leg extension and had to be demoted to iPad support duty (see above). I didn't like any of the combinations of features in the current Manfrotto offerings and had been admiring the SmallRig CT200 4-Section Lateral Center Column Aluminum Tripod/Monopod for a while. It was on the porch when we got home. This is obviously a life-changing experience. I have plans to do an extensive review, but just let me point out that extensible center column.

Getting close to things for pinhole photographs with very wide-angle cameras usually requires leaning the tripod onto the edge of a table or the piano keyboard, often involving easily disturbed arrangements. It's lots easier to set this thing on the floor and extend that arm toward the subject. It's a little tipsy at full extension, but my camera only weighs 90 grams.

That goes double for getting directly over a subject. That used to involve laying the tripod across a couple of chair backs (or pumpkins, see above).

It, of course, came with some accessories. An adapter for a very large camera, a cell phone holder – amusingly for such a heavy tripod (2kg, almost as much as your digital camera) – and a hex wrench, different from the one for all the other tripods. The very nice case has become a receptacle for all the tripod cases I also don't use.

An additional gift was a little bag in case you need to carry around a few pinhole cameras. Displayed here on Leigh Bardugo's conclusion of the Ninth House trilogy, which came in the same delivery.

It's kind of a tall tripod, but with that center column out like that, the legs become very easy to adjust to lower angles, and the arm makes it easy to get over things even on the ground.

We have had a good yield of hot peppers, which go through color transitions as they ripen. Initially, a desaturated green.

Orange transitioning to red.

Fully outfitted appropriate to their capsaicin content. Note the lower-angled tripod leg.

One of them fell off the vine (probably aided by a critter who later realized their mistake), so I used it to provide a little contrast to the last green tomatoes.

Morton has two .23mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is a 220 format roll of Kodak Pro 400 MC, expired in 2001, developed in a C41 kit I mixed in March, now finally at its rated capacity, but it looks fine.