Roadtrip: Mosquito Hill and the Neville Museum

One day in October, Sarah and I spontaneously decided to go to Mosquito Hill. We have been going there for years. Almost weekly from the thaw until the eponymous mosquitos made it impossible in June and then again for leaf peeping until deep snow in December or sometimes in January. I have exposed great amounts of film there to the point that I put together a small book and had an exhibit in their gallery. We hadn't been there since before the pandemic.

In my bag of film in the freezer, there was a 24 exposure roll of Kodacolor Gold 400. I never use ISO 400 film, mostly because the exposures in the sunlight are shorter than you can do manually even with card-waving over the pinhole. I think I found it in the bag with my Olympus XA2 and Canon F-1. It could be left over from our Silver Anniversary trip to Paris and London in 2000. It was a dark and gloomy day so I wasn't too concerned about the exposures. Little Guinness was still sitting on the kitchen table.

The negatives came back a week and a half later (Don't you miss one-hour processing?). I noticed the contrast mask was at least a stop darker than recent negatives. Scanning them, the color balance was, let's say, unusual. There was liberal use of color balance, levels and brightness/contrast, occasionally using auto color for suggestions, some of which I accepted. Dense negatives from fast films in 35mm pinhole cameras can be pretty grainy. Cool! These may be a little more impressionist, if that's OK, Alfred.

On the way up it was nice to see some of our maple friends still doing well.

A double trunk birch that was featured from two directions in my Greening of the Hill series one year. It hasn't done so well.

A row of sumac lines the lower overlook toward New London.

There is a little flat spot with a cliff face rising above it at this point in the ascent.

A colorful little bush illuminating the south side near the top.

The upper southwest overlook featuring the Hillshire Farms sausage factory.

The top of the hill seems to have taken the lead in losing leaves.

I have a weak spot for two-tone leaves divided by a relatively sharp line.

A fallen old one which I think has been down a few years.

Another two-tone face up among it's more desaturated neighbors.

A very wet two-tone clump of grass in the meadow.

A plant in the meadow with one leaf overturned and covered with drops. It had started to rain lightly. Not good for a cardboard camera.

Steve Wittman's Original V-Class Airplane, done on my birthday at Pioneer Airport, got accepted into the Neville Public Museum's juried show in Green Bay. We went up to deliver it and have a look at the Museum. We hadn't been there since Andy was a child. It's a combined historical, scientific and art museum.

It's located on the Fox River. The first European settlement in Wisconsin was just across the road on this side of the river.

There was an exhibit of items in the collection that might have some Halloween interest. This dress was dyed with Arsenic. It contained enough to kill hundreds of people if ingested. 

We were going to Massachusetts later in the week, so I wanted to finish the film and get it to Camera Casino, so you get holiday decorating.

The mantle fully outfitted for the season.

Two optical instruments. The pumpkin's hat projects a witch flying on the ceiling, and you can take pictures with the Nikon. I'm occasionally asked if I ever take pictures with lenses. I do not avoid lenses, Mandrake, but I do deny them my film.

Little Guinness has a .17mm hand-drilled pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame.