Beginning and ending the week with Photo Opp - Manic Expression version.

For the Oshkosh Photo Walk and the gala gallery gathering at Photo Opp, I chose to be very disciplined with a medium format camera adhering to a theme of people and their cameras, but I also wanted to take pictures of whatever appeared before me. Along came 35mm HandyCam, made from Fox Valley native materials, full of plenty of speedy Fuji 400.

A call for cleaning and last-minute renovation came out on Saturday morning on social media. Ethan VerKuilen delicately removed black paint with an Xacto knife that had hidden the names of the founders of the original synagogue.

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Alex Simpson installed the gallery hanging system.

Sunday was the photowalk in Oshkosh. Despite having no official role, I felt some responsibility since, this time, I was the native and had suggested it as a possible site. I arrived early at Becket's, a bar and restaurant in the riverside City Center.

Dave Heim, Almon Benton and Graham Watashka got there moments later.

Becket's had generously made their private dining room available for us to gather.

Graham led me up to the parking level through a stairwell I had never realized was there. It must have rained while we were inside. 

The view across Jackson Street, which I had often considered from the ground but assumed some kind of pass was necessary to get up there.

The stairwell in question. Graham slowly walked up and down during the exposure, but he was no match for the bright cement.

It was 46° F with a 16 mph sustained wind, but that didn't stop anyone from going out to photograph the very interesting angry clouds. 

The last boat on the public docks gives an odd bit of color to the scene.

The Weather Service said it was gusting up to 30 mph, but along the river, it might have been more gust than sustained. These gulls stayed put, grimly facing upwind, with the tripod only a few meters away. The second time this had happened to me in a week.

This black leaf on the City Center sidewalk with a few raindrops seemed to characterize the autumnal evening.

No one was in the less damp Opera Square two blocks north.

Across Market Street from the square, the interior lights stood out against the outside gloom.

It just happened to be the meeting of the Fox Valley Photography Group in Kaukauna on Thursday. If it's sunny at meeting time, I go over to the west side of the Library to try to catch the sunbeams.

The meeting room was empty. In case I had the date wrong, I only rolled out a table for Bobbi Hague, our leader who usually arrives before me, and one for myself 

Others showed up shortly.

During the discussion. 

Saturday was the gala event at Photo Opp.

The nave transformed into a gallery with the From Our Streets exhibit featuring Char Brandis, Billy Hintz and Tyler Gajewski and a juried selection from others.

I volunteered to welcome guests and hand out nametags to the photographers, board members and sponsors. 

Featured artist Char Brandis was present at the door with an electronic ticket checker, and one other volunteer had the printed list, leaving me mostly idle. I started to finish my roll of film.

Brandi Grahl unloading something at the last minute.

Almon looking skeptical at my use of 35mm film in anything other than a Leica.

Graham duly documented the arrivals.

A couple arrived on motorcycles. 

Fox Valley Photography colleagues Tim Matey and Mike Burman both had a picture in the show.

Scott Kruger behind the light table, which had been put to use as a somewhat Kubrickian bar.

Decorative lighting under the circular window.

Candles illuminate the stairways.

People in comfortable seats are usually agreeable to a long-exposure photograph. Engaging them in conversation keeps their faces pointing in the same general direction.

Negatives were often featured in the decorating scheme.

Adam James tended the downstairs bar in the less cinematic but very pragmatic church basement kitchen, used for preparing hors d'oeuvres, cleaning painting tools, and washing film until they get the darkroom plumbed.

HandyCam has a hand-drilled .15mm pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame. The film is Fujifilm 400, developed in an Arista.edu liquid quart C41 kit.

Beginning and ending the week with Photo Opp - Medium Format and Really Wide Angle

When Photo Opp scheduled a photowalk in downtown Oshkosh, it put me in a quandary. Part of the fun of these events is to go somewhere you've never been and discover compositions as they appear before you. I've spent years riding around in downtown Oshkosh exposing hundreds of frames. I decided to concentrate on people and their cameras. The Sunday afternoon weather forecast predicted long exposures, and maybe we'd be hanging out in a bar. That called for Lomography 800 in my fastest camera, the Variable Cuboid with the f100 20mm front. It's also my widest camera, with a 113-degree angle of view. Every little bit of this speed was necessary.

A 35mm Populist also went along but that's another blog post.

Host Graham Washatka's preamble was briefer than usual because he wanted to get back into the conversation with some first-time walkers who brought a film SLR and a Holga.

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A group headed down to the event space in the large atrium led by Giles La Rock and his Hasselblad.

About half the people who participate in these walks do at least some event photography, so this environment is pretty normal.

 

Mark Ferrell advancing his original Nikkormat after taking my photograph.

The group from that earlier conversation emerged from Becket's with multiple camera straps across most shoulders.

This time, I was the hometown boy. We chatted about how to get to the Fox River and historic Main Street. I glanced up and saw Graham on the parking structure on the roof of the City Center, which, based on signs on the entry ramp, I thought was forbidden for the general public. An architectural photography pro and fan of brutalism, he recognized one of the doors as the bottom of an open staircase with no signage at all. Technical pinhole serendipity note: Despite the odds against it, the lights from the bridge are perfectly reflected in one lens of his glasses. This happened with him once before.

Looking to find photographers in the wild, I set out up Main Street and found Almon Benton and Brandi Grahl in Opera Square with a Linhof field camera and a Leica M6. There's probably a Leica over his shoulder as well.

This walk's unintentional double exposure. On my return, there was nobody else at Becket's to photograph. Well, I'm a person too! A self-portrait enjoying a club soda around the fire pit, the most brightly lit spot in the room. Graham arrived and took my photograph as I closed the shutter, which it seems distracted me from winding the film. Later, Almon set the shiny Linhof right in front of me. The opportunity of a stationary subject was too compelling. Not a bad abstract composition, but I'd rather have the two pictures.

A late group returned and sat sort-of in the light. At least two flash exposures of the table by the door occurred, which it appears did nothing for my film. 

The following Saturday was the From Our Streets gallery opening and festive gala fundraiser at Photo Opp, showing off the renovations...and what still needs to be done. Here, five friends converse around a table waiting for my exposure, one to the left taking a call, and on the right someone arriving to show a photograph.

The place was tastefully strewn with paraphernalia, like this sturdy 4x5 Calumet view camera, which was the camera they checked out to students when I was in grad school.

In a comfy moderately well-lit place to sit, these folks agreed to stay put for a five-minute exposure.

The 20mm front for the Variable Cuboid has a .20mm Gilder electron microscope aperture. The Lomo 800 was developed in an Arista.edu Liquid Quart C41 kit.

From Sea to Art Alley

For the last few years when we've gone to Massachussets to visit Andy and Kristin, I've brought along a medium format camera, in this case The Crackon, but never made any exposures with it. Most historic sites and museums have draconian "no tripods on the grounds" rules, so I make do with the 35mm Populists and pocketable tripods.

I took The Crackon and the full sized tripod to Newport, Rhode Island and bought it along when we went on the seaside Cliff Walk. The sky was mostly blank but this cloud appeared near the end of the walk. I broke the streak and had at least one photograph for the trouble of bringing the camera.

The following Friday was possibly the last day for a bike ride in shorts and sandals so I headed for Lake Winnebago. Another in the series of trees in the gap between Ames Point and Monkey Island. Usually the geese slowly move away as I set up the tripod, but this time they just stayed there as close as they've ever let me get to them. The picture's still in the camera but this happened to me again a couple days ago on the riverwalk.

 
In the windows of Venue 404, formerly the grand lobby of the First National Bank, this view camera was spotlit by the sun. I wonder if it's a prop or gets used at the fancy dress-up events. Nice tripod.

Lewis Hine, one of pioneers of documentary photography, grew up in Oshkosh. A while ago I noted that the interesting alley behind the historic lower 400 block of Main Street would have been brand new when he lived in town. Little did I know that I was photographing the back door of his parent's restaurant which is now Jambalaya Arts. They recently got a historic plaque installed on the front of the building and with the help of files from the George Eastman Museum, printed a representative exhibit of his work. I always think about how in often risky situations, he had to be working on a tripod with sheets of film, or glass plates, which were just barely faster than today's photographic paper.

As I spoke to the Artist Member in attendance, he reminded me that the Art Alley Market was the next day. Last summer I took the Manic Expression Cube with Antique Tri-X to it and found a lot of very willing-to-be-photographed people and had great fun doing portraits. With all their colorful fashion and coiffure, the little grainy black and white negatives didn't do them justice. That would be good project for medium format color.

Everyone I asked was more than willing to let me photograph them, getting pretty close-up with the tripod and wide-angle camera. I mostly asked them to stay as they were, just don't get up and leave until I close the shutter. It was just assumed that what I was doing was creating a piece of art and they were happy to collaborate. Everyone thought the home-made camera was cool, but no one was surprised by it.

Thank you all very much.

Although I gave everyone my card, I only picked up one and I don't remember whose that was. (Hi, Kelly Coutley, www.etsy.com/shop/bluemoonart13).  Please identify yourself if you wish and link to your page in the comments below.

Last year the only persons within three decades of my age were the parents of one of the people in the band. This time it was the band (well, there was one other).

I'm pretty sure these two were costumed as the White Rabbit and Alice, but the cool weather in the shaded wind-tunnel alley required additional insulation.

The painter, a graduate of UW Milwaukee, and his companion, who began to leave the picture but assented when I said she was part of the story. They both moved their heads slightly and thought it was cool that their faces would be slightly smeared. I always ask people where they went to school because I probably know their professors if it's UW Oshkosh. 

An artist drawing on an iPad with an Apple pencil.

In the upper right corner of that last picture, across the alley. We conversed about how I could have photographed the interesting clothing the young people wear that was now under a hoodie. I said some of the protection from the cold looked pretty interesting.

Art is a family affair. It was notable that almost everyone assumed an expression that could be held for the duration of the exposures, five to thirteen seconds. Especially the daughter, who was smiles and eagerness when I asked her for permission to take her photograph, snapped into a face worthy of a Vogue cover as the shutter was opened.

A clothier interacting with the buyers and her friends across the parking lot while her wares sway in the wind.

I once rebuked the editor of the college literary magazine who, in a photo essay of a play a friend of mine was directing, removed the one picture of her friends in the audience, waiting in the lobby. These two friends of the dress maker were waiting in the warmer sunshine for me to finish taking her picture.

The Crackon has two .27mm pinholes on the axis and 13mm above it (these were all done with the axial pinhole), 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Lomography 400 developed in an Arista.edu liquid quart C41 kit.