Neenah, Madison and back home.

I reloaded the EyePA 30 for a midweek Photo Opp photowalk, this time sponsored by the Neenah Public Library. The group was pretty small and about evenly divided between the Photo Opp regulars and library patrons wanting to learn how to take better pictures with their iPhones.

Unlike most of these events, the group stayed together as we walked down the extremely posh historic Wisconsin Avenue alongside the river. Lots of tempting scenes but even folks in these showcase homes get nervous about privacy when there's a tripod involved. This one with it's blue clapboards and red door dappled in the evening light was close enough to the sidewalk to fill the frame of my extremely wide angle camera and I couldn't help myself.

A sailboat on the quai similarly frame-filling, blue and dappled, but no red.

A directionally lit majestic oak and a photographer getting just the right angle of the dock.

Normally it would be very suspicious for an old man to approach two young girls for a photograph because they were nicely lit and the colors of their shirts sort of matched the landscape. These were participants in the photowalk and patiently waited while I struggled to level the tripod on a bit of a slope.

A final benediction back at the library from Richie the Librarian (no last name on his nametag and no staff directory on their website), who I didn't see take any pictures, and Mark Ferrell from Photo Opp, with crossed-body straps holding digital and analog cameras.

The following weeks were very eventful, some of which were documented with 35mm, but this camera sat idle. We decided to make a weekend of delivering a piece I had accepted into a photography show in Madison. The only pinhole in the exhibit but no media description or artist's statement to brag about it.

The 1873 Hotel Ruby Marie is nicely restored, just a few blocks from the Capitol, next to a stoplight on a triple intersection of major cross town thoroughfares and the railroad.

There's a balcony off the lobby overlooking the courtyard of the Up North Saloon below. You might think one of the rooms off it would be as noisy as the street, but we were in the bar for our complimentary drink about 9pm and it was empty except for one women conversing with the bartender.

Back home, in order to make having a scanner in the sun room more attractive and easy to use, my side of the couch has been reconfigured and the Buddha has moved across the room.

We planted a variety of pumpkins with larger vines than we expected which have completely covered everything else in the garden.

Despite hundreds of blossoms, there has only been one big pumpkin that we could find, which is beginning to ripen.

Another one beginning with it's flower still attached.

The EyePA 30 has two hand-drilled .23mm pinholes, one on the axis and one 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Lomography 400 developed in an Arista.edu liquid quart C-41 kit.

Technical Postscript.

I am very happy with the imaging qualities of Lomography color films and of course it's affordability, but the curl of a dried Lomo negative is one of the great forces of nature. The curl is in both dimensions. It's almost impossible to get them to stay in the carrier and not touch the scanner glass in multiple places if you do get it clamped in there. These were cut as soon as they weren't sticky and placed under heavy books for 24 hours. That helped with the transverse curl, but the long way is just as a powerful.

When I had a student for a second year in a summer middle school pinhole workshop, I asked her what she remembered. Her answer: "If there's a problem, the solution is more tape." That turns out to be right for this as well. There's only about a millimeter wide edge of the carrier, but it wasn't too hard to get it attached without extending the tape into the image. It was a lot easier than fighting with the curl and I only noticed one instance of Newton Rings from direct contact with the glass.

Homebuilt Air Photography - Ultralight Division

I had two day passes to the Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture this year. Monday, the first day of the convention was a brutally hot day that is typical of the end-of-July event. I exposed all but four frames in three medium format cameras. Thursday morning it was low 70s (F) and low dew point. I quickly took care of those last four frames and switched to 35mm Little Guinness loaded with 36 exposures. Between the comfortable weather, the completed primary assignment and the bounty of available film, finding and taking pictures was a little more relaxed.

Generally styled like a 1930s air racer, the side by side cockpit of Kay's Speedster caught my eye. It's a modern homebuilt kit the designer named after his wife. A review I read called the configuration romantic.

 

A kit to build your own "personal" jet.

The homebuilt hangar featured airplanes built with modern materials and motors but designs based on very early historic aircraft.

A quiet lawn between the forums buildings with an airplane parked here and there.

Another shiny airplane engine.

Another half-built homebuilt.

In addition to their business jet, motorcycles and lawn-care products, Honda displayed their first US import automobile, the what-was-then-high-mileage 1975 Civic. A coworker of mine got one of the first ones. I remember the Honda's doors sounded tinny when you closed them. I had a '73 Super Beetle that was almost as economical and actually fun to drive. Thousands of airplanes have the same engine as my Volkswagen. I wonder if anybody ever made a plane with a '75 Civic engine?

Airbus had a strangely lonely booth and no airplanes this year.

This expensive looking tripod was sitting in the middle of Boeing Plaza with no video crew in sight.

A quiet corner at the Boeing pavilion.

Easy enough to get a comfy lawn chair on Boeing's Veranda.

One of the most surreal experiences I've ever had. Two children idly playing with the wing outrigger landing gear on a B-52 strategic nuclear bomber. I was already a little shaken after standing inside the open bomb bay.

Giant Pratt & Whitneys on a C-17 Globemaster.

In my first AirVenture piece two years ago, I misidentified the landing gear of a KC-46 Aerial Refueling Tanker as that of a C-17.  This is the landing gear of the C-17.

Looking up to the cockpit in a smaller but still kind of gigantic C-130 Hercules. After being in the C-17, the cargo bay of the Hercules seemed a little cozy.

One of the crew of the C-130 selling merch. 

The EAA media cart that drove around the grounds doing live streams. He waited for me to make the exposure. It doesn't look like I'm on camera.

I was much more successful in taking advantage of the trams this year. Still plenty of steps.

It can be over a mile from your airplane camp site to the convention grounds so bicycles are very popular, especially those little folding ones which I've never actually seen anyone riding before. It was deserted out in the North Forty during the day and these decent looking bikes were completely unlocked.

Not too many bikes over by the private jets at Basler Aviation. Walking around among these things with nobody bothering me was a weird experience.

Two weeks later, from the largest airshow anywhere to one of the smallest, EAA Chapter 41's Open House at the Brennand Airport. My goal again was to get a ride in a small plane. Despite the lovely looking and feeling weather, the winds were assessed to be too unpredictably gusty and the flying had been cancelled. When I talked to one pilot about it he said the landing I was in last year came up when making the decision.

Disappointing, but I saved the film for this. A very shiny homebuilt reflecting the sky. 

Rudder and elevator of a white airplane.

The Radio-Control group displayed planes at several scales in front of a not-scale-model airplane.

One corner was draped with a net so children could fly drones with two very brave and patient volunteers inside to right things when they crashed.

Four flight simulators were set up in another corner.

Chapter 41 continually builds an airplane.

A wing bristling with rivets temporarily placed so certain holes could be drilled with proper alignment.

Spare parts between hangars. That dent in the cowling probably explains how this got to be a donor.

Sharing a hangar with a vintage '65 Olds 88.

The car show was just three sporty Fords. A 1957 Thunderbird.

A '69 Mustang.

And one not intended to be sporty, but because it had the first mass produced V8 so Henry Ford could one-up Chevy's six-cylinder, the '32 Deuce Coupe became a legendary hot rod.

Little Guinness has a hand-drilled .17mm pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame. The Kodak Ultra 400 was developed in an Arista.edu liquid quart kit.

Ordinary again

All the while I was exposing lots and lots of color last month, I was also carrying around the Toucan 45 loaded with humble Kentmere 100.

Once again I rode around trying to find things I hadn't already photographed in Oshkosh and ended up doing variations of scenes I've already done.

We've had more rain than usual in July transforming the lawns of Menomonee Park into large ponds separating the shore from the city.

I arrived quite early in Kaukauna for the Fox Valley Photography Group meeting and took a walk down the lock channel.

The locks operate daily and are pretty well maintained, but in some places they look like ancient monuments.

A backlit cloudscape with the Fox and the Kaukauna Public Library.

They've been adding to the trees along Miller's Bay. This is the smallest of the new plantings on a very windy day.

Since the last time I photographed this wall in the Art Alley behind Main Street, they've covered it with brightly colored murals, although it looks much the same in monochrome.

The theme for this month for the Fox Valley Photography Group is shadows. I wondered if the shape of the shadow would be apparent against the chain link and pipes of this gate. Not really.

In a previous exposure in this location, a long shot of the entire tree was featured but here concentrated on the shadow.

The back porch of the Morgan House in a little too much shadow.

Shadows at various angles on the County Courthouse.

This is maybe something that would have worked for last month's Abstraction theme, but it's not what I was going for. The label on the door to the right reads "Danger - High Voltage" and there's about an inch of water at the bottom of the stairs. I'm not sure that's all obvious.

Some festive decorations in the Living Room.

The Toucan 45 has .27mm pinholes on the axis and 15mm above it, 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Kentmere 100 was semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.