Easily influenced

 

I recently corresponded with someone to whom I had given several cameras. One comment I found distressing was that they didn't use them because they were "afraid to wear and tear them because they are so lovely." My cameras are made from packaging materials, and the ones in question were beer cases, which were protected with spray acrylic. Think of what that goes through in your shopping cart. It's pretty tough. I'll admit to occasionally needing a little maintenance, but that is usually a drop or two of glue. They're also pretty invulnerable to falls. My tripod goes over at least once with every roll of film. The EyePA 30 has exposed 10 rolls of film and is currently in an art exhibit. 

Then I thought, "Do I do that? Do I avoid cameras because I'm afraid they'll get blemished?" 

The Little Black Cube immediately came to mind. It's made out of about the lightest material I've ever used, although wonderfully opaque and maybe a little extravagantly thick for its original purpose as an envelope. Because it has the same internal film holder as any of my Compact Series, it doesn't feel crushable, and doesn't seem any more delicate than any of my other cameras when you're holding it. It's one unique feature is the glossy Chanel logo against the matte surface. If I covered it with glossy or matte protectant, that would disappear. The tiniest bit of moisture would disfigure it. There have been only two rolls of film exposed with it and all of that in the house and the garden.

I've been mostly using color film lately, because when you mix a C41 kit, the clock starts ticking as it oxidizes, and the data sheet practically dares you to exceed the recommended capacity. I finally declared my latest mix expired at 60% over capacity, thrice the recommended storage life, and two new kits waiting in the darkroom. So now I'm free to use some black and white film.

A good bit of that color film and the last roll of black and white were extremely expired, so I loaded The Little Black Cube with a brand new roll of top-of-the-line Ilford HP5+.

Another influence was my recent return to using an extreme-for-pinhole-narrow-angle-of-view, 53-degree, 6cm camera, which I wanted to continue.

At about this time, Photo Opp had a rummage sale of a lot of the things that were donated during their first fundraising efforts. They kept the best stuff for their educational mission, but there was still a lot of usable photo paraphernalia. Inspired by the look in Wes Anderson's Asteroid City, Sarah told me to see if there was a good-looking, quirky rangefinder. After rejecting a few Kodak Retinas, I picked up this camera. It's a Beauty. In the late 50's, Taiyōdō Camera changed its brand name to Beauty and offered this 35mm Super II with a Canter 45mm/f2.8 lens. It's in absolutely mint condition and everything works. The rangefinder patch is bright and as easy to focus and frame as any rangefinder, even with glasses on. It's presenting me with a philosophical crisis.

Among the heavy-duty video and cheap point-and-shoot tripods, this Star-D Aluminum tripod really stood out. One of several rebrands of the classic Marchioni TiltAll (including Leitz!), it's as big and primarily the same design as the Davis & Sandford RediTilt I've had since the 80s, but it extends a bit higher to 72 inches. I was volunteering at the sale and thought I'd talked someone into buying it twice. At the end of the day, I couldn't leave it.

The Kohler faucet in the kitchen, installed in the mid-90s, began to drip when completely closed, but was fine if you left the handle a few degrees from its full stop. We had it adjusted when the plumber came for something else and he told us it was on its way to total failure. It's now been replaced by a Moen product named after the city Andy and Kristin live in.

What the plumber was here about was the bathroom faucet that had failed explosively one morning. This Moen was the best one they had in stock at Lowe's, so the plumber could come the next day.

This is supposed to be about seeing if this camera can stand up to normal use. Sticking it in the sink is not normal usage for anyone but me. Taking the minor precaution of nice weather, I strapped the tripod to the bike rack as usual, with the camera mounted.

A nicely restored Model A.

The cloud above the geometric blocks of the YMCA with its shiny sign seemed quite modern.

The new doors in the highly anticipated Truffle Pig restaurant. With the narrow camera, I couldn't get far enough back. The tripod was already over the curb.

The shiny Masarati sports car that's always parked on State St.

In the window of the bridal shop at the corner of Main and Church. 

Some basement reorganizing revealed this oil lamp.

And a vase with rose decorations. I don't think I quite captured its translucence.

I can't tell any difference in the condition of the camera after this. It was very nice to use. It has the problematic take-up reel stops that I've later modified, but the film advanced really smoothly. One risky practice that's not apparent is that the interiors totalled six hours of exposure.

The Little Black Cube has a .30mm hand-drilled pinhole, 6cm from a 6x6cm frame. The HP5+ was semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

More old film

The theme for the Fox Valley Photography Group this month is Composition in your home, another one I suggested. That gave me an excuse to try out another roll of professional Fuji NP160, expired in 2001.  Lately, I've been using mostly the extreme 90-degree wide-angle commonly associated with pinhole. For a change, I pulled out 53-degree Paterson the Pinhole Camera, still somewhat wide angle by traditional standards, but a few standard deviations above the mean in the pinhole community.

The view from my normal seat on the couch. Another pillow on the tufted loveseat in the diffuse light of the sheer curtains in the sunroom. The bunny seems to be trying to figure out what the camera is.

With that assignment taken care of, I got on my bike to document the holiday weekend when I encountered two giant cherry pickers with crews disconnecting electricity up and down the street. This spring, all the trees near the street on the block were cut down, except our magnolia. We are scheduled to have the street converted into a large ditch for a few weeks soon. The power company is taking advantage of having the street closed to traffic.

There were well-attended games between high school-aged baseball teams at all the diamonds in the park. The lowest seat on the bleachers behind the dugout was available for me and my tripod. The entire team stood up while their side was at bat. 

As I was winding the film, Number 16 turned around and asked, "What's that?" 

"A pinhole camera. Do you know what that is?"

"No."

At that moment, there was the crack of bat on ball and a brief cheer until it was caught, signalling the end of the inning and their return to the field.

A new elementary school nearby with lots of shades of grey, planes and angles, which consolidated three now-gone elementary schools on the east side. It often looks to me like modern architects cut and fold flat pieces of patterned cardstock into boxes to design these buildings. Maybe it's just me.

The Parks & Recreation Department offers free sailing lessons a few times a week. On this very hot, humid day, the students were more interested in capsizing so they could get dumped into the lake, causing repeated megaphone instructions to get back in the boat.

I saw them working on the cross bar of the T-dock, but the stem was the only part that got new wood.

This year, the fireworks were launched from Ames Point, a little further from people and easier to transport gear to than the former site on Monkey Island. Is it more acceptable to stake out your viewing spot with a collapsed canopy than leaving it fully erected? There were several other sites well-supplied with blankets, chairs and coolers with a single occupant playing video games on their phone, at least 6 hours before the display.

On summer weekends, with picnics spread along the shore, I'm often reminded of Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Part of my reason for choosing this narrower camera was this photo - in order to be farther from the nearest group, yet not have the expansion of depth a wider angle would portray, separating the groups. If Seurat had been composing with a lens, it would have been a bit telephoto.

 

Another view near the beach.

What's become of that line of tomato blossoms.

In early June, the rose vines on the arbor seemed moribund, so I cut them to the ground. We planted morning glories and a clematis. The roses took up the challenge, and we now have a diverse ecosystem wound around the arbor.

Paterson has hand-drilled .31mm pinholes, on the axis and 15mm above it, 6cm from a 6x6cm frame. The expired film was the thirteenth roll developed in a Cinestill Powder Liter C41 kit, mixed April 6th, which makes it quite expired as well.

Green Bay Retrofuturism and ordinary Oshkosh.

In anticipation of a Photo Opp photowalk at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, I loaded another roll of vintage Portra 400 NC, at least a decade and a half old. In 220 format, it has no backing paper. To prevent issues I previously encountered, I lined the entire interior of Morton with backing paper from a recent roll of Portra 800, including two extra layers over the counter hole. That should make it opaque.

Without numbers to guide me, this time I tried one and a quarter turns for the first eight pictures, one and an eighth for the next eight, and just one thereafter. That would have worked great except for the fact that I forgot to wind it twice and advanced about two and a half frames, with the shutter open, while having a conversation. Accounting for those errors, I would have gotten twenty exposures, and there was enough film left for three more pictures. Another issue that reduced the yield from this roll was that increased reciprocity failure is also an issue with film gerontology, and there were a few unrecoverable underexposed interiors.

The location was interesting for me because, other than Madison, there were more statewide meetings I attended there than any other campus for the alphabet soup of LTDC, EMTC, CIO Council, and a couple of our Oshkosh building committees. I haven't been there in ten years.

Most of those meetings, some of them radically virtual for the time, included showing off Mary Coffrin Hall Room 204, the Distance Education Laboratory. Built in 2001, it could connect to two properly equipped remote sites for two-way live communication at VHS quality. With a giant "bridge" in Madison, all thirteen campuses could connect Hollywood Squares style. There were two pan-tilt-zoom cameras, three projectors to display the two other sites and a computer, the document camera, or from their cutting-edge video server. It cost millions. Now we can do it on a $30 burner phone. They did offer a lot of courses to smaller two-year campuses for years before on-line classes replaced that sort of thing. Tania Nelson was Photo Opp host and the designated watcher of gear.

UW Green Bay was established in the late 1960's when America was still great enough to realize the societal benefits of an educated population and critical research. That timing led to a rather exuberant embrace of Brutalism, so the campus sometimes looks a little like a sci-fi movie, especially when it's completely deserted late on Saturday afternoon in the summer.

The six-story David Coffrin Library rises above the campus with views of Green Bay to the west. Not unlike Polk Library at Oshkosh, it's going to come down in a few years because the legislature has been withholding the necessary budget to maintain HVAC and other systems and provide a decent education. I left the magenta stripe along the bottom. The film wasn't in its wrapper when I bought it, and it's leaking just a bit at the edges.

One modern feature is actually pretty enviable. With the school in northern Wisconsin just off the east shore of windy Green Bay, all the campus buildings are connected by tunnels, which really enhances the sci-fi effect.

In some places, it's almost monotone.

These blue tables, wooden arbor and random brickwork on the Student Union provide a little relief.

 

Brandi Grahl and Morgan Kirchenwitz and their children were my companions for some of the time, but pinhole photography wasn't compatible with two pre-teenagers in the lead. At the end of the day, I tried for a group photo, but the kids were off again while their mothers graciously posed with Leonardo. 

Upriver in Oshkosh, another in my series featuring the north inlet to Miller's Bay. Brutally treated by the ice, the T-Dock gets a makeover.

 

Encasing utility enclosures in stainless probably saves paint and reflects light in a more interesting way than a white or brick building.

A splash of tomato blossoms.

A rather severe crop of a white peony featuring the fast film's grain.

A pink peony.

Another variety of pink. After the rain, you have to get under them and look up to get a face-on view.

Morton has two hand-drilled .25mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Portra NC was the 12th roll developed in a Cinestill liter powder C41 kit.

Nulli Reges

Other than being really offended that the Americans rejected his benificent patriarchy, George the Third didn't really have much involvement in the policies that bred the American Revolution. That was Parliament, pretty much an oligarchy at the time. He did support them, and they, him. When it got too expensive to argue with us, and they needed to get back to fighting with France, not swapping out for a new home-grown royal line made us unique, so let's celebrate that.

The Winnebago region No Kings event, including the Fox Cities and Fond du Lac, took place in Oshkosh at Opera Square, just down the block from where pioneering documentary photographer Lewis Hine grew up. Coincidentally, it also happened to be Flag Day. The theme for the Fox Valley Photography Group this month is An Event. Another of those assignments of all basic photography courses - pick a pre-scheduled event and bring back a picture from it. I chose to use the Diversity 30, as good a protest camera as I've got.

I encountered a Green Bay TV station cameraperson while I was waiting with a crowd to cross what continued to a busy street all during the event. He asked me if he was in my way. I replied, "No, you're in my photograph." He just went back to what he was doing.

This scene across the street is probably what he was recording. I appreciate a linguistic joke to go with the costumes. Remembering the solemnity of the last large public protests I was in, during the Vietnam War, the levity displayed everywhere takes some getting used to. I liked the Yippies and Country Joe McDonald back then, and getting attention is the first level of Krathwohl's Hierarchy of the Affective Domain, if you're into Educational Psychology. Yes, I am one of those educated elites, although most of my career, I was considered practically uneducated.

With people spread a block either way down two streets at one of Oshkosh's central intersections and crowded around the sundial, it was hard to capture the scale of the event.

There was a PA system and several people spoke into it, but they couldn't be understood more than a few meters away. It seemed a very decentralized affair until you blocked a walkway or stepped over the curb, and a volunteer with a vest apologized and asked you to stop that.

I struggled to stay out of a walkway as I stood waiting for this costumed individual to turn toward me. The wide angle made it easy to get an up-angled view and have the entire figure in the frame in this crowded environment. Google's AI tells me "This technique can make the subject appear larger, more powerful, or dominant, and can also create a sense of awe or intimidation." Yeah, that's what I'm going for. Smash the Patriarchy. Everyone seemed to recognize what I was doing was taking a photograph, and no one mentioned my odd way of doing it except for a few people who recognized me from Photo Opp events.

A young man with his family reminding us white folks not to be too proud of ourselves.

Nice integration of ideas to bring Evolution into it.

There was a lot of conversation going on, but it seemed every time I began talking to someone, a chant would break out next to me.

A guitarist and his dog set up on the other side of the park and started playing Bob Marley's Stand Up For Your Rights. It occurs to me that a lot of those chants could easily be set to 12-bar blues. That could give a person something to do during these events. There's a portable Pignose amp somewhere in the basement, and it's probably too optimistic to think we won't be doing this again.

That makes a good segue into the other event I covered last week, a group of very experienced rock n' rollers getting together to jam to 12-bar blues and other three-chord rock in a basement.

They've got a new rookie rythm guitar player trying to inject a little metal into the mix.

The Diversity 30 has two .23mm pinholes, on the axis and 10mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Kodak Gold 200 developed in a Cinestill liter powder C41 kit.

World Stereoscopy Day: The Unseen Library

 

World Stereoscopy Day, led by the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy, occurs on June 21 each year, the anniversary of Sir Charles Wheatstone's presentation on Stereoscopy to the Royal Society in 1838. This is my fourth year participating.

Early this year, I made a stereo camera out of two Hughes Chocolate boxes just because they were the right size. Shortly thereafter, I arranged with the Oshkosh Public Library to do an exhibit in their new exhibit space. On a whim, I asked if I could use my new local-icon camera to do a series of stereo photographs so the public could experience the parts of the library where they are normally not allowed. They went for the idea right away, but I would have to be accompanied by Sandy Toland, Community Engagement Librarian, who organizes the exhibits.

I made a list of the scenes I'd like to get, and except for getting up on the roof, they were agreeable to all of them. We did three sessions. One roll of six pairs the first day, two rolls the second time, half of which I ruined, and a last session to repeat those. I ended up with 18 pairs.

There are three ways to view stereographs. In line here, they will be set up for Crossed Eye Viewing, which needs no additional equipment.  Crossing your eyes makes a double image. When you make the two inner images overlap in the middle, and focus on some element in the scene. It pops into three dimensions. Here's a link to an exercise that might help to learn this. For Parallel Viewing or printing for a classic Brewster Stereo Viewer, click here for a PDF.  For using Red/Blue glasses, click here for a PDF with Anaglyph versions (really big file).

The public sees the Circulation Desk from the other side each time they enter or leave. There are only two people captured in these stereograms. In the far background, just to the right of the column, someone is searching the catalog.

The Reference Services Librarians' office.  At the far right, Librarian Learns host Mike Macarthur is the only other person recorded.

The Library Administration office. I think the foggy area in the right frame (on the left here in crosseyed format) is a light leak. It's a great illustration of how your brain just picks the best parts of each image to form the image in stereo.

The Director's Office. When I met him weeks earlier, he expressed incredulity that his office would be photogenic. I told him everything reflects light and you can frame any shapes into a composition. He said he was going to use that line in meetings. He was in one when this picture was done. They went in and asked him so I could catch the sunbeams. I wonder if he knew I was coming that day?

Technical Services, where materials are acquired and processed. After graduating from college, I worked in the cataloging department at the UW-Stout library and was responsible for preparing materials for circulation. The basic unit of measure of progress is a book truck.

The Winnefox Libraries System Distribution Center - one big library with a unified catalog and circulation system for five counties.

 

Where the materials come and go.

The staff entrance and back stairwell.

The IT department.  In the basement, of course, but with a window.

The mechanical room.

The maintenance shop is predictably right next door.

The archives, including document boxes, leather-bound ledgers, loose photographs, ephemera and a cardboard robot from an earlier event.

Craft and activity supplies have their own well-ordered room.

Up to the top floor. The lunch room decorated for Valentine's Day. My good luck to be there when the decorations matched the furniture.

The gallery beneath the dome. 

Just outside the left door is this small seating area.

Turning around, the stairwell of the original building.

Down the other hallway, the meeting and staff development room, with its smart board and ultra-short throw projector. (Sorry, I'm a former AV guy)

I bought special lenses from Berezin 3D, but made the rest of three viewers out of foamcore and cardboard for visitors to view the stereocards. Viewers and cards survived the public touching the artwork for a month.

Hughie has two side-by-side 6x6cm chambers with .25mm pinholes on the axis and 8mm above it in both chambers, 30mm from the image plane. The film was Portra 800 developed in a Cinestill Liter Powder C41 Kit.

Happy Stereoscopy Day!