The Eve of Destruction

"On November 12, 2024, the City of Oshkosh Common Council adopted a budget for the 2025 Capital Improvement Program, which included the reconstruction of the streets listed above."

So begins every communication with the city about the project going on in front of us, with the complete text of the resolution attached. Central Street was shaded by a leafy arch of maples, hickory and oak. On Saint Patrick's Day, signs appeared that the street was closed, and they cut down all the trees next to the street. Only our magnolia and the youthful crabapple next door were spared.

The project has been ongoing for months in the three blocks south of ours where Central Street jogs over a bit. Last Friday, they ominously started moving a plethora of massive equipment and supplies onto the boulevard of our block.

 

The first was this giant container, which also held several buckets for the backhoes.

Trench boxes, which are placed in the holes they dig to protect from collapses while people are working in them, come in a variety of sizes.

One twice as wide as the others.

One is twice the length.

Six trench shores, which are 5 by 10-foot, two-inch-thick sheets of steel, moved together in a single pile.

Looks like whatever is under that manhole cover is getting replaced. That's going to take a pretty big hole.

A stack of green pipes.

New hydrants and their connections in front of a pile of black pipes.

Existing manhole covers and grates have already been removed and presumably will be reused.

Lots of machines started showing up. A small loader with a big bucket.

A big digger. The sheer brutality of these things is impressive. They label the inventory numbers on with a welder.

A big loader currently configured as a forklift to move all this stuff around.

An attachment to pound the gravel down after they refilled a hole. It shook the whole house when they were right in front of us.

My favorite of the lot. A plant taking advantage of the dirt accumulating under the arm of one of these beasts. After a week of heavy use, the plant's still there.

Less inviting space underneath the machine.

One of the attachments is a wire brush, which looks like it's used on wet cement.

Surprisingly complex hydraulics needed for it.

So far we've been spared the above-ground hose as the source of all our water that the blocks south of us have had all summer.

The responsible party.

The film is a 220 format roll of very expired Portra 400 NC. Since that format has no backing paper with numbers, I've been writing down how many frames I've used so I don't waste effort taking pictures on the ending leader. When I got to 21, I had plans for the remaining three frames, which I thought I could remember and stopped writing them down. I immediately double-exposed the next frame.

My scheme of advancing one and a quarter rotations of the take-up spool for the first third of the roll, and reducing that to one rotation by the end, worked out pretty well. I got twenty-three frames, but this one was pretty tightly cropped on one side by the end of the roll.

I used the first frame to complete the story of a line of tomato blossoms I've been following because they had to be harvested, so we got to eat them instead of the residents of the garden.

Morton has two hand-drilled .25mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. My curiosity got the better of me, and this is the fourteenth roll developed in a four-month-old Cinestill Liter Powder C41 kit.

XPerimenting with XPired XP2

At Photo Opp's rummage sale, I picked up four more very old rolls of Ilford's C41 Black and White film, XP2. It's not really experimenting since I already know what the film is like, but who can pass up that title? I didn't really have any concept in mind, so investigating outdated film is a good excuse to play pinhole. Since I've been trying not to get in an extreme wide-angle pinhole rut, I picked the 45mm Crackon, pretty darn wide-angle at 67 degrees, but still narrow in pinhole land.

At the end of Ames Point, a monument to Richard Ames, who led the movement to restore Millers Bay and the north end of the park. His grandson was in Andy's Cub Scout Pack.

The Facebook group Cycling for those aged 70+ seemed to consist mostly of pictures of people with the right bike wearing the right outfit, covering 100K rides with their club. I posted a picture in my t-shirt and sandals with my 50-year-old Takara Standard road bike, mentioning I got it with Gerald Ford's stimulus check. It got 350 likes and 13 comments, way more than I've ever gotten with a post about pinhole. Arriving home from the grocery store the next day, I took a picture with my bulging backpack, a 12-pack on the rack and a bag of chips hanging on the handlebars. I posted that I didn't hear much about grocery shopping on that forum. That got 500 likes and 100 comments! Should I say something about rollin' pinholin'?

Tempted by a lily in dappled light that didn't quite hold still.

The giant hosta in the back corner.

Herbs from the garden to go into chicken salad.




The jam group I've been playing with is on hiatus for a month, so I brought the Marshall home. An attractive addition to any decor.




The line of little tomatoes I've been following. You can't really tell here that they're ripening.

The arbor, which was completely bare two months ago, now totally covered by both roses and morning glory vines.

 

A little courtyard with nice light next to the original Oshkosh B'Gosh headquarters.

William Waters began his architectural practice just about the time Oshkosh burned down, so he designed half the buildings downtown. He is being honored by the construction of a gazebo that mimics his later Columbian Exposition neoclassical style. His massive earlier neoromanesque Post Office, City Hall, Courthouse and a few others were on this street, but only parking lots remain. 

To get this roll finished, the arrangement that's been on my side table for at least a week, in its natural colors.

The Crackon has two .27mm hand-drilled pinholes, on the axis and 13mm above it, 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Super XP2 was semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

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.