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!

A Touch of Grey

I really never intended this to become a discontinued and expired film blog. They just keep finding me. First, it was a bulk roll of Tri-X and a box of 4x5 Plus-X I rescued when we got rid of the freezer in my department. Then Almon Benton gave me a twenty-year-old roll of super fine-grained Agfapan APX 25. Last year, Jonathon Gutow gave me some common Fuji 400 that was really old and poorly stored, which made horrible negatives, but I was surprised that they yielded reasonable pictures, although of course with Photoshop providing intense arbitration. I had good luck with an old roll of Ilford XP2 this spring, and got good results with some 220 format Kodak Portra NC 400 last month. When I saw four 120 rolls of Fujicolor NPS in the $5.00 bargain basket at Camera Casino, it seemed worth the chance.

It's a professional color negative film. The things I remember about the category of professional medium format films are that they cost more and were refrigerated in the store because their precisely calibrated color became intolerably less professional outside the correct conditions.

I remembered to ask how they were stored. They had no idea. Most of the rolls in that bin were given to them. It's a good bet, with the likely original buyer of this film being a pro, it was refrigerated until it got to the store. These rolls are pretty darn old, expired in 2001. 

Somewhat at random, I picked the AirPods Pro Box Camera for the trial.

I measured exposures at ISO 64, based on a four-year-old discussion on Photrio. The negatives look normal. The film does show its age. It is as slow as predicted, with noticeably low contrast. The color balance is somewhat muted but otherwise normal, if it's correctly exposed. When overexposed, it rapidly shifts toward cyan and underexposed toward magenta. With a wide angle like this camera provides (77 degrees), vignetting in the distant corners is a common issue. The centers are likely to be overexposed directly under the pinhole with my casual approach to timing exposures. That makes for some interesting negatives, but my friend Adobe and I could bring them around without extreme measures. I wouldn't call the color natural, but come on, it's pinhole photography, I'm not trying to be natural. My goal is to make the color not distractingly wrong, and I'm fine with some painterly freedom to the palette.

A good bit of the motivation was that it was a beautiful day and I was ready quite early in the morning. Trying out some old film would be a great excuse to go out and play pinhole. As I neared the railroad I passed the long plain back of a self-storage facility completely clad in dark grey siding. That reminded me of a project I had been considering. I've noticed that greyscale building exteriors have recently become the fashionable rage in architecture. That would be a funny test of the color rendition of the film. And you thought the blog title referred to the age of the film, or mine.

There is only one opening on that long stretch of aluminized clapboard, covered with perfectly matched steel siding.

Just across the railroad, another self-storage facility - white doors and gutters, but otherwise a medium grey.

 

Some colors show up at the YMCA, but it's mostly great slabs of grey.

It's not just the utilitarians and the modernists. The Corbett House, being publicly restored by a pair of realtors on Facebook, is covered in this dark monotone.

The brand new Day By Day Shelter is more noticeably grey on the other side, but they might not appreciate me photographing the front door. Here in the back, a staff member came out and waved when she drove out.

I documented the construction of Mackson Corners Apartments when it was just an elevator shaft, and shortly after it was finished.

The docks next to it on the river are also devoid of color.

A little lower contrast distribution of shades in the Annex Building across the road with matching utilities for my foreground.

From the river, Anthem Luxury Living looks like red brick with colored panels, but the street side is this monochrome facade.

The Brio Building strikes me as a disjointed stack of flat boxes

The Miles Kimball building, another I've covered since it was a windowless wall.

Anybody notice that, without a rising pinhole, this became an exercise in managing converging verticals? I had never noticed one-story Houge’s Bar was all grey until I was looking for something to finish the roll.

The AirPod Pro Box Camera has a .28mm pinhole 40mm from a 6x6cm frame.  The vintage Fuji was developed in a Cinestill liter powder C41 kit.