A Salty Dog

As I was about to recycle an empty box of kosher salt, I thought, "Hmmm... Nikon, Canon, Fujinon, Chinon, Crackon... Morton sounds like the name of a camera."

Also, Sodium Chloride was a prime ingredient in William Henry Fox Talbot's original photographic process. A sheet of paper wetted with a weak solution of salt was brushed with Silver Nitrate to form the photosensitive Silver Chloride. Since he discovered that a weak solution of salt provided a more sensitive compound, he also fixed his earliest works in a concentrated solution of salt (soon replaced by Sodium Hyposulfite). The method survives with salted paper prints as a popular alternative process.

This is the first compact series camera to make the shutters into the entire front and back of the camera, which makes it easier to use the designs on the packages I make cameras out of.

And there's the song by Procol Harem.

Otherwise, it's a Compact 30mm with a 90° angle of view. The pinholes are burgled off of one of the solargraph stereo pairs from last winter.

Since I cook a lot, kosher salt is omnipresent for me. 

Yule supplies make shiny subjects.

My view from the couch this week. I misplaced my dust brush.

The spooky lifestyle applied to media traditionally more merry.

Weren't these in another room the other day?

I arrived early for an event at Photo Opp, so I walked down to City Park specifically to photograph the dancers in the fountain dusted with snow. Happily for my color film, they've gotten dressed up a little.

The event at Photo Opp was a visit by the photography classes of St. Mary's High School in Neenah. My contemporary Mark Ferrell and I got to do kind of a witness-to-history lecture on film photography, the tour and demo in the dark room, and guide them through the use of a studio set-up. They had heard of the "red room." It was very enlightening interacting with people who have had a camera in their hand almost all their lives. At one point, I picked up an Argus 75 and said that it was my family's camera in my childhood. "What do you mean - you all shared the same camera?" None of them had ever seen a negative. They had never heard of pinhole photography. One surprise for me when looking at the cameras they were using for the class was that inexpensive digital SLRs come with zoom lenses that only stop down to f5.6! (n.b. Most interchangeable lenses stop down to f16 or 22. This camera is f120, about as fast as my cameras get.)

Even in gloomy early January, the window in the bathroom makes interesting subjects in the textures of the towels and tiles.

Touches of red brighten the composition.

The bright yellow handle led me to reprise the electric snow shovel demonstration. Iron Man was playing when I thought of it, but Rock and Roll High School was on by the time I had to strike a pose.

Down the garden path. It's hard for me to get inspired by the dreary monochrome outside with color film. I'm not sure how successfully I responded to the challenge.

A few shades of brown to play with.

Morton has two hand-drilled .25mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film was Kodak Gold 200 developed in a Cinestill quart powder kit.