Random acts of color with the AirPods Box

A total lunar eclipse occurred in the wee hours of Pi Day (3/14 in American dating notation). I wanted to give the Airpods Pro Box Camera a try with color film, so I put it out for the night with Kodak Gold 200 inside. I've had better results with Lomo 100, a stop slower, in the EyePA 30, a stop faster, so the exposure should be the same. I suspect the reciprocity profile of the Kodak with these really long exposures.  I got home from a Fox Valley Photography Group meeting and pointed the camera, based on my memory of looking up a couple days before, where the center would be. Based on our garage and the neighbor's lit garage window, it's pointed where I thought, but it looks like I was wrong about where the eclipse would occur.

 

Recently, I was interviewed for local TV about my exhibit at the Oshkosh Public Library by NBC 26's Claire Petersen, who also acted as her own film crew. It's amazing how she distilled our hour-and-a-half conversation into a minute-and-a-half, which made pretty good sense. At one point, she paraphrased my favorite type of pinhole experience as having an "astute" idea and shooting 12 pictures based on it. What I actually said was a "stupid" idea. I didn't have any kind of idea at all for this roll of film.

During Oshkosh's late 19th century heyday, State Street was lined with massive Neo-Romanesque giants like the courthouse, post office, and city hall. Now, it's mostly parking lots except for the block that contained the Oshkosh Northwestern. I show you this photo not because of its own merits but to boast about the accuracy of my precognition. When developer TJ Rodgers bought the building, I said it would be great if he made it into a Mediterranean restaurant. Ta-Da: The Truffle Pig opening this year. Kind of a disturbing name, but I'm looking forward to the menu.

The block also included the world headquarters of Oshkosh B'Gosh. They moved to Atlanta in the nineties but this awning still had their name as late as 2022.

This always-perfectly-clean Maserati is usually parked on the street nearby.

I've done almost this same view of the sundial in Opera Square, in black and white, and in color with different clouds just last summer, both a little earlier in the day.

The AirPod Box insisted I stop to make this photograph. The Exclusive Company was a force in recorded music and equipment in eastern Wisconsin for the last third of the twentieth century. The Oshkosh store moved down the street in the early aughts, but the sign stayed on the vacant building. The original owner died a couple years ago, and the family is finally doing something with the three storefronts they occupied. You can't help but hear those signs in his voice: "Say it with me!" (if you're from around here).

With color film, the Art Haus window could not be passed up. It also included a promotion of the Oshkosh Gallery Walk, which my pictures at the Library were part of this month. That turned out to be a nice, quiet and peaceful event.

Bikes for sale in the sunshine.

One afternoon, Sarah idly folded two foil wrappers from Dove Chocolates into a bi-tone rectangle. We remarked she was inspired by Mark Rothko. I set up the camera with it on the dining room bureau, waited for the late evening sunbeam from the stairway window, and opened the shutter based on the time predicted by The Photographer's Ephemeris. The Sun only made it through for a few minutes, so I left the exposure for a few hours with the lights on.

The sources for the sounds heard with the AirPods.

The azalea just about to pop. More of this in my next post. Negatives are drying now.

The AirPod Pro Box Camera has a .28mm pinhole 40mm from a 6x6cm frame. The Kodak Gold 200 was developed in a Cinestill One Liter Powder C41 kit.

Other libraries

It feels a little improper dallying with other libraries while having a closer-than-usual relationship with the Oshkosh Public Library. Photo Opp and The Appleton Public Library hosted a Photowalk in their brand-new building last Saturday.

We were asked to arrive before closing and were sequestered in a meeting room until after the normal sweep of the building. (Is that just a museum term?)

Upon release, I, of course, went to the main staircase. The design of the building goes out of its way to provide views with as much depth as possible. Is that a little 20th-century brutalism influence with that raw surface on the concrete columns?

A gallery and what looks like a mid-century modern café on the south side of the building. The giant window lighting didn't have much effect because it was dark and raining outside, but it's probably pretty cool on a sunny day.

Very pragmatic exposure of the technical infrastructure. The Pompidou Center in Paris, which radically introduced this kind of thing in 1977, is currently being remodeled to hide it.

Not sure whether to blame Kubrick or Rothko for this one.

A minimalist utility cluster with reading areas on either side is divided by a hallway.

Seriously, the next person who says it's a great day for an indoor photowalk is going to get it.

Maybe because of my recent forays into stereo photography, these extreme depth features of the building really caught my eye. On one end of the first floor is this giant glass box with Newton ring-like swirls enclosing a space that goes from a skylight inset into the ceiling down to the Children's Library in the lower level.

The view from below. Evidence of the photowalk is seen in the ghostly image of a photographer with her camera on the bottom terrace of the play area at the right and a tripod between the column and the stacks on the left.

When we had to leave, it was a little late and dark for the bad weather to make good photographs using a pinhole camera, but I still had three frames left. The north building of Polk Library at the University is planned to be torn down and reconstructed. It seemed appropriate to go there to finish the roll.

The atrium connects the 1967 North building to the 1973 South building, beneath which I served for three decades. I usually used another entrance to descend to my office, but for three and a half years while I was both Director of Learning Technologies and Interim Chief Information Officer, I probably arose from the "lower level" through this space and up three floors in Dempsey Hall, in the background, two or three times a day. I had both knees replaced shortly after I retired.

I bumped into the current Library Director and the Head of Public services (two different people), and we discussed the reconstruction plan. They informed me that my subterranean domain was going to be gutted and filled with compact shelving.

Except in the windowless conference room, the only place I ever spent much time in the north building was the windowless stacks on the third floor. It was where Q and TR were shelved. Now, it holds half the bound periodicals and the Educational Media Center, which had to be moved because the Republican Legislature, in their war on education, let the HVAC systems decay to where they are in danger of exploding, which, I suppose, would achieve their ends. 

Thinking about this was making me very tense, but then I encountered a sunbeam in a back stairwell.

The EyePA 30 has hand-drilled .23mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Ilford HP5+ semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.