This always happens at the end of April

Central Street has experienced great trauma in the past year in order to improve the infrastructure under it. Our Merrill Magnolia was often the center of drama as brutal, gigantic machines wrent asunder the earth and concrete. It had two large branches torn off "by accident." (Actual quote from one of the contractors after they left it on the ground without mentioning it.) The roots were severed within a meter in three directions and trod over by worker and iron for months in the fourth. The street paving contractors crudely argued it needed to be removed.

So the least I could do was load a camera and capture it's brilliance blossoming in the spring. Not quite the exuberance experience of the recent past, but a very welcome recovery. It's now successfully putting out leaves to eat plenty of CO₂ to recover, as long as those heroic roots can give it water. The city has planted eight youthful trees along the block to keep it company.

An inadequate attempt to capture the backlit view as you walk by under it. 

One of the torn-off limbs remains in the back yard and made a valiant attempt to blossom, which it couldn't complete. The bud was rather violently shaken by the wind just as I opened the shutter.

And then it was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.

A long and heavily promoted event, for both analog and digital practitioners, was planned at Photo Opp in Appleton. No one registered. I had shot my mouth off promoted the idea that you could just show up with a bodycap, and I would make a pinhole for it. That made me obligated to go up there in case droves of people arrived to discover digital pinhole. No one came.

Responsible Board Member and Potions Master Char Brandis was there with me. Fox Valley Photography Group colleague Giles La Rock came with a new 3D-printed pinhole front for a Hasselblad Film Holder he wanted to test. Andrea, an artist from Oshkosh, also came unexpectedly for the analog option and got a very personalized experience from Char and me. She did some very cool photographs. Somebody finally listened to me that they probably wouldn't be close enough.

Everyone got prepared and was off. I found myself alone in the building, by the available light of stained glass windows in the expansive nave. I had brought along the Reditilt-clone Star D tripod I had bought at the Photo Opp sale last summer, which extends to two meters. With the camera that high, with the upper pinhole, all of the front wall could be captured with a level camera. Tricked again by the wide angle, much of the ceiling was also included. There are two strange mergers. The great oculus window hanging by a wire from the ceiling, and perched up in the niche, my curious halo, as I selflessly review submissions to the Pinhole Day gallery.

The basement by available light.

The window light in the kitchen with a foreshadowing of the next frame.

The tripod is a very well-used specimen, and the screw into the camera tends to come loose. Not that big a problem out of the wind as long as no one touches it, but an attempt to wind the film will twist it crazily and require retightening the camera. Somewhere along this process, the shutter reopened and recorded this crazy sequence as I struggled to advance with the camera on the unreliable attachment. 

I went outside for a classic architectural rising front picture with the tall tripod. Again fooled by the 90-degree view, and a bit of the sky has been cropped. The super wide-angle and the slightly less than vertical pole holding the lights give it a bit of a Looney Tunes aspect anyway.

The bowing awning stand and the mural seemed worth a frame. It's a little to the right of what I intended. 

Again, my severe paradoeilia has been triggered, and the right wall appears to be quite shocked at what's going on the left, or is that just a political metaphor? Bricks are always fun in any event.

Another double exposure which this goofy light stand joint seems quite amused by.

I don't know why this reminds me of Man Ray. If I ever give a lecture on Composition, this would be a good example for repetition of form.

And the Sun sets on another Pinhole Day.

I still have frame of color film to look at before I decide what to submit for Pinhole Day. You'll have to check to find out. If you took a pinhole picture on April 26, don't forget to submit it before June 30.

La Paquet Trente has two .23mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it , 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Kentmere 400 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.