Pinhole Day at The Draw

This was my first time leading a pinhole experience on Pinhole Day and also the first workshop hosted by Photo Opp, a new photography education and community darkroom group in Appleton, Wisconsin. It took place at The Draw, a studio/office/event space, which is a side gig of John Adams, the cinematographer of the trio that founded Photo Opp. It's a pretty nice place to hold an event. Not bad. (That's an inside joke.)

The Draw was originally built as the Riverside Paper Company Office in 1939, across the street from a giant paper mill which is no longer there. It's on the tail end of an island between the Fox River and the Lock Channel.

The workshop consisted of participants choosing one of my cameras loaded with FP4+. I offered some pinholy wisdom and sent them off to expose the roll. When they finished, they returned and we loaded their film on a reel and helped them develop and scan the negatives. I loaded nine rolls of film in a row onto reels. It was nice that there was a comfortable bench in a reliably light tight room. Much appreciation to John Adams who provided logistical, technical and emotional support to participants, and Almon Benton who loaded the two other rolls and coordinated all the chemistry and processing. Also thanks to all the photographers who contributed their tripods, graduates, tanks and reels to the Photo Opp collection.

The coordinators of Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day are pinholers out taking photographs and participating in events on Pinhole Day, but we all try to log-in and keep the reviewing moving along. It was kind of fun sitting with the participants and showing them what others were doing around the world while they waited for their negatives to dry. 

I also exposed a roll of color film over the weekend in The Populist and that will probably tell a different story of the workshop when the negatives come back in ten days.

The weather was at just the edge of too horrible to go outside. There were a few periods of active rain and a heavy mist drifted out of the sky all afternoon. The participants were troopers and just went out in it but didn't go far from the building. The cameras survived! The only failure was the glue melted off a winder which we quickly swapped with another and continued. All the wet, shiny pavement was interesting. Several folks waited out the ten minute exposures in the basement stairs and hallway.

When everybody was getting to the scanning stage with the slickest, mirrorless camera - copy stand - film holder - light source system, tethered directly to a computer you can possibly imagine, I went out to take some pictures for myself.

To accomodate the dark day, we limited it to the 45mm, 67° cameras, and the 30mm, 90° cameras. I picked the 90° f133 Diversity 30. The most common surprise expressed was how much wider angle the negatives were than they expected and they should have been closer (I told them so).  Even people who daily use the 105° iPhone camera revert to their normal perception when they don't have a viewfinder. This is one of those scenes where anyone familiar with the building wouldn't believe you could get the whole stairway in the frame without floating on the Fox.

It's surrounded on three sides by water. The Lock Channel overflows picturesquely behind the building. This gives you some idea just how much the lock actually drops.

 

It's just a few meters upstream of Appleton Lock #3.

Lawe Street goes over the Lock Channel on what I thought was a tiny little draw bridge. (Next to The Draw?!) Riding my bike over one of the heftier bridges in Oshkosh, I realized the parts that move are the same size. The bridge tender's hut is very shiny. I'm beginning to get into the variety of details in these little utilitarian structures.

OK, let me say right away this is a mistake but it's instructive. About the time this was set up, two wet little boys came up from the shore with an assortment of chunks of concrete to throw off the bridge. Distracted, I opened both shutters on the axial and rising pinholes. I really don't like when things like this happen but I have to admit it's kind of interesting - especially where the patterns cross. One of the participants, who wasn't there when I saw the negatives, exposed almost half the frames through both pinholes, and someone had asked earlier about how to calculate times for double exposures. 

I'm glad I noticed when I closed the shutter. The little boys asked me if I was taking their picture. They were throwing the cement into the river when the shutter was open for the single second exposure.  I said "No."

The barrier is much smaller than the ones on the big bridges in Oshkosh.

I had forgotten that I'd done a picture of the North side earlier in the morning. One of the surprising things to me was that several participants continued their digital habit of taking several minor variations of a scene. I forgot to make some pompous comment about honoring the value of film in the sermon (and making a commitment to your previsualization). This is another impossibly close shot right up against the channel wall. Nice place to spend the afternoon - worth two portraits in slightly different moods.

I hung around until almost everyone was gone and then went down the road along the main river channel to the still functioning, vintage Neenah Paper Mill, right in the middle of town. You have no idea how these things use to affect the atmosphere when I was in junior high. On a clear winter day we could smell the acids from five miles away. They're just kind of scenic these days. The history of water power is everywhere. There's a brisk current coming from under the building toward the railroad bridge.

Next door by the River Walk is the 1882 Vulcan Street Plant, the first hydro-electric plant in the world to power a network of buildings, which burned down in 1891 with most of the places it powered. This is a replica from 1932, built in a third place and moved here in 1987.

Lawrence University looms over the valley like some kind of ancient walled city.

Everyone seemed to have a good time and got at least a little wowed by pinhole photography. They all got a roll of usable negatives. Out of eleven rolls (twelve including mine) I don't think there were more than half a dozen completely blank or irretrievably overexposed frames.

The group was interesting. Half were professional photographers, there was one art professor and a few who had no experience other than their phone. They included a mother and her preteen daughter and an uncle and teenaged nephew. About half had never used film. Their determination to just crack on in the face of the weather was notable.

As a leader of this kind of experience, I learned a lot about how people approach photography and how other people have different skill sets that I have to pay attention to. I hope I get a chance to do something like this again. 

The Diversity 30 has .23mm pinholes on the the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Kentmere 100 semistand developed in caffenol.

If you took pictures on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, remember to submit your favorite to the annual gallery before June 30.

South Side Sweetie

 

In a fit of paranoia, I felt the need for one more camera in case the local populace beat down the doors for my Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day Workshop in Appleton (Turns out I have plenty).

We have a standing order with Oaks Candy for a selection of their historic chocolates. They're packed in sturdy white boxes. All my pinhole supplies are stored in them. My experience with white cardboard is that it's very hard to make truly light-tight. One day as we broke down one of the boxes for recycling, I noticed that it's grey cardboard with a white covering and actually pretty opaque.

The cardboard is thicker than most product packaging. It makes a sturdy box but it required a little on-the-fly adjustment to make it fit right.

As it happened, we needed a resupply the next day. Very satisfying to make the camera's first exposure of the front of their South Side headquarters.

The window on the right is still festooned with Easter decorations featuring this giant foil wrapped bunny with two similarly oversized rabbits with their chocolate more exposed.

Some days the mail is more enlightening than others. It would not be inaccurate to describe this scene as illuminated by a star beam.

Out after a different kind of sweet, I stopped for pastries at the Thunderbird Bakery in the Beach Building. The main entrance is at the side near the parking lot, but you can come in through this little lobby behind the formal historic front entrance.

Back across the river to the camera's native South Side. Several years ago, I did a photograph of the beautifully lit, but dilapidated back of La Luz del Mundo Church. Since then the congregation has restored the building to pristine condition.

All winter the shadows of bare trees have been a key feature of my photographs. The vernal transition is now occurring, modifying both the trees and their shadows as they bud and leaf out.

One of those awakening trees in front of the city Transportation Department.

There is one rather large bay off the Fox River leading to some pastoral scenes right in the middle of the city.

Despite working at the University for thirty years and once doing a long video project with community leaders to raise funds to transform it into the Oshkosh Sports Complex, I've never been in Titan Stadium before.

My bicycle looking triumphant in the skate park with the medieval looking barrier atop Garbage Hill, a man made sledding slope, rising above it.

A return to the north side of the Fox for the arched entrance of the Paine Art Center from the parking lot.

South Side Sweetie has a .27mm hand-drilled pinhole 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Arista.edu 100 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100. I forgot to get more instant coffee to make Cafennol with.

Happy Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day everyone! Remember to upload your favorite pinhole picture from Pinhole Day to the annual gallery before the end of June.

Kentmere 100 at two angles of view.

For just a little over a decade, Harmon Technologies has offered Kentmere films which are, according to Wikipedia, "particularly aimed at the student market and those new to black and white photography, due to their lower cost and 'forgiving' exposure latitude."  I never seem to outgrow being a student of photography, frugality is a common virtue for pinhole, and another way of saying "forgiving" latitude is the ability to maintain detail in shadow and sunlight. Until last winter, they were only available in 35mm, and since the introduction of 120 have been in strong demand and a little hard to get. Finally found some of the 100 at Midwest Photo.

Next week on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, other people will be using my cameras. Two of them had exhibited slightly stubborn winding and I wanted to make sure they were up for the workshop. The new film went into the Diversity 30 made just last month, and the Fantasy Factory Cube, my first attempt with dual sided adhesives, in this case, carpet tape.

Although I just did a ride with different films in a rectangular 35mm and a 120 square camera, I haven't been out with two cameras of different angles of view with the same format and film for a bit. For some people having the choice between the two cameras is a source of stress. The different angles of view,  53° with the 6cm cube, and 90° at 3cm, should be recognizably different.  I must have thought so when deciding which camera to select for each scene. These are presented more or less in the order they were taken and I'm not going to tell you which is which.

On an unusually warm day in early April, a boat with three fishers was drifting along the shore competing with the pelicans. They were going a little faster than I anticipated and the tripod had to be repeatedly moved to keep them framed under the tree. When everything was finally ready, the composition ended up a little random.

The sun shining on the diamond plate connectors on the docks with the weathered wood in Menomonee Park has gotten to be a bit of an obsession.

A picnic table among the shadows with Monkey Island in the background.

Rockin' the shoreline.

A sunbeam coming over the corner of the entrance to the zoo.

The southern side of The Waters, with it's giant flag, just in case you were out on Lake Winnebago and didn't know which country you were approaching.

It's a good thing to see winter go, but I am going to kind of miss these bare trees casting shadows on everything,

Another at the rear corner of the Wisconsin National Life Building.

More stone and shadows on the front corner of the Beach Building.

Again, at the Courthouse.

Another new luxury apartment building overlooking the river, here portrayed in it's actual colors. This is the fourth building within sight of this with the monochrome color scheme.

Moving on to stucco behind the Mediterranean Revival Pollock House on campus.

A very weary looking steel box near the Heating Plant.

Distracted by the sunshine while making salads.

This structure of white PVC pipes by itself next to the road has a sculptural vibe.

All the wooden benches from the soccer fields under a shelter at the County Park.

The steel tables can handle the elements. Check out the interference pattern where you can see the latticed seat through the latticed tabletop,

A table tennis table, with it's durable net, reflected in a puddle.

The show ring at the Sunnyview Expo Center (aka the Fairgrounds).

The ditch that connects the south lagoon with the wetlands further north in the County Park.

Built by a local foundation, The Tiny House Village will provide "short term, affordable housing for families paired with life, home management and financial skills."

The warm weather forced the magnolia into blossom. Then it rained and kept the flowers rather wet. The temperature has returned to the lower end of seasonal and the cooler conditions let the display go on longer.

Out again for some more stone and shadow on the courthouse walls.

The doors to the courthouse are surrounded by Art Deco faces labeled with some classification such as Farmer, Worker, Native, and lastly in the lower right, Vacationist.

The Kentmere film was fine. I'm not the best person to do a serious review of a film stock. I like the pictures I got with it. I wasn't shy about choosing very high contrast scenes and the film seemed to handle it. The scans took the usual compliment of levels adjustment and burning and dodging, but no more than usual. No matter what guitar you gave Eddie Van Halen, he would still sound like Eddie Van Halen.  These look like my pictures.

The Diversity 30 has .23mm hand-drilled pinholes 30mm from a 6x6cm frame, on the axis and 11mm above it. The Fantasy Factory Cube has .30mm hand-drilled pinholes, 60mm from a 6x6cm frame, on the axis and 15mm above it.  The Kentmere 100 was semistand developed in Cafennol.

A Little Old Response to the Black & White Challenge

The Fox Valley Photographic Group's challenge this month is Black & White. These challenges are meant to encourage members to go out of their comfort zones and explore something new about photography. I'm pretty comfortable with monochrome. What can I do to make the challenge special?

Black and white 35mm came to mind after a recent experience with some 40-year-old Tri-X. I still have probably 60 feet of it left.

There are two modes that I typically work in - rather formally composed, optimally diffracted images using medium format cameras mostly in black & white, and spontaneous grab-it-if-you-can photography in color done with 35mm film while I'm traveling. What if I did sort of a freaky Friday and used the antique 35mm Tri-X to do the kind-of-formal work? This would also give me something my digital associates would have to fake - film grain. 

The counter on the bulk loader doesn't work very well so I wasn't sure how many frames I loaded. It turned out to be about my height for 36 exposures. I could just barely reach for a single stroke of the squeegee.

This idea came to me just before leaving to participate in hanging a show with the Fox Valley Photographic Group at the Kaukanna Public Library. This is the entire process of hanging the northwest wall portion of the exhibit from about 9:20 and throughout the artist reception until about 11:00.

I was so determined to abide by my special challenge, I took it along with The Crackon, a square medium format camera, determined to just let the proportions of the image decide which camera I used, except maybe not be so picky with the little camera full of a lot of free film.

A pine reflecting in the Menomonee Park puddles.

Two pines reflecting in the Menomonee Park puddles.

A wide establishing shot of Miller's Bay looking south.

Jonathon Livingston Seagull is supposed to be a symbol of peace and freedom but they're actually pretty fierce predators.

 

The wooden ramp next to the boat launch farther south in the bay.

Looking down the dock a few meters to the right of the previous frame.

Looking across all three docks at the boat launch.

 

At the far south end of the bay, the shore is defined by this somewhat worn wooden bulwark.

The floating slabs.

There is less ice floating in the Lagoon.

A distinct current is flowing through the inlet into the Lagoon.

The wind blowing over the ice was forming a stream of fog where it crossed the warmer shoreline but the film didn't capture that.

The last giant pile of an ice shove in the park.

A closeup of the forward edge.

My refusal to use refractionist terms like focal length and pinhole lens gives me the reputation of somewhat of a grammar nag. Is the pizza not food or the food not great?

A pile of cuboids behind the east side of the 500 block of Main Street.

Finished the film in the bigger camera so I was free to continue to explore without having to decide about the format.

Heirloom tomatoes and a lemon.

A half dozen eggs.

Out again in the other direction toward the Fox River. 

The faux Tudor back of the Paine Art Center Conservatory. No rising front on a 35mm Populist, by the way.

The modern Charter Center attached to the Neo-Romanesque Algoma Methodist Church.

Across the street is a praire-style house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for a lumber company executive for whom he had done an earlier house in Illinois. Wright would have hated those overhead wires.

The bell tower of the Read School looks down on me disapprovingly.

The fly loft over the University Theatre posing dramatically.

The HVAC plant no longer burns any coal.

The University has done a lot to move toward sustainable energy use.

Sage Hall was designed particularly to use window daylighting to reduce energy consumption. I was responsible for the design, installation and maintenance of the projection and audio systems of those brightly lit classrooms about the time I was given responsibility for the entire Information Technology Division. I attended quite a few meetings behind those second floor windows discussing all this with the College of Business Faculty. One thing about the graininess is it makes things look like something you saw in a nightmare dream.

Flower-like solar panels follow the sun across the sky in the parking lot.

The great blancmange of the winterized athletic fields.

If this is how you're entering the courthouse, it's probably not a good day.

A last random arrangement of light.

Neville has a .17mm hand-drilled pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame. The old Tri-X was semistand developed in old Rodinal 1:100.

I think I can pick one from this group for the discussion. I might bring props to hand around at the meeting including the bulk loader and the last dregs in my ancient bottle of Rodinal. When we discussed approaches for the challenge last month, nobody wanted to talk about development.