Welcome to Narnia

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I went for a very foggy walk on Mt. Tabor in Portland last Monday and had lots of fun with my cameras! Here is one of my shots. I also brought along my new Canon EOS Elan ii. I am running a roll of black and white film through it to make sure it is working properly. I really can’t wait to see the results of those photos as well.

This photo, delightfully, has made Explore on Flickr. The last I checked it was #75. I know. I am a dork. It’s a nice ego boost. What can I say. It’s also nice that something other than over processed HDR makes it into Flickr Explore once in awhile. Power to the Pinhole!

Camera: Zero 2000
Exposure time: 1 minute 15 seconds
Film: Fuji Velvia 50
Pinhole: 0.18mm
Focal Length: 25mm
ISO: 50
Aperture: f138
Dev: C-41 by Lab x-proed
Scan: Epson V500

LenZLess

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Several months ago I took a chance on my photography and entered some of it into the Plates to Pixels LenZless exhibition. I found out a month ago that one of my photos was selected! The photo that you see above. I took this photo the weekend after my first pinhole photography class with the Holga PC I received as part of the class.

You can find the rest of the exhibition here. There is some AMAZING work here and I am so completely humbled and honored to be included here with them.

If you would like to purchase a catalog of the exhibition you can find it at the Diffusion Store. When you buy one of these you are supporting art and in return you will receive good karma.

Camera: Holga 120 PC
Film: Kodak Portra 400
Pinhole: 0.25mm
Focal Length: 48mm
ISO: 400
Aperture: f192
Exposure: 2 minutes
Dev: C-41 by Lab
Scan:Epson V500

The little creek at the park

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My iphone died due to the cold so I had to guess as to the exposure. I think this was a minute? I think it is a bit underexposed.

Camera: Holga WPC
Exposure time: 1 minute
Film: Kodak Tmax 100
Pinhole: 0.3mm
Focal Length: 40mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: f135
Dev: D-76 by me
Scan: Epson V500

Cross processed pinhole

Exposure time: 16 seconds.

Exposure time: 16 seconds.

Yesterday, during a brief Facebook discussion on a friend’s status, I was pointed to this tip on scanning cross processed negatives by Herschel from Squarepegpinhole.com. I immediately needed to try it out on some x-proed pinhole shots I took last fall that I wasn’t super thrilled with.

The tip: scan cross processed slide film as positive and then invert in your photo processing software. I have Lightroom which is a bit tricky. A bit of Googling helped meand I was able to do this in Lightroom quite easily.

This was a shot that I wasn’t happy with originally. It was very over exposed and way too contrasty. I couldn’t even make out what it was, actually. I am pleased with how this came out! I am still not convinced that cross processing is the be all and end all, but it is fun to play with now and then.

Camera: Zero 2000
Exposure time: 16 seconds
Film: Mystery Fuji slide film
Pinhole: 0.18mm
Focal Length: 25mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: f138
Dev: C-41 by Lab – cross processed
Scan:Epson V500 – scanned as positive and inverted in Lightroom

A return to my childhood

A couple of weeks ago I was on a mission. This mission involved visiting all of the thrift and antique stores in Sandy to find this thing I was looking for. I didn't find what I was looking for in the thrift stores but I found a lot of other great things. I found lots and lots of old cameras. I resisted temptation for most of it but this one I had to buy. To my credit, I waited an entire day to let it simmer before I went back to the Goodwill to buy this old camera. It is a Keystone Pocketflash 106 and I picked it up for $2.99. I decided I needed it because several months ago I accidentally bought<a href="http://shop.lomography.com/us/films/110-film" target="_blank"> 110 film from Lomography</a>. I thought it might be fun to use it. I bought a film called <a href="http://shop.lomography.com/us/films/110-film/lobster-110-redscale" target="_blank">Lobster Redscale</a>.

I can't express how giddy it makes me to hold this camera in my hands. I had one very similar to this when I was a kid, it was the camera I cut my teeth on. I took photos of everything with it! It was a blast to play around with this. It even has a flash! I am a happy girl.

The photos are terrible quality, as they always have been with these types of cameras but, still. There are a few from the roll that are passable. These I took at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Park,_Portland,_Oregon" target="_blank">Cathedral Park</a> in Portland, Oregon.

A foray into the world of portrait photography

I am completely fascinated by portrait photography. When I look at a portrait I often wonder what the person's story is, what are they thinking when the photo is being snapped. I have come to believe that portraits are a reflection of the photographer, in many ways. A portrait almost says more about the person taking the photo than the person themselves. Or maybe it says something about the story between the photographer and the subject. Maybe? I haven't quite worked out what I think about all of this, but you can see that portrait photography makes me think.

Kiaora
Kiaora

For the past couple of years I have been very inspired by some talented photographer friends (Josh and Brendan, I'm looking at you). It's been really fun to watch their portrait projects take shape as they both have developed their style. It has made me want to try it myself.  I am kind of shy though, so it's been hard for me to begin. It's very, very difficult for me to ask people if I can take their portrait. My experience so far has been with people asking me to take their portrait first, and not the other way around. With this last roll of film I thought I would step a little bit out of my comfort zone. Last week my husband and I visited his family in California for his mom's 70th birthday and I thought this would be a wonderful time to capture his family on film. Lucky for me, they were very happy to oblige!

Sophia

As I mentioned, I am fascinated by what the person might be thinking when their picture is snapped. So when I take someone's picture I often ask them to think about something that makes them very happy. I don't ask them what they were thinking, that's between themselves and their own brain. But It's nice to see their happy expression. Sometimes I am a little too shy to ask this  because I don't know what the person will think about such a personal question.

Mr P
Kim

I think it's a little easier to ask children than adults.

Sophia

I love this photo of Sophia because it was her idea!

I had a lot of fun with this. I hope I can get over my shyness and try again soon. I think I really like taking photos of kids the best. I love their expressions. I am trying to decide what my style is - I think I like getting in close and focusing in on the face and the eyes the best. I need to play more, though, to really figure it all out.

These were shot using my Canon EOS 650 on Fuji Neopan 400.

Film Swap with Inge - Round 2!

I did another film swap with my friend Inge last month. This time around I sent a roll of film overseas to Inge. I shot my roll at Bagby Hotsprings, the day I write about in this blog post, actually. She decided to shoot the roll while she was on vacation in Germany. The results are really cool! Here are more of my favorites:  

 

"Sorrow drips through your heart through a pinhole..."

Those Death Cab lyrics have nothing to do with this post at all, but since I am on a DCFC kick and have been listening to their music lately and I love that song and it uses the metaphor of a pinhole... well. Why not?

I visited The Grotto again a couple of weekends ago! It happens to be an Atlas Obscura location so I brought my pinhole camera and had some fun.

I mentioned that I am fascinated with the way pinhole photography renders people and crowds and I am continuing to experiment with this. I am especially interested in self portraits using a pinhole camera. Since the exposures are so long I can insert myself for an extended period of time into the photo and then I become a ghost in the photo. The photo above is an example. Here are a couple more:

It is all very fun to see the expressions on the faces of the passers-by when they see a wooden box on a tripod and it's owner doing something in front of this wooden box. I don't think they know what to make of it at all. Most of them ask about the wooden box and I am always enthusiastic about telling them about it but they get bored and their eyes glaze over when I mention the word "aperture."

You can see a couple non-self portrait photos from this excursion on Pinhole Obscura.

And here is the video for the song "Marching Bands of Manhattan," which is completely bizarre. As music videos tend to be.

A Carnival is setting up outside my window

A carnival is setting up outside my window on a hot summer day. The purple, blue, orange, red flag that entice people to buy elephant ears flap gently in the wind and are beautifully back-dropped by the blue sky. The road is blocked off. they have taken over the empty lot next door  and the street. People have to drive through the library's parking lot to reach their destination. I wonder what kind of excitement I will meet in the coming days.

Nachos, Cold drinks. & Lemonade

A man comes into the library, asks for poetry. Shel Silverstein. He says he is a poet. He has a seat at the table next to mine and recites to me a poem that he wrote to a friend in her yearbook. It’s a terrible poem and I am annoyed by it. I have things to do. He then talks about the carnival. he works at it, works one of the games. He tells me how the carnival is fleecing the people in the town in which I live. He tripled the price of a light saber simply by turning it on at night, he says. He pulled stuff out of the garbage and made a necklace with it and people bought it, he says. we are basically selling people garbage he says. He recites another poem to me and, again, it is terrible. terrible rhymes and metaphors. but I am thinking about this man’s life and how it could be a poem. He tells me, “they took my brain out of my head when I was sixteen.”

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Three days later as I was driving across town I saw that they were packing up and the convoy of brightly colored trucks was on it’s way out of town. Off to fleece other people I guess.

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Amsterdam Vs. Sandy

I met Inge via Brendan when I first saw the film swap they did together. I checked out her photography on Flickr and was all, "I need to be friends with this woman." We have a lot in common, film photography and tattoos being a couple of those things. I am glad that she felt the same way because I have really enjoyed getting to know her on Twitter and Facebook. Inge lives in the Netherlands and took her photos in Amsterdam. She shot her side of the roll with an Afga Optima. She redscaled the roll and sent it my way to Oregon where I re-shot it on a walk around Sandy one Sunday evening. My shots are upside down which made for some interesting effects.

The idea of Amsterdam vs Sandy makes me laugh a bit. Sandy is so small town and hokey. I love my little town, don't get me wrong. But it is.  I thought it might be fun to contrast my small town with Amsterdam, which in my mind is this mythological utopia of liberal goodness (I have never been there but it is on my list of Places I Must Visit Before I Die).

You can see more of Inge's work on her Flickr.

Red

I tried redscaling film. Have you heard of this technique? I hadn't until about a year ago. It is when you expose the film on the wrong side. The red sensitive layer of film is exposed first, which dominates and produces the ultra red cast. This process requires you to wind your film upside down in a film canister. You can buy film that has been redscaled or you can easily do it yourself (which is what I did).

Some of the film swap photos were redscaled, which produced some really cool effects since both sides of the film were exposed.

I am still not quite sure what to make of the photos I took. I know that I like them though. The intensity of the red varies from very deep, blood red as in the photo above, to a little bit more subtle:

I really like the surreal effect it has on the forest.

It is most definitely fun, though. I will be playing with this technique more!

Pinholing at the beach

I am completely and totally obsessed.  It is all I think about.  What I can pinhole next? It has become a sickness. Should I get help? Or should I just continue on down this merry path and see where it takes me? Here are some favorite pinholed moments from our visit to the beach a few weeks ago.

There is more over here on Flickr.

I just received notice that my Zero Image has shipped. Stay tuned as I sink deeper into this madness.

Source: http://monismithphotography.files.wordpres...

Oregon/Washington Film Swap

If I had to blame my obsession with film phtography on a person it would be my friend Nick from Spokane. Back in the days when we used to go on "Photorolls" with the Spokane Flickr Group (years and years ago) he was dabbling in film photography. And doing interesting things with it! Like double exposures and pinhole photography. I remember seeing his stuff and saying in my head (in all caps) "I WANT TO DO THAT."

Six years later and I am doing that. And I am having a blast.

Inspired by the filmswap I did with Brendan, Nick suggest that we do an Oregon/Washington film swap. I sent some film his way and he sent some film my way. You can see the results of the film I sent him on his Flickr. Here are a few of my favorites from the film he sent me. The film he sent was 20 years expired so that is why it is a bit grainy and has a blue-ish cast.

If you want to swap film with me let me know in the comments! It's fun!

Source: http://monismithphotography.files.wordpres...

Pinhole Photography Class

I took a pinhole photography class this past Sunday! It was FUN. It was taught by Zeb Andrews who does amazing work. I learned so much. Part of the class was spent in the classroom where he went over the technical aspects of pinhole cameras. We also looked at some examples of some of the things you can do with this type of photography. Then we went out on the town and snapped away.

It was really cool to have Zeb there to help out with little things. I feel like my knowledge on this subject grew exponentially in one afternoon, just by having been with an expert in the field for a few hours. Interesting how that happens. It makes me realize that photography is something I need to get out there and do with other people more often. I miss all of the learning that happens when you shoot with others.

We were provided with a Holga Pinhole camera and two rolls of Ektar 100 film. Here are my favorites.




A couple  of the things that I am completely fascinated with:

  1. These cameras have insane depth of field. There is only one aperture setting on this camera: f/192. Yes, that is correct. f/192. Most cameras only go up to f/22. Since everything in the shot is in focus, you are able to take advantage of every single detail in the frame. I could go nuts with this.
  2. Since the aperture is so tiny you have to have longer exposures to let the light in. This allows for really incredible motion blur in broad daylight. In the photo at the top of this post I set my camera down on the ground so I could get a shot of the bridge and the river. As I started my exposure a crowd of people marched by and created this crazy wave of ghostly apparitions. I didn't expect this at all (because I can't control what people do). That's part of the fun of this. Since the exposures are longer you can't really control what goes on during the exposure and the result is unexpected. People move around and the faster they move the more transparent they become. This is another thing I want to play around with more.
  3. Pinhole photography is, essentially, an in-depth study in exposure. The only thing you have control over is exposure time. Everything is in focus so you don't have to worry about that. There is no aperture to control. It is completely and totally about exposure time. I like this. I like how it forces you to really focus in on this one aspect.

I am taking my camera with me to the beach this weekend. I can't wait to see what this camera does to the ocean waves!

More International Film Swap Fun

The International Film Swap with Brendan continues (as I previously mentioned)! Hooray! I am really enjoying these collaborations.  Here are my favorites from this round  My shots were taken in Santa Cruz & San Francisco. His were taken at the Grand Canal in Dublin, Ireland.

Source: http://monismithphotography.files.wordpres...

Paris in Black and White

When I visited Paris in September I decided to bring four rolls of Kodak Tri-x with me - one roll for each day. I am not sure what made me decide to bring black and white film of all things, but I am really glad I did. I knew I was going to take my darkroom class eventually and in the back of my mind I decided that I wanted to develop this film myself. So I stuck it my desk drawer until this past March. It was a delight to develop this film after having visited several months ago. It was fun to relive the memories of being there! I've also been printing many of the prints which has also been fun. The last time I was in the darkroom the other person in there was also printing something from when he visited Paris. It was really cool to compare stories.

Film used: Kokak Tri-x Camera used: Pentax P30t

International Film Swap Pt. 2

My International Filmswap with Brendan from Aware of the Void continues! He shot the last of the three rolls on Sunday - and even developed them himself so we could have results that day. I am so pleased with how they turned out! Here are some of my favorites. 

My side was shot in Downtown Portland, Oregon and at Cape Disappointment, Washington. His side was shot in Dublin, Ireland. He blogs at AwareoftheVoid.com and he has a really good Flickr stream that you should check out too.

See the photos from Part 1 here.

Source: http://monismithphotography.files.wordpres...