7 day nature challenge - Day 1

Hello there, readers of Moni Smith Photography! My, it's been a long time. I have decided to re-start my photography blog over here. It just so happens that my Facebook friend and fellow pinhole photographer Marie, from the blog Shimmering Grains, has nominated me for a landscape challenge, in which I post a landscape photo everyday for the next 7 days. I thought this would be a great way to kick off the blog anew. 

My first image is a pinhole image, taken with my Zero Image 45 and Delta Pro 100. It was taken up at Zig Zag Falls on Mt. Hood. 




Scaling back

Hi there, wonderful readers of Moni Smith Photo's blog! I am needing to scale back on my blogs, so I am going to be posting here only when I have news about my photography. You can see regular photography posts on my personal blog, Blatherskite. See you there! 

School of Rock

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I was inpired by my friend Inge's double exposures so I thought I would try my hand at doing some intentional ones with my Holga. There were a couple of keepers on the roll. Here is one. I took this in Portland on Hawthorne. First I took a photo of the "School of Rock" sign and then I turned around and took a shot of a poster-covered telephone pole. 

I had a lot of fun with this! I will try it again, for sure. I think I also want to give my Holga more attention too.  

If you love doing film swaps and double exposures you should join us here at the Facebook group that Inge set up (and that I'm helping out as admin).  

Self With Pears

I started a "Sheet A Day" pinhole project a couple of months ago, in which I shoot one sheet of 4x5 film a day in my Zero 4x5. I want to really get to know this camera and I thought this would be an interesting practice to help me with that. I have been enjoying the project for the most part! I did finally run out of steam last week on day 46 though. But I kept on going anyway. 

As I go develop the photos i do a rough scan with my iphone and a light-box to see what they look like. I am uploading them all on my Flickr here (If you are interested in seeing them let me know. we will need to be Flickr contacts. They are not fit for public consumption!) It has given me time to decide which ones I want to scan on the V700 at Newspace. 

This is one that I really liked. I feel like there is something here, but am not sure what that "something" is. I like what is going on with the pears, for example. I like the sort of mundane self portrait in the background. I feel like there might be a project in here somewhere. I just need to suss it out somehow...

The Stranger

This is my second stranger-on-the-street portrait. I am kind of proud of myself for finding the courage to take this. In June my husband and I were staying in Newport, Oregon for the weekend. We were wandering along to docks taking photos, and this woman wandered up behind us and started chatting with us about photography. I was using my pinhole camera and she was curious I did the whole nerdy spiel. It occured to me to ask her if I could take her portrait and she said yes! So I grabbed the camera my husband was using  (Yashica FX-3) and struggled to take the shot (because I didn't know how to use the camera). Thus, resulting in the annoyed look on her face. 

Film swap with Square Peg Pinhole, Round 2

Several months ago I did a pinhole film swap with Square Peg Pinhole (you may recall). While I was shooting my roll of Portra, he was working on a roll of Acros to send to me. This would be my first black and white film swap! I really like the results! Here are my favorites from the roll. Again we used a Holga WPC on the 6x12 mask. The last photo in the gallery made Flickr Explore, which is always kind of an ego boost. 

Check out Herschel's wonderful photography on his blog or Flickr!

Zero 45 experiments

I have been spending a lot of quality time with my Zero 45 lately. A few weeks ago I took it up to The Witches Castle in Portland and shot several frames with both 4x5 and 120 film. I thought it would be interesting to shoot the same scene, one with no extension frame (25mm) and one with 1 extension frame (50mm). I was actually quite shocked when I saw the results. It's crazy how wide the 25mm configuration is compared to the 50mm. In the photos below my camera is in the exact same spot. The only change was the extra frame. The photo on the left is the 25mm configuration. The photo on the right, the 50mm configuration.  I actually like the one on the left better. It is more interesting to me. 

WPPD film swap with The Old Penfold

As I mentioned before, on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day I met up with several of my fellow pinhole photography friends in Amsterdam. When we stopped for lunch we put a roll of 120 film into a hat - a roll of pinhole that we shot before we left for Amsterdam. Then we passed the hat around and picked a roll. I picked Alex. I had to figure out what to do with his 6x17 photos on the roll.  I finally decided to shoot 6x6 and do a triptych over his shots. For each triptych I did a self portrait, a shot of the "landscape" and a shot of some flora in the landscape I was in. 

You can see more of Alex's great work on his Flickr stream or his website. 

Click the images to see them in their wide angle glory. 

Next Best Thing Pinhole Project

Swimmers at Trillium Lake

I am humbled and honored to have been chosen by Herschel Pollard (AKA Square Peg Pinhole) to be one of the pinhole photographers to represent the Pacific Northwest of the USA in his Next Best Thing Pinhole Project.  You can read more about the project at the website. Here is my  submission for the Summer/Landscape image. It was taken up at Trillium Lake a few weeks ago. Visit the blog entry for more info about it.

New Dawn

New Dawn

Here is another photo taken with my Zero 45, this time using a Graflex "23" 120 roll back and Velvia film. This is the first time I have actually used slide film for it's intended purpose and not cross processed it. I really love the results. I have always kind of been afraid of it, especially with pinhole, because I know it is less forgiving than color negative film. But I'm glad I took a chance with it.

I am still struggling with this camera's wide angle. It's hard to wrap my head around it.  

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pappergank/1...

Time

“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.”
— Pink Floyd. Time.

I have a large format pinhole camera that takes really, really wide angle shots. I have been struggling with it since I got it. I can’t quite figure out how to compose a shot, or even what the best kind of shot is for this camera. So I decided to burn film through this mutha so I can maybe learn something about how it works. I’ve spent a lot of quality time with this camera lately.

A few weeks ago I was in a “Dark Side Of The Moon” mood and listened to this album several times from beginning to end. This song, these lyrics, really stood out for me at that time.  As these lyrics were rattling around in my mind I came up with the idea for this photo I was curious to see what would happen if I pinholed a clock’s arms moving around in a circle. So I tried it. My original idea was to start the photo at 11:11 (I have a thing about 11:11) and I did do that, but the shot turned out over exposed. This was the second shot and it came out better exposed.

Is this the best photo I have ever taken in my life? No. But I learned some things from it. I learned that having a theme, or an idea in your mind is a good way to get inspiration. I may kick around more photos around “time” as a theme.

I also learned that for this camera you have to get in very, very, very close. This was close and it wasn’t even close enough. Also, I like the way still life looks with this camera (using 4×5 sheet film), as opposed to landscape. I think the crazy vignetting works well with still life. So. Note to self.

Cinestill at the beach

rolling waves of sand

After seeing some of the wonderful results on 52 Rolls, I thought I would try using Cinestill too. I loaded  it up in my Olympus XA and headed out for a weekend at the beach. I think I like the results. I am not immediately in love with everything on the roll. There were quite a few shots that were very grainy. I am not used to shooting with 800 ISO film so that may be the issue. I did, however, like this shot. So there you go. 

Waiting

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I am continuing to explore self portraiture with pinhole photography. I am not sure what I love about self portraits. I don't think I am narcissistic. I think they just fascinate me. Especially pinhole self portraits. 

This was taken with my Schlem P6*6 and Ektar 100. I think it was exposed around 3 minutes?

Incidentally, this photo made Explore on Flickr, which is always kind of an ego boost. However my ego was soon kicked in the ribs upon discovering that it was put into a gallery called, "Explore...WHY?!?" I had to laugh at that, actually. I have said the same thing about many photos in Flickr's Explore. My big photography pet peeve is HDR and I have not been afraid to say so publicly, in probably a not-so-nice-way. So I yeah. I think I deserve this little bit of karma. 

Portraits at a wedding

My mom got remarried last weekend! It was a joyuous event. I am so happy for her. She asked me to take photos at her wedding. I brought both a film camera: my Canon EOS Elan II, and my digital camera: Pentax K7. I used Arista 100 (developed in Diafine) for the film shots. My plan was to get some portraits on film rather than snapshots of the wedding. My favorites are featured below. 

I am continually fascinated by portrait photography. I think my favorite thing to do is to get in really close and focus on the expression of the subject. To me, that is the most interesting thing about portrait photography. I really feel like a portrait is, basically, the story between the subject and the photographer and that story is told in the face of the subject.

A few days after I developed these I found myself searching Google for the best portrait lenses for Canon. This could get dangerous fast!