fun with a pinhole camera

we had a two-day course over the weekend in creagive - it was with  photographer/journalist lars bertelsen and he was wonderful and inspiring! he taught us to make a pinhole camera using empty shoe boxes. we then learned to develop the photos in the darkroom. it is downright addictive and i'm thinking about which room could be transformed into a darkroom. 

the second morning of the course, i had my shoebox camera loaded and i stopped along my usual route along bækgårdsvej, where i knew that the single tree would have the kind of contrast the pinhole camera craves. i set it on the hood of my car. a bit more of that ended up in the picture than i had hoped, but it also gives it a vibe.

 

the weekend was cloudy, but that helped us learn a lot about light. light is super important with a pinhole camera and our results may have been better, had the sun been shining. but the fact it was cloudy also gave our photos a moody appeal. i  wandered down to the church, looking for shapes and contrasts. 

after the first one, i went back, looking for an angle that had some texture. i love how the cobblestones turned out against the church. i'll have to make a small video, as the church bells were ringing and i recorded them, thinking it would be the perfect accompaniment.  

lastly, we paired up to do a selfie. in this one, a 3-minute exposure, i turned my head after one minute and two minutes. i can tell you that standing still for a camera for three minutes feel like an absolute eternity. 

i have to take some photos of my shoebox camera and then i'll tell you more about the process. 

photography lately

glass distortion

although artist mette colberg was very nervous and it seemed like she cut her TED talk abruptly short (probably due to her nervousness), my interest in her work with glass, especially her filter project, was piqued. she works in glass and has made some blown-glass "lenses" to fit onto a camera, in order to explore the way which glass transforms the objects which we look at through it.

always keen to do something new with my daily photo project, i came home and started looking at the glass around the house in terms of how it might give me a new view on the everyday scenes around me. last night, at the dinner table, i noticed the orangey sunset light coming through the big jar of stones on the windowsill and decided to snap a few photos through the thick glass of the jar. the double layer of thick glass rendered the sunset scene almost watery and wavy, despite the clear skies. the tree branch sticking up outside the window ended up looking a bit like one of the big steampunk electrical pylons that are visible in the distance when you look at it through the much clearer lenses of your own eyes.

it's interesting how glass both clarifies and distorts. if i didn't have my glasses or contact lenses i'd practically need a dog to guide me around, so some glass makes things clearer. but other glass, even the glass on our windows, can distort the things we see, transforming them into something strange and unfamiliar.  to do this intentionally is an interesting notion.

this is the sort of thing i hoped TEDx Copenhagen would do for me - inspire me to look at the world around me in new ways. so, although i thought mette become overwhelmed onstage and exited much before she had intended to, she did inspire me to see the world just a bit differently.

more on TEDx Copenhagen as i continue to ponder the experience.

nifty fifty meets the kittens and falls in love

a couple of weeks ago, i spotted a used nikkor 50mm 1.4D lens in the window of photographica, denmark's most wonderful photography shop. they weren't open, but i contacted them and was able to buy it via mail. i'd long wanted a portrait lens and since it was used, the 1.4 was about the same price as a new 1.8, so i went for it.

sabin has fallen in love with it and it has awakened her interest in photography - she even gets out the tripod regularly! i'm still getting to know it and learning that i can't get as close with it as with my 60mm macro lens, but i love how fast it is and how well it does in low light.

it was way too dark when i took these photos of the kittens last evening, but somehow making them black and white seems to give them a soft, filmlike quality that i really like and that i don't really get with my other lenses.

the kittens are wonderful portrait subjects when they hold still, don't you think? funny how having a new lens has renewed my interest in photography a bit as well. i'll admit my daily photo efforts had stagnated and become a bit routine of late. this helps.

desuetude in photography

this photo of an abandoned farmhouse in SD is by me

bloggy friend celkalee sent me a link to some stunning (if a bit over-processed) photography of abandoned places by dutch photographer niki fejen. some of the the photos were featured yesterday on huffington post. i initially thought the photographer was a woman and it's weird how i had a different feeling about the photos before i found out fejen was a man. fejen calls the style urbex (urban exploring) and he likes to wander places you're not supposed to go (i like him already).  he makes me want to visit chernobyl even more than i did before. (note: i have chosen not to post any of his photos here (it seemed impolite) - please visit his website to see them.)

but as usual, the photos have me thinking. i find them, with their HDR style, to be over-processed and despite the subject matter, too slick. tho' at the same time, they are rich and lush and i linger at each one, taking in all of the details of the desuetude. but the processing gives me pause as to their authenticity. i have to wonder if some of them aren't staged.

errol morris devoted an entire chapter of his book believing is seeing (which i highly recommend, it's a must-read if you like to ponder photography) to a photo of mickey mouse amidst rubble that may or may not have been staged by photographer ben curtis in lebanon on 2006. morris does an exhaustive analysis of whether the photo was staged, even interviewing curtis, who says it was not. he also sensitively explores the feelings such photos bring forth in us and the meanings we instinctively ascribe to them and how they can be used to manipulate public opinion. it's a discussion of authenticity and staging that's worth reading. but i digress a bit from fejen's photos. and i recognize that if they are at times staged, it means less than if photos of war are staged.

as i looked through the gallery on fejen's website, some of the photos just rang with a false note for me. was that moss on the bed in photo no. 11 really that green or has he dialed it up in photoshop? photo no. 36 - i have to wonder if that bowler hat was really there on the back of the chair, or did niki pick it up and place it there for the shot? the wheelchair in no. 44 and no. 45 would seem to indicate proof of staging. the open doors, affording a peek in to a jesus statue down the hall in no. 46 seems a bit too perfect. the way the chairs are carefully lined up in no. 122. and the doll with the gas mask on in the chernobyl set, did she really have that on and was she really sitting on that chair? but does any of this matter? anytime you raise your camera and take a shot, you're making choices about what's included and what's not and you are, in a sense, manipulating the scene. it's part of the medium. i think when it bothers me is when it causes the photo to ring false.

i also find it a bit annoying that for the most part, the photos are not labeled as to where they are taken, tho' i recognize that abandoned hospital near berlin that so many have photographed. i wonder why he has chosen to do that? i look at them and the first thing i wonder is where it's at. is he afraid we'll all jump on a plane and go take our own pictures? or does he think it lends meaning for us to imagine for ourselves where they are? me, i just find it rather irritating.

i am, however, a sucker for a dead piano (no. 28, 33, 36, 146, the organ in no. 58) - there is such aching beauty in those. and i still remember the first one i saw and photographed, in an old castle along the banks of the volga river. unfortunately, it's buried somewhere in a box somewhere in this house and i cannot locate it at the moment, so i can't show it to you. 

shoot what you love

shokoofeh posted a link on facebook to this series of photographs of bloggers by gabriela herman. i find it quite fascinating. and a bit lonely. it captures some of the nature of blogging as a solitary activity. a nocturnal one. i, of course, love the preponderance of macs. bloggers, even if mostly alone in the act of blogging, are part of a community. the glow of that community is reflected in the bloggers' concentrated faces as they sit solitary at their computers in the darkness. alone but not alone at all.

be sure to check out gabriela herman's blog while you're there. especially the post about how she came to do photo essays for martha stewart living. she says to just shoot what you love. inspiring.

* * *

next week, i'll do a little photo "class" for children at our local library. it's part of the community project i started back in february - to encourage anyone who wants to participate to photograph life in our little town. mainly, i want to give the kids (who are probably around sabin's age) some inspiration and then send them out to photograph things around town. all that sculpture is a given, but i want to give them some small assignments to make them think differently about photography and the subjects for photography. i want to encourage them to shoot what they love, already now - whether that's flowers and bees or their own shoes or clouds in the sky or the local church or bakery or their friends.

the photos they produce will be part of the photo project documenting a year in the life of our town.

if you were going to send kids out running around with cameras in hand, what would you tell them to photograph?

new names, moments of bliss and food

once again playing catch-up on the reverb10. i got a bit stumped on the dec. 23 prompt and then christmas came and well, you get the idea.

december 23 – new name: let’s meet again, for the first time. if you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?

this question stumped me. mostly because i feel like a julie (i use julochka because there are a lot of julies out there and all forms of julie are always taken online), so nothing else comes readily to mind. i've always disliked my middle name - kay - because i don't think it goes very well with julie and it just never felt like it fit me.

but when i asked my sister, she immediately rattled off "penelope, gwendolyn and chloe." which i frantically scribbled down. i said out loud, how do you spell penelope and husband answered - "it's like pineapple with more l's." which was very amusing, if not entirely true.

i also asked husband, because let's face it, jens-peter isn't really the coolest name ever. and he gave the odd response of "heinrich." i think hope he was kidding.

i guess if i had to choose something for me, it would be something with a russian flavor - natasha or sofia or anastasia.

december 24 - everything's ok: what was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? and how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead?

i have to say that it's fortuitous that i fell behind on this, because this moment came yesterday. we (and by we i mean husband and his eldest) cleared a skating rink out on our lake. they built a little fire beside the lake, where we could warm ourselves and some spiced apple cider. i made a batch of little bite-sized mushroom tarts and we ate them together with full mugs of spiced apple cider. we took along a bag of those lovely orange peel-able clementines and they got gorgeously cold waiting for us to eat them in the basket - their bright wedges springing cold and sweet in our mouths as we gobbled them up. we were out there for most of the afternoon - racing one another and then skating through the snow (new skates are sharp and the snow covering the lake was light) to the other end of the lake in the purplish-pink light of sunset. again and again, all afternoon, i was aware that this was exactly what we were here for. and that everything would be ok.

me, taking pictures. taken by my sister.

december 25 - photo: sift through all the photos of you from the past year. choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

photography was a big part of 2010 for me - my 365 project helped me notice my surroundings and live more in the moment that i think i ever have. it may be that a great deal of what 2011 is about for me is taking pictures, so i have chosen this photo, where i'm doing exactly that. taken last summer by my sister, during a 4th of july fishing derby at a lake near our hometown.

from the garden

december 26 - soul food: what did you eat this year that you will never forget? what went into your mouth and touched your soul?

we moved in may - a bit late to plant a proper garden, so we didn't have a whole lot of garden produce this year, but we did find, to our delight, that there were 12 rhubarb plants already on the property. and so we had rhubarb crumble and cake and i made a gorgeous pink rhubarb juice that was turned into a summery rhubarb fizz with the addition of a bit of gin. food from the garden has to be the best kind of soul food.

brilliant pink rhubarb juice

rhubarb gin (or genever) fizz

december 27 - ordinary joy: our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. what was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?

is it just me, or are these starting to repeat? i think i already answered this one. here.  and possibly also here.

that said, i find that i still have something new to say about it....those moments when i most often experience joy during an ordinary moment i'm cooking. that has been curtailed a bit by my depressing old kitchen, but i have gotten it back of late. as recently as making dinner this evening...squeezing an orange over the duck we had for dinner, peeling and chopping veggies, sipping a glass of white wine, sprinkling snow of flaky salt over it before putting it all in the oven those are the moments when i most consciously feel joy in the everyday.

and now, once again, i'm caught up - only a few days left of reverb10.

a symphony in frost

it is absolutely still, clear and cold. a wintery sun peeks wanly over the horizon, its pinkish golden light illuminating the heavy hoarfrost that has settled onto the trees. the sky is a clear, clean blue so brilliant it seems unreal. the still air so fresh and cold it makes your very lungs feel alive as you breathe it in. and in the stillness of that cold, glittering world, you begin to hear a glorious symphony of sorts which seems to be coming from the frost itself.

pure creative potential: film swap

on the flickr blog the other day (thank you flickr front page), i learned of a flickr group called "film swap." people shoot a roll of film in their analog camera, leave the tail sticking out then swap with someone else and double expose the roll - two different photographers, two different sets of eyes, many different subjects, preferably two distant locations. once i read about that, i knew i had to try it. so i loaded up my old canon AE-1 program and asked if anyone in the blog camp 365 group would like to do a little film swap with me.

the film swappers in the big film swap group are pretty advanced and into lomography, and naturally so am i (stop snickering there in the back), so i loaded it up with expired (in 2007) fujichrome sensia 400 so we could cross-process it in the C-41 chemicals in the end.

so basically it's got like this mind-blowing exponential creative potential going on. slide film, negative chemicals, analog cameras, two different photographers in two vastly different locations, expired film, and double exposures. one photographer's eye imposed on another. i'm so excited about this i can hardly contain myself.

and i'm hopping up and down happy that the lovely shokoofeh of a new simple something fame is who i'll be swapping with on this first attempt! she has the most amazing, artistic eye and that alone is mind-boggling. but for me, the whole notion of views of iran layered on views of denmark and vice versa adds so many layers of meaning to the creative potential that it very nearly takes my breath away. i feel like an entirely new topography will open up and you know how much i love topographies!

i've finished my first film and just loaded a second one. i made some mistakes with the first...i didn't set it on double the ISO as i should have, which may mean that shokoofeh's pictures don't shine through as much as they should. i was also so worried about losing the tail of the film when i rewound that i opened the camera a little bit early and spoiled the first 5 or 6 exposures. but hey, i learned two things and i won't make those mistakes again. and so i'm sure this second roll will be even better. i think i'll send both to shokoofeh. i really can't wait to see how this turns out.

 * * *

psst. for those of you who sew and quilt and aren't so into photography, there's a very cool new project here. i'm going to be doing it as well. after all, sometimes one should use the stash and not just stash the stash.

three times trees

the troll hill (troldebakken) across from our house on thursday, december 17, 2009
straight out of the camera (SOOC)

8:29 a.m.

10:42 a.m.

4:04 p.m.

proving once again that light makes all the difference in the world.

out of tension comes meaning

it seems my little ditty yesterday about documentary photography struck a cord with some (thank you all for your comments). and thanks to your comments, i've had a chance to think some more on the half-thought thoughts i threw out there.

i want to start by saying that i, in no way, was saying (or even thinking) that my iPhone photo of a photo in a museum was in the least bit an example of documentary photography. what i like about it (and the one above), is seeing my own reflection in the photo. it underlines for me the way in which i feel i participate in an exhibition (or really, most things) by placing myself somehow there. participating. active. part of it. that i chose these documentary photos of russian women to take my iPhone photo in underlines another interesting thing (for me, anyway) - that the ones i wanted to identify with were the photos of russians, not of norwegians or gypsies or rwandans (which were also represented in the exhibition). i guess it was these to which i could most relate. either that or the reflection was best there and i could see myself most clearly. which is also a potentially interesting statement.

ASIDE: can i say that I DESPISE blogging from a PC and IE6? who is still using IE6, you ask? morons. why is this stupid thing hopping up to the top all the time? ARRGH! deep breath. and now back to the regularly scheduled blog...

and to a huge extent, i agree with bill that many of the photos on blogs, while documenting everyday life in many instances, are not documentary photography. and it has to do with what he said about there not really being that much of the less-than-perfect. i know that aside from iPhone photos, i don't really share with all of you the ones that didn't turn out or which were from the wrong angle or where i had the settings all wrong. we try to show our best here in the blogosphere. and that's not really that real. documentary photography is raw and almost painful in its realness.

i guess what i was wondering about blog photos and frankly blogs in general, is whether they will be data worthy of study by future historians and sociologists, in the way that walker evans' photos evoke the depression like no one else can. i saw the photo of allie mae burroughs that redhead riter mentioned and i have to admit i was transported instantly into a steinbeck novel. i suspect what we're doing out here is more ephemeral, less dense with meaning (yet i continue to try to find meaning in it, like some obsessed maniac).

and the debate made me think about a whole style of photos on blogs that has arisen out of the 3191 project. a sort of naturally-lit, slightly lonesome but rather poetic and a bit wistful photography of mundane breakfast crumbs on a plate. because there's a lot of that out there. and i'm guilty of it myself. but honestly, i don't think it will last. not like walker evans. but i do think it captures the ennui of this present moment and that's something. i don't think that in the diptychs there's enough tension between the photos to hold greater, lasting meaning. because true meaning needs tension of some sort, doesn't it?

of course, a growing disdain for such diptych projects hasn't stopped me from wanting one myself. so we started across ø/öresund, which i share with kristina, where we do photos of life in denmark and life in sweden (and which i love and look forward to and enjoy collaborating on).  i'm not sure we are always beyond wistful breakfast crumbs (i do adore a good macro, after all), but i'd like to think that over time it will show that we have captured something of the contrasts and similarities of the two countries in which we reside, so near and yet so far from one another. and for the first time, i think that i'm willing to watch and let something develop and only later see what it really is. and that's something, at least for me personally. and speaking of kristina, i would say that of the blog photographers i know, some of her photos come closest to a documentary photography spirit.

my own photos probably never will mostly because i have a hard time letting them speak for themselves. that's why i've pushed myself to do wordless wednesdays, in an effort to try to let the photos speak and not try to pile words and meaning onto absolutely everything. that and i really don't like taking pictures of people all that much. rocks and leaves just sit still so much better and they never get impatient with you and tell you to hurry up and snap it already or yell at you for taking their picture without their permission.

but, i thank you all for your thoughts and for the polemic. it provoked a whole lot more thinking on my part and it's less a half-thought thought now and more of a two-thirds thought thought. but, as i said, out of tension comes meaning.

edited: sorry for all the stupid errors that were in this one...but on that stupid PC, it kept jumping back to the top and i clearly lost my place several times...sigh. another reason to love macs. and safari. but that's a whole 'nother post, isn't it?

grateful friday: etsy treasury

yesterday, i took the plunge and listed a bunch of photographs on my etsy and already, one of them is in a treasury! i couldn't be more excited. my first treasury! i'm also working on a big cartel site (will link to it as soon as it's ready), just to try it out. as much as i love to buy things from etsy, i sometimes feel like it's easy to get lost there with your own shop, because there's just so much there! i haven't been very good at standing out from the crowd, but i have decided to try a bit harder (i actually hadn't really tried at all with the stones i've had listed there). if i'm going to fulfill my ambition of having a fantastic little shop when we move to a farm place, i've got to start somewhere. several people who i admire started with an online presence on etsy and then opened an actual shop where they live.

one of the things i listed yesterday was my little rainbow stacked coin fleece-backed baby/lap quilt. i think i'm even more excited about it than the photos, because it feels more personal. i've got some pillows underway that are similar to the ones i originally listed when i started my etsy shop last spring. i hope to list them this weekend (light for photos permitting).

if there are photos you're interested in that i didn't list, just send me an email, i'd be happy to make them available. but please do go check it out! just a note: i do hereby promise not to get too insufferable about this, i'm just a little excited!

happy weekend everyone!

bad genes are good for something

i was just scrolling through the 33,477 photos i have in iPhoto on my iMac (thank goodness for that terabyte of time capsule backup), looking for a particular event (if you don't have iPhoto, an event is the way iPhoto organizes your pictures, so it's kind of a folder in windows terms). and i kept getting lost along the way, stopping to click into other events that had nothing to do with what i was looking for. and i realized there are a lot of folders that i've called "macro" something or other.

because in case you hadn't noticed, i'm a bit of a fan of my 60mm nikkor macro lens. and with the ability to focus exactly where i want to on the D300, i spend a lot of time with that lens. and me being me, i couldn't resist thinking about why that is. because otherwise in life, i'm not known for my attention to detail (a solid meyers-briggs ENTP). i'm a big picture kind of person. so what is it about the view that the macro lens affords that i find so fascinating?

and then it hit me. the macro lens sees in a very similar manner to my own eye (hmm, i guess i wasn't done with that whole eye thing after all). i'm really near-sighted. like one diopter from a dog. my glasses are -7 in my left eye and -6.5 with the right. there are places where -8 is legally blind. but of course, i can correct my vision with contacts and glasses and i do so. but without correction, my own eyes work a lot like the macro lens. there is a point of objects that are very close that's in perfect, sharp focus along a line and it fades quickly along the edges and in the background. i have little depth to my vision and without glasses can only see something that's held very close to my eyes.

so i've come to the conclusion that my eye feels at home with the macro lens. and i have to admit that getting down into the details of things, noticing and really studying something up close, through that lens, has helped me to be more mindful in general. i notice my surroundings more, including the small details that used to escape me. i guess i can thank my bad eyes and my 60mm macro. maybe i'll have to stop trying to get my parents to pay for my glasses, arguing that it was the fault of the bad genes they gave me. it seems bad genes are good for something after all.

* * *

on another note: you should go and check out SE'LAH's beautiful "gift of jewels" project. it's a beautiful idea and it involves getting a lovely card in the mail from a wonderful blogger somewhere out there in the world. kind of like postcrossing, but more personal. it's in celebration of the ethiopian new year, but also in celebration of the community found here in the blogosphere.  here's a list of who is participating already, but you can still play too! just scoot on over to this post on the necessary room and sign up by friday!

against the sun

why is that they always tell you not to take pictures against the sun? i've been defying that every chance i get for awhile now and i have say that i totally disagree with it. i've had a lot of fun trying it and some good results. sometimes, with photography, you just have to experiment and break the rules. and sometimes, you just have to find a peaceful bench and unwind in the late afternoon sun.

you gotta check out the little honda rebel 450 my sister has for sale on eBay, not because i think you should get a motorcycle, tho' you are welcome to do that, but because of the very cool J.Peterman-esque way she wrote the description for it. she's so cool. she's also selling her flowbee and you gotta read the description of that one too. i sure wish she'd blog with me a little more often. that girl is funny.

the textures of life

we live in a world where impulses come at us all day long. many more than we can ever hope to take in. we grab onto some of them, but we undoubtedly let most of them pass us by. and we don't give any thought at all to what we're missing, i guess because blissfuly, we don't really know. at bee's recommendation, i recently read amanda craig's hearts and minds. (amanda blogs, by the way.) her book perfectly captures the sense of the world today and those missed connections. but this isn't really about missed connections. it's about found ones.

like these:

: : finding out about couchsurfing through tevolving, an adventurer in montenegro (at the moment). our first couchsurfer is showing up tomorrow night (husband will receive him). i wish i was going to be home.

: : the ever-fabulous discounderworld. stacey has some really exciting things in the works, so run along and order your gold edition today. you will not be sorry.

: : lovely lynne, who thought of me when an interesting opportunity recently came up. my fingers are still crossed.

: : kristina, who i met because i was once inspired by sandra juto and with whom i now share a fantastic photography project of which we are very proud. we've got a giveaway running thru the weekend, so do stop by and leave a comment, telling us your favorite diptych.

: : marinik, whose courage, strength and honesty have been making me cry lately.

i could go on and on, perhaps by mentioning how much i'm inspired by the photos here and here and here and here, but instead, i think i'll just say that i'm very grateful for connections and the textures they add to life.

note: this beautiful thai tapestry was on the wall at bee's house, but i was trying to avoid going on and on about blog camp in this post.

if you give a child a camera...

we handed the little pink sony cybershot over to sabin today and i hereby give you what she came up with...all shots from onboard the singapore flyer (the world's largest ferris wheel)...

i'm pretty proud of this one.

it seems she IS watching.

far's new shoes are cool too!

singapore flyer - from the inside

construction all around.

it's almost as if they don't know there's a financial crisis.

more views of below.

hmm, wonder how these photos w/the 60 mm macro lens are going to turn out?

far's got the "little" nikon w/the BIG lens

she's got a good eye.

i wonder when she's going to demand a "big" camera?

yup, she's got an eye.

going to bed now. big day ahead tomorrow. back to work for me.