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. 

museums :: the new selfie central

the wonderful louisiana museum of modern art is open 'til 10 p.m. on week nights. so, after work today, i decided to pop up there and see the kusama exhibition that's on at the moment. polka dot explosion and precisely what i needed after starting my day with a rather nasty email from that infamous deficit person i've mentioned before (more fodder for that novel that i need to get to writing). kusama and a solitary, but not lonely, dinner at the museum was precisely what i needed to shake it off.

in the kusama exhibition, there are several places where there are mirrors and which invite one to partake in today's selfie culture.

ok, it was kind of a lot of places. lots of mirrors and many, many polka dots. kusama is an amazing woman. i sat for a long time and watched a film with her. she's got quite the ego, actually, but i suppose at this point in her life, she's earned it. and she does, after all, live in an insane asylum and has for many years, of her own choice. you may think it's all just polka dots, but it's much more than that...a kind of search for but obliteration of the self in endless repetition. much deeper than it may appear on the surface. and she has enviably lived her art as a way of life.

and it got me thinking about these endless selfies we take these days. are we also searching for who we are? or are we obliterating ourselves in the repetition?

and what does it mean that we see our own reflection (quite literally) in the art we obsessively photograph as we go around the museum - like me in this rothko?

or the ghost of me against william burroughs in this mappelthorpe? maybe it doesn't mean anything other than that i really should put away my phone and just be there with the art. but those polka dots do make an excellent screen background on my phone(s).

wandering in oslo

when we went last month, i hadn't been in oslo in 5 years and it seemed to be much cooler and more happening than i remembered. a lot had changed, a lot had been built (some of it by apparently blind architects, as it's a real mish-mash (more about that in another post)), a lot was under renovation. it seems that norway, with its gazillion dollar sovereign oil fund, didn't suffer from the same economic crisis as the rest of the world. oslo is a pretty and very walkable little city. they had this art thing going on along aker brygge and i took a few shots of some of the thoughts. i'm not sure what i make of them, but i kind of like that they also ended up as selfies. i was happy to be wearing my new felt hat. we need to wear hats more often, don't you think? what do you make of these quotes?

* * *

i need me a bibliotherapist.

* * *

wacky theories about the pyramids are nothing new.

* * *

the danish brand of socialism is actually pretty good.

100 happy days :: day 27

new cut. new color. new part. i always part my hair on the right, but today, the friend who did my hair (i traded a cut/color for a concert ticket) parted it on the left. i think it's already making a big difference. i also like the grainy low-light photo. and my scarf. and my glasses. and that we age and that it's a natural process. so much happy if you just look for it. and accept it.

worth the wait

it wasn't easy, but i got through the waiting at long last. i spent the morning ironing and cleaning and tidying and at last selecting my outfit. i shouldn't have gone with the vintage boots because one heel (which i didn't even know was weak) cracked as i walked from the main building over to where i will work. i was able to glue it and hold it together for the day, and now it's just a funny memory.

had to have a selfie, of course. this is, after all, the age of the selfie.

and this is what was waiting for me on my desk when i arrived. a whole stack of apple awesomeness. it really doesn't get any better than that.

and i got to fish through a box of minifigs for the ones i don't have (alas, they weren't all there, but i will get the final two, i'm certain of it).

in denmark, you nearly always get a welcome bouquet of flowers when you start a new job. i had to bring mine home to enjoy them. most jobs, however, don't come with a whole lot of lego. but then, most jobs aren't this awesome.

helle thorning-schmidt behaves like a teenager at the mandela memorial service

"hey, wait a minute, i recognize you, aren't you barack obama." 

the danish prime minister helle thorning-schmidt must have been deemed pretty expendable to get a seat next to obama at the mandela memorial service. i'm sure no one could have predicted her schoolgirl behavior, flirting and laughing with obama throughout the service

it must have gotten so bad that michelle decided she had to separate them. helle was likely furiously texting her gay husband (who lives in switzerland), "you shoulda been here, stephen, obama is hot!"

i guess this will be the photo that justifies the OED's choice of "selfie" as the word of the year. it's really true, everyone is doing selfies.

these photos are circulating the interwebs, but i found them here (with a little help from my sister).

updated to include this, where obama tries to get michelle's forgiveness for the flirt with helle the star-struck groupie:

* * *

i came across a linguistic turn i'd never seen before:

“The mood where I’m at’s ecstatic,”

at with an apostrophe s

it was in this article in the reno gazette journal.
i can't quite say that i think it's wrong per se, but somehow it is.
or at the very least very colloquial.

what do you make of it?