Day One at Penland
I woke up around 5:30 this morning when my neighbor, who I share a bathroom with, got up to shower. I never really got back to sleep. I finally rolled out of bed around 6:00 and showered. Breakfast is not until 8:00, so after getting dressed, in layers, I got out my laptop.
Before I left home, I copied my picture archive onto my laptop, so I would have access to all my digital images in class. I have about 10,000 images, but I suspect many of them are not worth having with me. There are lots of kid photos, which have sentimental value, but other than that, it is hard to say. There are really only a handful of photos that I would do anything with, but you got to have options. I just don’t ever delete photos.
I am really excited about this class. As I have made my transition to digital, I am really interested to go back to the basics of photography (through the pinhole process) and thinking about things differently. I need to shake up my creativity, and the lack of control of pinhole may be just the thing. I have always enjoyed the darkroom, so I am also looking forward to exploring other printing processes. I like the idea of taking a clean image and messing it up with a physical process. Many of these techniques are now easily replicated in photoshop, but it just isn’t the same.
We started the day by making pinhole cameras. I used a Cafe Bustelo coffee can, so all my pinhole photos were powered by coffee. A pinhole camera works on the same basic principle of light as your eye and any camera. The light reflects off your subject, travels in a straight line, through the hole onto the photographic paper or film in the camera. The photography side of things are based on the size of the hole (aperture) and distance to the film or paper. From these you calculate the f-stop and exposure. This gives you a general ballpark, and you shoot test exposures to determine the actual exposure for your camera.
Coffee Can Pinhole Camera
Most exposures are calculated for bright sunshine. This gives you the sharpest photos. It was cloudy this first day, so our exposure time was longer. I was shooting paper negatives and my exposure time was about 20 seconds.
Each camera needs to be light tight, but you also need to be able to load and unload your paper or film. This is done in the darkroom (or a dark room). After loading your camera, set the camera down in front of your subject, uncover the pinhole for the determined amount of time, and cover it again. Then it’s back to the darkroom to process your image. If you are doing this in the field, or while traveling, you need a black changing bag and somewhere to keep your exposed negatives until you return. Pinky, our instructor, told us about her trips to Mexico and her darkroom setups in a closet including pitchers with her chemicals, rather than the more traditional approach of trays.
Camera in Position
First Pinhole Picture
My exposures were pretty consistent in the morning while it was overcast, but the light was constantly changing in the afternoon. This made it hard to get a decent exposure. One of the first things you learn about pinhole cameras is that you must relinquish control. Until you understand how the camera frames things, you cannot control the composition of the photos. Until you learn the exposure times (based on light and paper), you can’t just change a setting. And finally, there is no focus, but pinhole have a wide depth of field, so the foreground and the background are in focus.
So the afternoon was very frustrating as I struggled with overexposed and underexposed pictures. And you only know this after processing the paper negative and looking at it in the light. This means that it is many 10-15 minutes between shots, so the light changes from one shot to the next. I was also having a lot of trouble framing the photos the way I wanted them. But once I remembered that this was part of the point, I needed to just keep trying and accept what I got. I changed paper sizes to get a more panoramic look, and this completely changed what got in the frame.
As the afternoon was winding down, we were all getting pretty tired. I planned to take one more photo before calling it a day. I had been trying to get a panoramic shot of the mountains, and I just couldn’t get it. I was going to be done whether the photo worked or not, and due to luck, karma, or just the mountain air, I got a great image. See it in the post below.
Photos from Penland
I am currently at the Penland School of Crafts taking a pinhole photography class. Here is one on the photos that I shot today and scanned.
Here is a link to pinhole photos only.
And here’s a link to other photos from Arrival Day and Day 1 at Penland (including the pinhole photos). More later.
By the way, the food is fabulous.
Arrival at Penland
I arrived at Penland around 5:00. It is a beautiful rustic campus in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. Here is a description of classes from the Penland website:
Each summer, the school offers 98 one- or two-week classes in books and paper, clay, drawing and painting, glass, iron, metals, photography, printmaking, textiles, wood, and other media.In the spring and fall, Penland has seven classes that run for eight weeks. These long sessions, called Concentrations, are unlike anything else offered in craft: almost as long as a college semester with the focused intensity of the single-subject workshop. We also offer a few one-week classes in the spring and fall.
Tonight we had our introductory class. We met our instructor, an older woman named Pinky Bass from Alabama. She is full of energy and lots of stories. She showed us a variety of pinhole cameras she has made from things like oatmeal boxes, coke cans, a purse, and even a hollowed out bible. This is just the sort of creative environment I need to be immersed in. Looking forward to a great week.
I Made an Offer on a House
Yesterday I made an offer on a house. I have been living in an apartment in Carrboro for the last 9 months, while I have been looking for a house. I have only the bare necessities in my temporary abode: limited furniture (no couch, just chairs), limited toys, one room for the kids). And I haven’t really done much since moving in because I didn’t want to get a bunch of stuff only to move it again.
Anyway, I found a 3 bedroom house (separate rooms for the kids required) in Durham that has an eat-in-kitchen and a separate dining room that works great as an office. It has a fenced in yard that backs up to the woods. The best part is that it has the configuration I need without being too big.
I am going away for the week today, so we are trying to wrap up the offer today, but the sellers are away for the weekend. We will figure it out.
Here’s a photo:
Not Necessarily a Gratuitous Post
My general blogging goal is that by the end of each month, I will have averaged one blog post per day in the month. And I have met that goal each month since November. I was close in September and October, but really didn’t set that goal until December. Generally this means that I post what I want throughout the month, and I have a flurry of posts at the end of the month to meet this goal. Unless I post a bunch today, and I really don’t have the time to do that, I will not meet this goal. I have gotten close, but I am going out of town today (for the coming week), and will not have the access to post.
In looking at my posts over the past month, my topics have been on the down side of life: torn-down buildings, broken arms and zombies. Since most of those are things I have taken pictures of, rather than events in my life, I am not worried about it.
We Like Jott a Lot
Last night I started playing with Jott. It is a free service that let’s you make a call from your registered phone, leave a message and send that message to a variety of places. Your message is transcribed and Jott sends both the text and a link to your recorded message. The default is that it sends it back to you via email (or text message) and to your the Jott inbox. This is a basic reminder service that is helpful, but not extraordinary.
Where this application really flies is in its connection to other services. I currently have it set up so I can Twitter from Jott, blog from Jott, and even update my Google Calendar. And now that Google Calendar can sync to Outlook, Jott becomes a service that lets you voice record appointments that show up on your Outlook calendar.
Peter was definitely enjoying playing with Jott too much. He loved the mis-transcription of “We are watching basketball” to “We are watching I Got Bob.” Here are some links to Peter’s Jotts:
I would like to post…
Powered by Jott
From the Mouth of Peter
Beep! Beep! Beep!, he said after banging his knee into the chair. His alternate expletive is, Symbol! Symbol! Symbol!. Like they say in comics.
Relationships Matter
Here’s a commercial for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions called The Couple. A blog about it is here. It compares the relationship between an advertiser and a consumer with the relationship between a man and a woman. Stereotypes, generalities and reality collide to make a powerful point about both sides of the analogy.
From a post by Jay Deragon.
Can this really be happening?
Peter fell again and hurt his right arm, so he has a cast on his left and a hard splint on the right. This injury, like the others before it, is growth plate injury. This means it is a likely fracture to the part of the bone where growth occurs, but the injury does not show up on an xray.
This is not an ideal way for Peter to begin baseball season.
