I received a surprisingly interesting Christmas present...a Holga Wide Angle Pinhole camera! If you're not familiar with this instrument, it's the most primitive, simple, low tech, camera there is! The pinhole projection concept has been around for centuries having been described by da Vinci in 1502 and used extensively by Vermeer as a tool for painting. There is no lens, and no shutter and no focus control (everything already is focused by the extremely tiny light hole) . One just uncovers the pinhole, counts the requisite seconds, and covers the pinhole again having allowed the film to be exposed. Here are two images from my first attempt with it. I did enhance them a little bit in Photoshop Elements 21, but very minimally.
It's difficult to find the time to travel to new places for photography, but fortunately the places I've already often visited are rarely the same twice. These are from Dutton Island Preserve which is a place once owned by the Dutton family (not the Yellowstone crew! ;) that was donated to the state.
Returning yet again to Blackrock and Boneyard Beach on Big Talbot Island, I was seduced by what I've presented below. To a certain degree, I was experimenting with a No. 11 green filter, and I am not particularly impressed by what it did, but I then changed back to the No. 15 deep yellow filter and was able to obtain typical results. I hope I can make a trip farther away from the coast in the coming weeks and see what looks good.
To get to this area of Little Talbot Island State Park, I walked two miles through a forest. Stupidly, I had forgoten bug spray, and thus spent every single moment swatting, swiping and slapping myself! It's a good thing that killing bugs is not frowned on, because I was a mass murderer of the swarming, wee bastards! When I finally reached the beach, the little winged nasties were gone and I was free to enjoy making photographs. Here are three I liked from the ten exposures I made.
Sometimes, what's close at hand is easy to ignore. The first two photographs taken in our backyard are about the way light reveals tones and textures. The third is from a place I've often photographed from the other side of the road looking east toward the ocean. I took this picture at lowish tide with the sandbar quite our of the water. I was standing on a bridge, and the rock wall with bushes was in the foreground.
I've finally gathered the wherewithal to take my camera out and make some photographs. Like seeing an old friend when you've been among strangers, I went back to Black Rock Beach where I've often had a good outing as what's there is so inherently interesting. Here are five from the roll of ten that I like. Just to see how they'd look, I toned the bottom two a slight sepia. I'm still not sure, so I'm going to leave them as they are now.
I've not posted here for a month or so, but yesterday (August 17th) I resolved to take my camera for a ride to Marineland. It was an opportunity to photograph the surf against the coquina rocks at a little bit slower shutter speed than the meter called for using an ND filter. That shutterr speed was 1/8th second which was enough to capture the splash against the rocks, but not so slow as to totally blur those waves. Of the ten exposures I made with my Pentax 67, 55mm lens, and variable ND filter I liked these two.
This image was also on the roll of film from a previous trip a month ago.
The past....
Round Lake is about a mile and a half from where we used to live in NY. Over the years, there, I made quite a few photographs of it in all seasons and weather. All were posted on this blog around the time I made them, but I decided to present them again here as a body of work. Almost all were printed in my traditional darkroom that I no longer have now that I live in Florida, but I still have the equipment should anyone offer me free access to a space I could recreate as a darkroom! ;)))))
