project 365-ish: April 30, 2013

 

This teeny tiny praying mantis was on my plumeria tree yesterday.  He really is an ittie bittie- just a little bit longer than my fingernail.  He's a good little buggie- may he stay around and eat the unwanted pests, and get nice and big!

A funny story- a few years ago, my tomato plants were covered with potato bug larvae.  I was in process of picking them off the plants, and one just wouldn't let go.  I thought that was funny, because these bugs don't hang on at all- they just drop off to the soil, and crawl back up again.  So why was this particular bug so hard to pick off?  It turns out that it was being clutched by a praying mantis, camouflaged and just out of view!  I apologized, and lft him to his dinner.

image made April 29, 2013

Woot!

trying to reduce the internal glare... flic.kr/p/eewMUK bathroomcam pinhole image in progress @pinholeday #pinhole #worldwide #say
— crunchy footsteps (@crunchyfeet) April 27, 2013

in progress......

WWPD 2013 exposure in progress....

Because the bathroomcam requires about 16 hours to expose photographic paper (figuring in a bunch of reciprocity error) I started a WWPD exposure this morning. It'll go 8 hours today, and 8 hours tomorrow...ending around the end of Worldwide Pinhole Day.

On the left is a photo of the bathroomcam's subject, chilling out in the backyard. On the right is inside the bathroomcam, image in progress.

I'm sure glad that we have a second bathroom! (-:

Happy WWPD!

Started my WWPD exposure at 8am: the bathroomcam has a 16 hour exposure! (2 days) #pinhole #day @pinholeday
— crunchy footsteps (@crunchyfeet) April 27, 2013

After my morning coffee, it's time to transform the bathroom into a giant pinhole camera for Worldwide Pinhole Day! @pinholeday
— crunchy footsteps (@crunchyfeet) April 27, 2013

The bathroomcam image completely fogged!  What a bummer.  But here is a paintcancam rendition  of our catering to George, during his very arduous photo shoot.  The heat and lack of food were pretty hard to bear!  (-:

This is my offocial Worldwide Pinhole Day image for 2013.  Paintcan camera, paper negative, 58-sec exposure, developed in Caffenol C.

Here is a comment I left for this post on Flickr, after my pinhole pals there gave their suggestions on what I could do to have a successful image with the bathroomcam:

Thank you all, for the really nice comments on this image, as well as your thoughts on how to change things for future bathroomcam exposures! I appreciate you guys so much!

Judith- Thanks so much for that link to the article on The Great Picture. I had watched a "making-of" video of this project several years ago, when it was on Google Video. After Google Video went away, I could not find it out if it was migrated to You Tube, because I forgot the name of the project, and my search words didn't turn it up for me. Thanks to your article, I searched You Tube, and found the video! It's well-worth watching, for anyone interested:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc-79vOzshw&list= PL27-EmZ05nT...

Rob Johnson, one of the photographers of this project, was interviewed in this video. If you go to 10:40 in the video, he explains the method for determining the exposure, and reveals aperture size and focal length. Like Judith said above, the aperture size was 6mm, and the exposure was only 35 minutes! He said that their initial exposure estimates were 6-7 days, but they came up with 35 minutes after doing some test exposures.

The emulsion they used was Liquid Light, which (in my limited experience) has about the same ISO as paper. So perhaps I can translate this experience directly to mine.

If you go to 11:16 in the video, you can see that they rigged up a "baffle" system like you talked about, Howard. It boxed the pinhole in around the sides and top, so that the light just shined on the film plane, and not onto the ceiling and walls. This limited the amount of stray light inside the camera. That's an excellent idea, Howard, thanks!

rt- that is also an excellent idea of flashing the paper first, to reduce exposure time.

Vince- Thanks for telling me about your experience of photographing the camera obscura image at the World of Illusions Centre. (that sounds like a great place to visit!) It gives me hope that i can do it, too. (-: It's goo to know how long your exposures were, too.

So I'll try it again with all your suggestions, and do some test strips before exposing the image. I'll keep you posted......

rt- Is there really a Cinco de Mayo Pinhole Day? (-: Are you participating? That does sound like a good day to try this again! It shouldn't be hard to secure a sombrero for George in this town. (-:

Sophie, Donna and Ned- thanks for your fun comments about this image! It was fun to cater to George to make this picture.

SO I'm off to make the improvements...in time for CInco de Mayo Pinhole Day!  

Project 365-ish: April 26, 2013

Bathroomcam: preparing for Worldwide Pinhole Day 2013

bathroomcam pinhole camera, image photographed with DSLR camera, 6400 ISO, 1/6 sec

Since I can't pick this camera up and move it to an interesting place to photograph (wild thought, that!) I decided to make the view more interesting than just the tree at the far side of the backyard. So here is George, our life-sized plastic Halloween skeleton, having a lounge under our groovy lounge umbrella. (I thought very much of art_y_fotos, and his dinosaur compositions, while putting this scene together)

Back inside the camera, I taped up a 20x30-inch posterboard over the shower wall, trying to decide if I should frame the shot horizontally or vertically. I'll end up covering this board with 5x7-sized photographic paper, to record the image, and develop these in caffenol.

I put this image in photoshop, and gray-scaled it, to look more like the image I might get. (praying for a decent exposure, and that nothing falls off the wall while exposing) I think George needs more contrast on his body- like perhaps a Hawaiian shirt?

image made April 26, 2013

Project 365-ish: April 21, 2013

Introducing...the bathroomcam!!

bathroom pinhole camera, image projected against the shower wall, image made with DSLR ISO 6400, f 4.5, 1/6th sec exp

Worldwide Pinhole Day is 7 days away!!! I'm practicing for it today. I think this year, I will make my bathroom into a pinhole camera, cover the shower wall with photographic paper, and attempt to expose the image. Here is Daughter posing for me out in the backyard, as seen through the penny-sized pinhole, cut from black plastic, which is covering the bathroom window. We had a blast, making pinhole pictures and videos! (-:

So the aperture of the bathroomcam is f.1115. I gotta figure out that exposure!

What are you doing for Pinhole Day?

Project 365-ish: April 20, 2013

"There's a little black spot on the sun today....."

This is cooler than it looks at first glance!  It is a projected image of the sun, through a telescope.  See the sun spot there, lower center?  The telescope was pointed at the sun, and the viewfinder was attached to a funnel, with a piece of silicon sheeting (used in projection tvs) stretched over the large end.  The telescope projected the image from the viewfinder through the back side of the silicon sheeting. The resolution was very clear, very sharp, and safe to look at directly.

This one of the many telescopes and demos set up at our local library, by our local astronomy club.  April 20th (today) happens to be National Astronomy Day, which is part of our library's festivities of National Library Week.

project 365-ish: April 14, 2013

Sycamore and Thistle Puff

I was rearranging some furniture this morning, and came across my large box of pressed and dried flowers and leaves.  I used to press them between books, and then use them for sunpainting, or arranging on the scanner into digital collages. 

I decided that I shall release these dried things back to nature, but also thought I'd do it slowly, arranging them into colleges bit by bit, and featuring them in the Project 365-ish.  It gives me fodder for the blog, after all, as I do not have any photo projects at the moment, and haven't found photographic inspiration in day to day life lately.

So here is Sycamore and Thistle Puff.  I found both still pressed between the pages of a book that I ended up donating today.  Both are now out in the front yard, being blown by the strong breeze this way and that, out in the sun's rays again, after years of darkness.

Project 365-ish: April 3, 2013

The beauty of beans...

We got the ham hock from our extended family Easter bash, so I made some bean soup with it yesterday.  The colors make me happy!