More Pinhole Goodness

Here's another image made using the WoodBläk 66 pinhole camera, designed and made at Mottweiler Studio in Portland, OR. With the camera mounted on a skinny little monopod, I pretended the set up was just a fancy walking stick, hoping not to look like too much of a photonerd while keeping things nice and steady for photographing. Anyway, personal vanity aside, you can see that the camera is capable of producing high quality, detailed images. The focal length of roughly 25 mm on 120 film is pretty freaking wide, so the shadow of my head makes an appearance in this frame. As you might have guessed from the color palette, I was shooting Kodak Ektar 100 that day. 

Pinhole FTW

My wife was wiped out from a day of hard work, so I was walking alone yesterday. What better camera to bring along on a solo outing than a pinhole? I could work as slowly as I pleased without messing up the rhythm of the walk. But it wasn't my grandfather's pinhole camera I had with me. No, it was the Woodbläk 66, a thoroughly modern affair, that I've come to really enjoy shooting. Given the late afternoon light, I decided to work handheld using HP5+. With a focal ratio of 120, I knew my exposures were going to be in the 1/2 to 1 sec range, so I was searching for interesting value masses that might look okay with some motion blur. It is the time of year for magnolias, and this one was illuminated by direct sunlight. I developed the film right away and scanned in the negs after dinner for a pretty quick turn around. Split toning helped achieve a nice contrast between leaves and flowers. 

On travel

If asked, I would say that one of the things I missed the most this year is traveling freely, taking road trips on a whim, things like that. Which makes sense at first blush, but if these excursions are so meaningful, why are there some I seem to have no memory of, even when looking at a photograph I took to document the trip? 

Apparently, we stayed in this cute little motel on a road trip long ago, but what were we up to? I have no idea. Was I wrapped up in job stuff, and is that where the empty spaces in memory occur? Is this image photographic evidence of being obsessed with work?! Ugh.