All posts by Kier

Inspiration Week of 4/25

April 29, 2016 Kier

For this week’s inspiration photos, we bring you five excellent pieces showing some great captures in wide open expanses. The weather in the Northern Hemisphere has warmed up, but the sun is still a little lower, making dramatic lighting more accessible than in the summer. If we do our job right, this week’s selection will get you motivated to get out there and make some fresh pinhole captures this weekend. Enjoy!

Evening
[singlepic id=306 w=600]Evening, ©Don Pyle 2016[/singlepic]

Don Pyle is a Washington based pinholer who captured this excellent vantage point of the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland, OR using a camera he builds called the Innova. A number of these Innova cameras are used in the wild by pinhole photographers around the world. The excellent results photographers are making with these cameras can be seen in the Innova Pinhole group collection on Flickr. Don captured this image on Ektar 100 film in 120 format. You can find more of his photos on Flickr.

*
[singlepic id=305 w=600]*, ©Pavel Apleton 2016[/singlepic]

Pasha Apletin is a talented photographer from St. Petersburg, Russia who’s been working on a series about the ships there. He made this photo during an early summer morning at the banks of the historic center there. He captured this on 5×7 film, which he sometimes uses for cyanotype printing. You can purchase this print here, or learn more about him and his work at his website, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, or Flickr

Jack’s Rake
[singlepic id=308 w=600]Jack’s Rake, ©Andy Werner 2016[/singlepic]

Andy Werner is as equally talented behind the camera as he is building one in his cabinetry shop. He made this photo of Jack’s Rake – the diagonal path running across the face of the rock – in the Langdale Valley in the Lake District, UK. The rock is known as Pavey Ark, and you can see the camera he used here. Andy has been shooting and building pinhole cameras for about ten years. So far the cameras have been for his own use primarily, and is currently working on selling small batches of his cameras.

You can find more of Andy’s work on his website, Facebook, and Flickr. His cameras will soon be available here, or you can get updates on Facebook.

Photograph After Visiting My Mother’s Grave
[singlepic id=309 w=600]Photograph After Visiting My Mother’s Grave, ©Cameran Ashraf 2016[/singlepic]

I love this powerful landscape capture that Cameran Ashraf made using his Zero Image 2000 pinhole camera on Acros 100 film. He made this photo while reflecting on his mother’s life and passing, and provided the following text to accompany:

“I took this photograph after visiting my mother’s grave on what would have been her 70th birthday. She had long feared growing old, never did, and passed away at 67. I didn’t say much to her at the grave, and though it had been years since she passed, I was still angry she didn’t stick around.

In the mountains north of her grave, I sat on this long dead log and let the day reach its close. The silence of the setting sun strongly called me to take a photograph, and as set up my pinhole camera I began to weep and said many things which my heart had desired to say to her.”

You can view more of Cameran’s excellent work on Flickr, Instagram, or follow him on Twitter.

Impressionistic Field in IR
[singlepic id=307 w=600]Impressionistic Field in IR, ©Marie Westerbom 2016[/singlepic]

Marie Westerbom made this awesome, ephemeral capture using IR film in her Zero Image 2000. She hand held the camera while making the photo over a 2 minute exposure. The result is a practically translucent impression of the field in a breeze. You can see more about the background of this photo on Marie’s blog, or see more of her work on Flickr.

Aesthetic, General

Book Review: Letting Go of the Camera

April 27, 2016 Kier

“Letting Go of the Camera” is the second Brooks Jensen book that I’ve read. Like the other book, Creative Life in Photography, this is a collection of essays and ruminations. But this time he’s turned his attention more towards the meta of creativity in photography.

He’s touching on a lot of concepts in creativity and photography that, honestly, are what led to my taking up pinhole in the first place. It’s been nearly a decade since I built my first pinhole camera (outside of a photo class) and fell in love with the process. Pinhole for me was a response to the rising trend in DSLR shooting and perfection. At the time, there was so much volume in my shooting. I was filling memory disks like mad. But there was rarely time that I was taking to see. Like a junky, I was voraciously consuming, and the DSLR gave me a fix.

So it is in that spirit that pinhole provided a very needed detox from this habit. Suddenly I wasn’t shooting bursts of photos but rather waiting seconds or minutes for a single exposure. I wasn’t obsessively composing but rather guesstimating based on angles. And I wasn’t filling memory cards but rather mindfully choosing compositions to use precious film on.

The result, for me at least, is that pinhole photography is a much more meditative process than any other form of photography. Several days ago I was at the West Side Market in Cleveland making an indoor exposure that, once corrected for reciprocity, took 18 minutes. That was 18 minutes of observance that I could do. Looking at what to shoot next. Watching the crowds. Observing how people shopped. Seeing. It was 18 minutes of the compassionate observance that David Foster Wallace described in “This is Water”. If I had shot that with a DSLR, I would have cranked up the ISO and opened the aperture enough to get me 1/60th exposure and just moved on.

So what the hell does watching people for 18 minutes have to do with “Letting Go”? Brooks Jensen is asking us to take this time, so that we may be better photographers. He’s not only a photographer, he’s also the publisher of Lens Work magazine, and the host of a number of workshops. In these workshops he’s seen tons of work, but “rarely see photographs that relate to [photographers’] lives, thoughts, feelings, or experiences.” Throughout the book, he’s practically begging us to take a little extra time and look at things differently.

Brooks argues for mastering the craft of photography so that we can let go as, “the true master is one who, indeed, has total control and then lets go and allows an accident to happen.” That’s practically a mantra for excellent pinhole photography. He challenges photographers to photograph what you feel, so that you “let go of yourself and let your subject speak directly to your audience.”

We all know that travel to an unfamiliar place can help spur the creative spirit, but Brooks challenges us to be better in this regard as well, noting that:

It seems that photography presents us with a choice unique in the field of art. We can work to find something new that has never been photographed before and claim it as our unique photographic turf or we can accept the challenge to use our tools as merely tools and realize that the real task of being a photographer is to develop ourselves as conduits for the inspiration that creates artwork. One path leads to tomorrow’s clichés. The other path leads to artwork that seems to endure. One eventually is easy; one is profound.

Brooks absolutely pulls no punches in this regard, also noting that “a great deal of what passes for fine art photography today is not based on vision, talent, or craft; it is based simply on access.” This is a notion that I identify with strongly, and am also toiled by. In our daily lives, hustling about with work and family duties, it can be extremely hard to develop a vision in the seemingly mundane.

However Brooks too understands this struggle, and provides guidance there. Noting examples such as Sudek and Wynn Bullock as great examples of photographers that have realized that “the key is to integrate our art into our life, not the other way around.” Even so, shooting over and over the same areas of our lives can be drivel, right? But no, says Brooks, noting that “Weston took 29 photos of peppers before he finally took his famous Pepper No. 30, and he may have taken many more afterwards.” Brooks expands to note that:

The paradox is simply this: repetition of what has already been done is a useful technical exercise but rarely produces artwork of merit. Repetition of your own creative vision however, leads to refinement, increased depth and sensitivity, and generally does produce better artwork.

It’s that refinement of craft that he’s really driving at. It’s this level of dedication to a topic, and staying to what you know, that is so readily apparent in the wonderful collection that Andy Adams curated in “Looking at the Land”.

There’s so much more to this book then I could possibly cover here. Brooks has been through the ups and downs of a photographic career that has spanned just about every perspective in photography, and has done an excellent job of compiling the many perspectives that come with that career. This is a great read for any photographer – pinholer or not. I encourage you to give it a read – it’s an easy and accessible one – and pursue your photography with increased passion and mindfulness.

“Letting Go of the Camera” is available at Amazon ($5.95 Kindle edition/other formats available)

Inspiration

Inspiration Week of 4/18

April 22, 2016 Kier

This week’s set of inspiration photos explore spaces that we get to know well. These photos explore some great opportunities that lie within our daily lives. Whether still life or layered action, photographing the everyday just takes a bit of seeing.

Hall 3
[singlepic id=301 w=600]Hall 3, ©Dan Smith 2016[/singlepic]

Dan Smith captured this unique scene while on a trip to London that he planned for his birthday. Dan and his son explored the Barbican Centre and the surrounding estates, which he found to be a real architectural treat. They had half an hour or so to kill before they headed home, and the limited light allowed Dan only a couple exposures as each was about 15 minutes. Dan used an Ondu Multi Format 6×12 loaded with Fuji Acros, and developed in Rodinal 50:1. More of Dan’s work can be found on Flickr and he can be followed on Twitter.

Moscow Gorky Park Ice Rink
[singlepic id=302 w=600]Moscow Gorky Park Ice Rink, ©LitterArt 2016[/singlepic]

This unique image was created by a guy who goes by the nom de guerre of LitterART, in Gorky Park, Moscow. The photo is composed of 2 pinhole photos from Gorky Park with a Fujifilm X-series camera fitted with a SKINK pinhole lens. LitterArt describes the rink as:

“The largest ice rink in Russia and Europe. Built using cutting-edge technology, the rink is open from October to March, and is one of the must-see places in Moscow. 59 000 sq feet of the smoothest ice the world has seen, 4 changing pavilions, cozy cafes, great music and a magical atmosphere.”

More of LitterArt’s work can be found on Flickr.

Studies on perspective lines: Piano
[singlepic id=303 w=600]Studies on perspective lines: Piano, ©Jari Savijärvi 2016[/singlepic]

Jari Savijärvi hales from Jämsä, Finland, and became interested in Pinhole photography after seeing the results of his friends’ pinhole efforts. He was particularly impressed by how the pictures were simultaneously sharp and smooth, how the depth of field was amazing deep, and how the format provided the possibility to have super wide angle view without distortion. For someone who enjoys strong perspective lines in his photography, it’s a format that works well.

Jari started planning and designing his own camera with a goal towards Worldwide Pinhole Day 2014. He experimented with cardboard and various formats before deciding on 4×5. He fashioned his camera to use standard 4×5 film holders, and made the pinhole out of aluminum that he installed in a shutter to help control precise exposure times. Jari realized some fast success with the homemade camera and format when his 1st real photo with it was published by the Washington Post. You can see more of Jari’s work on Flickr, Facebook, and his personal site.

Pub Rain
[singlepic id=304 w=600]Pub Rain, ©Jesús Joglar 2016[/singlepic]

Jesús Joglar made this photo with a camera he calls “ladybird”: a 6×6 format Digna camera produced in Spain in the 1950’s by CERTEX that he hacked to convert it into a pinhole camera. He took apart the lens and fitted it with a pinhole, finishing it with a ladybug magnet for the shutter (thus the name). For American audiences: the rest of the world apparently refers to ladybugs as ladybirds – who knew?

Jesús’s ladybird camera has a 0.15 mm, focal length of 32 mm, f/213 value which all comes together to give a nice wide 104º view angle. The photograph was taken in the Pub “Rain!” of Manchester (UK) with Kodak Ektar 100, exposed for 50 minutes. Jesús developed in Tetenal C-41 chemicals and scanned the negative with an Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner. You can find more of his great work on Flickr.

Artist Feature

Corine Hörmann – Test of Time

April 20, 2016 Kier 2 Comments

Nature landscape photography can be deceivingly hard. Not the composition or the exposure, or even the expression, but rather the challenge of telling the viewer something new about the natural landscape. Even once you nail the composition, exposure, and expression that you were aiming for, there’s a massive body of work produced by the photography community that you are measured by – not least that 800lb gorilla that is revered both inside and outside the photographic community: Ansel Adams.

There are thus two ways to excel at nature landscape photography today: go somewhere exotic; or excel at bringing subject, form, and content into harmony. The problem with the former is it’s not really about the art, it’s about deep pockets. Thus the latter is where art shines through as it doesn’t matter where the photo was taken – it tells its own story, with any setting being happenstance. It’s with this backdrop that I’m always impressed by the natural landscape photographer that tells me something new with their photos.

This creative challenge is a large factor in my affinity to pinhole photography. The limited toolset knocks a person off balance and forces the photographer to consider the variables differently, learn to use those limitations as strengths, and think about what is being put into an image more thoroughly. I strongly believe that from this extended experience, a photographer who uses both pinhole and lensed photography will be able to see more photo opportunities. But I digress…

Corine Hörmann is a nature landscape photographer who, in her series Test of Time, has shown me something new. She’s a Dutch photographer who was introduced to pinhole by one of her Art School teachers in 1997, and hasn’t looked back since.

Corine is a natural landscape photographer who is always seeking to capture a sense of wonder in the world. In the Test of Time series of photos, she’s attempting to capture the passing of time in a single image. The exposures are made over the course of 8 to 48 hours, creating contrasty scenes that show the passage of a day or days. Not quite solargraphy, but further extended than your average photograph, there is a peaceful glow in her photos that is only disturbed by the burning passage of the sun. Corine explains further in her project statement:

“This series was created from the desire to visualize the passage of time. I started looking for possibilities to photograph landscapes with a one day exposure time. After doing some research I started experimenting with an exposure of 12 hours using film negatives. In order not to overexpose the film I used several layers of neutral density filter. After weeks of experimenting with different exposure times, film and neutral density filter combinations the first exposures were successful and it is an ongoing project now. I leave the light to affect the film from 8 until 48 hours. The path that the sun describes in the sky and its reflection on the water constructs the image and the result is dependent on this. The line is sometimes interrupted which means that it was cloudy at that specific moment. During the progress I discovered that I am attracted by the cyclic movement of time and water as an important aspect of our human existence and as the most mysterious thing there is. In these photo’s I try to concentrate on the contemplative nature of water in connection with the theme of time. Where is the past gone and where does the future come from? Time flows like water and at the same time water is the primeval sea in many creation myths and the source of all life. It works like a mirror that reflects the universe. In these pictures water and light are like metaphors to visualize the passage of time. In the photos the difference between the seasons is quit clear. You will see the water with a frozen surface and a low sun but also the reflective surface of liquid water while the sun is high in the sky. So the cyclic movement of time is not only shown in a single photo but also in a series of images.”

Please enjoy the following selection from her Test of Time series – if you’re hungry for more from the series, you can satiate that need on her site. The rest of Corine’s work, as well as further background, can be found on her website. You can also follow along on Instagram or Facebook.

Test of Time 1
[singlepic id=286 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 3
[singlepic id=294 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 5
[singlepic id=296 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 6
[singlepic id=297 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 8
[singlepic id=299 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 10
[singlepic id=287 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 11
[singlepic id=288 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 13
[singlepic id=290 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 14
[singlepic id=291 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Test of Time 15
[singlepic id=292 w=600]©Corine Hörmann 2016[/singlepic]

Inspiration

Inspiration Week of 4/11

April 15, 2016 Kier

This week’s inspirational photo set takes us from the beautiful sun of the Hawaii sky to the tranquil shore of SW France. Here in the Midwest of America, we’ve just finished an unseasonably late cold snap in April, and I guess the selection says something about my need for warmer weather. Pinhole plays particularly well at the shore, but as you can see from the following selections, the sea doesn’t always have to be the subject of a great seaside pinhole photo – it just adds to the drama.

a quiet dawn
[singlepic id=282 w=600]a quiet dawn, ©Timothy Sandstrom 2016[/singlepic]

Tim mad this image in early March 2016 at Ft Baker, looking out towards Alcatraz and San Francisco with a 10 minute exposure on HP5+. The resulting image reflects the “slow, contemplative process” that attracts Tim to pinhole photography. He made this image with his homemade 8×10 foamcore camera that was inspired by another design he found online (here). He added “double rabbet” joinery to the corners for stability and light-tightness, with a good dab of gaffers tape to keep it protected from the coastal waters. You can see his rig, complete with a wood platform for stabilization, at an image he posted here. You can find more excellent pinhole work from Tim on Flickr.

Lāhainā Noon
[singlepic id=283 w=600]Lāhainā Noon, ©Ross Togashi 2016[/singlepic]

We’ve featured some of Ross’s photos before and he’s a consistent producer of compelling pinhole photography. He made this photo at Hawai‘i State Veterans Cemetery in Kāne‘ohe, O‘ahu. Ross provides an interesting snippet about this particular photo:

“Twice a year in the tropics, the sun crosses the sky and stands directly overhead. This astronomical phenomenon occurs in May and July and is called Lāhainā Noon. The day and time differs each year. It occurred over Kāne‘ohe on Tuesday, May 27, 2014 at precisely 12:28pm.

I stood at the base of this flag pole and photographed the sun as it was straight overhead.”

You can find more of his Lāhainā Noon photography in a dedicated Flickr Set. The rest of Ross’s expertly created pinhole photography can be found on Flickr as well.

Splash of Sun
[singlepic id=284 w=600]Splash of Sun, ©Jim Rohan 2016[/singlepic]

Jim spends most of his photographic creativity putting black and white film through cameras that he modifies for creative distortion. But on occasion he does some pinhole and even some color. In the summer time he finds himself on the beach and this time he had his Zero Image 2000 pinhole camera with him. Without a tripod he hand held the camera and made a 4 second exposure. The result is pretty impressive. You can find more of Jim’s work on Flickr, his website, or his blog, and you can follow what he’s up to on Twitter.

untitled
[singlepic id=285 w=600]untitled, ©TTkc 2016[/singlepic]

TTkc made this wonderful image in an oyster village called Piraillan in Bassin d’Arcachon in the Southwest region of France. He wielded a laser cut wooden box made by his ingenius friend known as Ysalis. You can find more of his work, pinhole and otherwise, on Flickr and his Tumblr page.

Interviews

Martin Martinsson – Movements

April 13, 2016 Kier 1 Comment

I first encountered Martin Martinsson’s work last year when perusing Flickr for pinhole work. It was his Movements 7 image that I found, and it was a perfect example of aesthetic in the everyday. When I dove deeper into his photos, I found a photographer who really understood spacial relationships – he clearly has the eye of an architect.

There’s a distinctively geometric pattern to his photos. In some of the photos, this geometry reaches out and grips you till you come to terms with the more subtle aspects of the photo. In other works, the geometry doesn’t hit you immediately, not till you let the image blur a little.

Martin’s work is often dripping with color and a moody tonality. He’s a photographer who’s bold style stands out immediately. He is also very skilled in an elusive practice: finding excellent imagery in the everyday hustle. Most of us can’t afford to pinhole full time, and so we have to fit it in around the rest of our lives.

Martin has been gracious enough to entertain our prodding questions below. I recommend you keep an eye on his work on Flickr, as he’ll soon be releasing additional photos.

Let’s start with your journey in photography. Did you start with pinhole? Or is it something you discovered later?
The pinhole camera was something I discovered a few years ago, so no, I did not start with pinhole photography at all! In fact I have been interested in photography for as long as I can remember. I remember that my parents were interested in photography and they both had some nice cameras laying around. Photography was always something present when I was a child and also discussed around the dinner table. I don’t really remember a particular starting point but when I was a teenager I thought photography was really a fun thing to do and I always tried to make an extra effort when I started taking photos myself. For a period of time, especially in my late teens and early twenties, I took a lot of photos and I have box after box with old photos laying around the house.

My manual 35mm camera broke down about the same time as digital cameras really started to hit the market. I bought one of those small digital devices, but strangely digital photography killed my interest in taking photos. For me something was lost without the manual controls and I thought most modern cameras looked and felt horrible to handle…

About three years ago I decided to give photography another chance so I went to the store to buy me a new high end digital device with retro looks and manual controls. I haven’t got any type of formal training in photography so I really never knew anything about the technical or artistic aspects of photography. Except for framing, I always just pressed the shutter button and hoped for the best. I decided that this time I will take it more seriously – bought any kind of book about photography I could find – and started to play around with my new camera. Digital was really a fantastic way for me to learn more about the technique and to really try all those “what happens if I do this” or “how can I achieve this type of effect” – type of questions most beginners have.

After some time my wife got a pinhole camera as a birthday present from a friend. It is one of those paper cameras you have to assemble by yourself with the use of tape. I wasn’t even sure it was possible to find 35mm film any longer since I was under the impression film photography was a thing of the past. A visit to the local camera store proved me wrong. I bought a few rolls of film, stole the camera from my wife (I have absolutely no intention of giving it back) and started to shoot some film again. The photos looked fantastic! It was mind blowing!!

That started another journey, or maybe it was more like going back to square one. I was reminded of what attracted me to photography in the first place. I have barely touched my digital camera after that but I take more photos than ever!

Waiting
[singlepic id=281 w=600]Waiting, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

Your Flickr feed is filled with great photography, both lensed and lensless. How has one form of photography influenced the other?
Thank you! That’s very flattering to hear. As I mentioned before, I used digital photography as a way to learn more about photography and once I got to know the camera a little better and was able to take photos that sometimes even looked better than the physical world, I became a little bit bored (easily done playing around in Photoshop or Lightroom). I noticed that I was not very interested in capturing the world as it is. Even making the photos that look “nicer” than reality is something I don’t find very stimulating.

I currently own about ten different cameras. I am not exactly sure what the influences would be, but I know that regardless of what I take photos of, I am aiming towards a somewhat different or unique look. My interest in analogue photography as a whole has always been about finding a special look that is in a way of out of my control. Adding an unexpected and uncontrollable element to the photos. That might be different things like a special type of film with unique characteristics, grain, physical defects on the negative, expired film or using a pinhole camera. All these things are possible to fake with a computer but I find that it is much more fun when there is a certain element of surprise.

Movements 1 – By Bike
[singlepic id=274 w=450]Movements 1 – By Bike, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

What is it about pinhole photography that attracts you to the artform?
The first time I got a roll developed I had no idea what to expect or even what the photos would look like. I didn’t have a light meter or anything to help with the exposures and mostly used my body, the ground, walls and statues instead of a tripod. I had never even used such a camera before. The photos that came out where blurry, with vignetting, weird colourings and sometimes with partially overlapping exposures. The photos also had a very unique look to them with a sort of dreamy characteristics. I absolutely loved it and in the beginning it was all totally out of my control how the photos turned out. I was hooked at once and haven’t really been able to put away that camera ever since.

After a while I started to learn a bit more about pinhole photography with its unlimited depth of field (or maybe more accurate unlimited out-of-focus) , bought a proper light meter and scanner, and got to know a little bit more about which types of film I like to use. My pinhole camera is also really small and convenient. It fit in almost all pockets so there is really no excuse not to take it with me. Besides, film is cheap (in comparison to Polaroid photography which is another passion of mine) so there is really no excuse not to experiment and to take as many photos as possible just for the fun of it. Not all of them are good, but it doesn’t really matter.

Pinhole cameras have a really unique character to them which I don’t really know how to describe in words. It just has a really special and unique look. Almost instant art.

Movements 5 – Commuting Underground
[singlepic id=275 w=600]Movements 5 – Commuting Underground, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

Movements 8 – Waiting at Kastrup
[singlepic id=276 w=600]Movements 8 – Waiting at Kastrup, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

I first came across your work when we featured your photo, “Movements 7” back in April. I loved this photo because you found a way to make something mundane so beautiful. In your Movements series, you focus on modes of travel. What was the inspiration for this series?
The idea behind the “movements” photo series was a combination of pure pragmatism in combination with and a simple creative idea that I wanted to explore. I am father of two children and I have a job which demands lots of extra working hours so my time is obviously very limited. I would actually like to walk around just take photos all day, but since time is so scarce I need to take advantage of any spare time. Such a moment is actually while commuting between kindergarten, grocery stores, work and the apartment. Travelling or moving around is something that takes up a lot of my time so why not take advantage of it and actually do something useful like taking photos?

The second idea I had, had something to do with the special characteristics of the pinhole camera. The long exposures open up lots of creative opportunities – either by using a stationary camera with moving subjects or vice versa. Since commuting means lots of moving around and lots of moving subjects I wanted to do a series about it. It is an activity that takes up quite a part of my life. It is also a part of my life filled with lots of frustration and waiting. On the other hand it can also be a moment of quality time with the family (or yourself) and some sort of (to use your words) mundane beauty which I thought was interesting to capture.

Movements 9 – Arriving at Triangeln in Malmö
[singlepic id=277 w=600]Movements 9 – Arriving at Triangeln in Malmö, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

Do you feel you’ve been successful in presenting the vision you pursued in Movements? Why or why not?
Actually I was quite disappointed at first with the results. The photos were taken during quite a long timespan and I have probably used up at least four-five rolls of film. From that batch there were only about 5-6 photos which caught my attention. I thought that was quite a meagre result considering what I normally get from a roll of 35mm pinhole. Quite a disappointment, but I have afterwards realized it was partly caused by the colour temperature of the light in the underground. The yellow light didn’t work really well in combination with slide films like Provia and Velvia and there were also a lot of underexposed photos caused by the fact that I forgot to calculate for reciprocity failure. The only photos which turned out ok, were shot in either daylight, or in situations where the light was really blue. I wasn’t really aware of that when I started the project. At least a lesson learned. I have continued to take photos in the underground and on trains but still haven’t developed and scanned the results. This time I have bought a Tungsten colour balanced film which I hope will work better!

Blue Underpass
[singlepic id=272 w=600]Blue Underpass, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

Your photo, “Coloured Underpass”, is stunning. It’s absolutely arresting. I’ve honestly had this photo open on my computer for 4 weeks now – I can’t stop looking at it. I need to know, how was this photo made? Is this a double exposure? Is it a glass hallway with lots of reflections? I must know!
I am so glad you like it! Maybe you will be disappointed now because there is really no trick! It is just a hallway between two office buildings at the Munich RE headquarters in Munich with coloured florescent lights. I was there at an open event last year when I noticed it. Each segment (leading to a different building) has its unique colour for making orientation easier. Each colour shift is an intersection between different underpasses and the floor consists of white pigmented concrete which has been polished so it reflects the light somewhat.

As I was taking photos of it, I realized that I needed to elevate the camera from the floor to get a better central perspective of the space. Luckily there was a wine bar in the building behind me so I went to pick up a drink with the tallest glass available to use it as a tripod – champagne!

Coloured Underpass
[singlepic id=273 w=600]Coloured Underpass, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

You have a fantastic sense of space and depth. To what do you attribute this ability to see? Are you trained in visual arts? Obsessed with shape? Something different?
That is very nice to hear. I don’t consider myself being a real photographer at all, just a guy who enjoys exploring things visually, and when I compare my work to some of the really good professionals out there I feel really humble regarding my own skills. On the other hand I have sold a few photos lately and there has been some attention in the internet which I would never have anticipated when I started so I must be doing something right?!

As I mentioned before I am not trained at all in photography and haven’t really had any artistic training except for my education as an architect. So shape, space and depth is something I work with all day but I really don’t know if there is a connection, at least not a conscious one. My day time job does have an influence on the type of subjects I find interesting like infrastructure or different type of “junk space” I can’t see an aesthetic influence. Photography is actually something I do as a way to escape thinking about work and my daily activities.

Orange Underpass
[singlepic id=278 w=600]Orange Underpass, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

Stairs
[singlepic id=280 w=600]Stairs, ©Martin Martinsson[/singlepic]

ƒ/D Associate Editor Libby Selinsky contributed to the content of this article.

Artist Feature

Studies in Motion – Jean-Christophe Denis

April 5, 2016 Kier

One of my favorite features of the pinhole camera is its blurring of time. In other photographic pursuits it is not unusual to see motion blur used creatively. However in pinhole, it’s nearly a constant aspect of the resulting image, which results in us having to always consider the passage of time as an unspoken subject of the images.

Jean-Christophe Denis is a French artist from Strasbourg who wields his pinhole camera to bring us some unique representations of motion and time. He describes himself as “keen on alternative photographic techniques. [His] world carries us off into dreamlike images, or staggered delicate portraits. By constantly pushing [his] practice of photography into a corner, [he] reveals [his] vision of the visible.”

The following images are a sampling of a couple avenues of approach that Jean-Christophe (or JC) has explored. First are some of the “staggered delicate portraits” which show the beauty of human movement in stutter-step detail. The second are from a stunningly energetic series of self-portraits while riding his bike.

He provides the following intro to the “Ride My Bike” self-portraits:

“For someone hidden behind a camera it is not easy to find yourself on the other side, the first self-portrait of a photographer is full of meaning, Hippolyte Bayard, the pioneer of photography represents suicide in his first staged photograph.

While integrating egocentric codes of contemporary society, like the selfie and Gopro phenomenon, I nevertheless take the opposite view of technology with the aim of building an image to fit into my time, my way.”

I hope you enjoy the following selection from JC as much as I have! To discover more of JC Denis’s excellent work, head over to Flickr or check out his personal website – he has more great pinholes and other photographic works.

Haré Pola
[singlepic id=263 w=600]Haré Pola, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Untitled
[singlepic id=270 w=600]Untitled, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Untitled
[singlepic id=271 w=600]Untitled, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Ride My Bike
[singlepic id=269 w=600]Ride My Bike, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Ride My Bike Front Back
[singlepic id=268 w=600]Ride My Bike Front Back, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Ride My Bike 3
[singlepic id=264 w=600]Ride My Bike 3, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Ride My Bike 4
[singlepic id=265 w=600]Ride My Bike 4, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Ride My Bike 5
[singlepic id=266 w=600]Ride My Bike 5, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

3 Beers Later
[singlepic id=262 w=600]3 Beers Later, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Ride My Bike Color
[singlepic id=267 w=600]Ride My Bike Color, ©Jean-Christophe Denis[/singlepic]

Interviews

David Cerbone – Cheat River

July 3, 2015 Kier 1 Comment

[singlepic id=248 w=200 float=right] [/singlepic]I first ran into David Cerbone and his work almost 8 years ago in the forums on f295 at a time when both of us were discovering the softly focused world of pinhole photography. Right from the start, there was a theme to his work. The guy was excellent at shooting these captivating scenes of rivers and gullies.

In the years since, he’s stayed true to that vision while refining the technique. He’s a rarity these days, staying focused largely on one area: the Cheat River, tributary to the Monongahela River Basin. Years of focus, exploration, and constantly looking for new ways of seeing has yielded a well rounded body of work that puts the viewer into the thick of this West Virginia landscape.

David has always been incredibly giving of his time in discussions in the past, and this interview is no exception. After the interview, be sure to have a gander at his Flickr photostream for more of his excellent work.

First, tell us a little about yourself. What was your journey to photography?
In real life, I am a professor of philosophy at West Virginia University. I have lived and worked in West Virginia for over fifteen years now (my first semester teaching at WVU was in the Fall semester of 1998). My main areas of interest in philosophy are oriented around the works of Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and more generally around the area known as phenomenology. I’ve written three books, the most recent a short introduction to existentialism, which is out this month.

My first serious engagement with photography was in 8th grade, when I took an after-school class in beginning photography at my local high school. There, I learned the basics of exposure and composition, as well as how to develop film and make enlargements. We started out with little Diana-type plastic 120 cameras: who knew they would become hipster gadgets decades later! Throughout high school, I took photographs all the time – for the school newspaper, the school literary journal, for myself – and spent countless hours in the darkroom. I was pretty obsessed. I read the Ansel Adams trilogy, pored over issues of Modern Photography and Popular Photography, as well as Canon camera brochures (usually adding up how many thousands of dollars my dream outfit would cost), and thought semi-seriously about photography as a career. Most of my college application essays centered on photography too. But then I finished high school and started college. I brought a camera to college, but never touched it. I got sidetracked by academic studies, lost interest in photojournalism, felt like I already knew what photography classes could teach me (or was afraid to find out how much I needed to learn). Whatever the reason, photography went fully dormant as an interest for more than a decade. (It’s poignantly ironic in retrospect, given my interest now in antiquarian/alternative processes. Had I been into that stuff at the time, I could have taken classes with Christopher James. Instead, I had to buy his book on Amazon.)

What had been a teenage passion was only rekindled after my wife and I moved to Albright, in Preston County, West Virginia. The camera came out of storage, initially out of duty (my wife wanted me to get a picture of her in a parade at the Buckwheat Festival), and then stayed out. I began exploring my still new surroundings in Albright and started developing a series of obsessions. For well over a year, I photographed a number of rusty nails that I found sticking out of old lumber, as well as the rust patterns on the corrugated metal roof of our barn. I also now had a little bit of money, unlike when I was a teenager, and so I could buy a lot of the gear I had dreamed about as a kid (and as the digital revolution picked up steam, the film gear I wanted just got cheaper). Having different kinds of equipment encouraged different ways of exploring. Sometimes, I think I love the cameras themselves nearly as much as I love the end result. While there is considerable merit in working expertly with a small array of equipment, in my own case, I find that using different cameras encourages me to think and see in new and different ways.

At some point, I turned my attention away from the rusty detritus around our house and started paying attention to the Cheat River, which runs right below us. I think the real breakthrough was World Pinhole Photography Day back in 2007. That’s when it first occurred to me to try photographing the half-destroyed railroad bridge not far from where we live (it’s about a five minute walk). I was intrigued by my first results, but also, in addition to posting on the World Pinhole Day site, I stumbled onto f295.org. The best of the images I made that morning was the subject of my very first post on that site:
http://www.f295.org/main/showthread.php?7588-Albright-Bridge&highlight=albright+bridge
The community at f295 was really welcoming and I think that helped in moving me more in the direction of pinhole photography.

I also have been in photography for a very long time, but also with some years-long breaks interspersed. How do you think these breaks from photography have helped your vision?
That’s a tough one to answer. I think there is a special kind of intensity that comes from a rekindled or rediscovered passion that is different from the excitement of doing something completely new. In the case of rediscovery, you’re tapping into something that has been lying dormant and there is both the feeling of its reawakening, along with the challenge to take it further. I guess the biggest difference for me is that I come at photography now as a grown-up. I am probably a bit more patient, a little more adept, and I am able more easily to follow through on ideas that I have. I also now have an incredibly rich environment to explore through photography. When I first started doing photography, we lived on Long Island and I had the shoreline of Long Island Sound to photograph (I still have a couple of pictures from that time up on my wall), but in between, I mostly lived in cities. I appreciate urban photography, but it is not something I have ever felt an urge to try doing myself.

As of this writing, your Flickr Photostream has 854 photos and, while I’ve not done an official count, it seems that as much as 90% of the photos are of river valleys in your immediate area. Where is this place that you’ve studied so much?
Pretty much all of the river-oriented photographs I’ve taken were made in the Cheat River watershed. Most are of the Cheat River itself, but I’ve taken a bunch along Muddy Creek, which runs into the Cheat down below my house. All of my regular go-to spots are in Preston County, West Virginia, between Albright and Rowlesburg.

There are all kinds of creeks and “runs” where I live and I really need to get out and explore more. A friend of mine showed me a good spot by Deckers Creek, which runs between Preston County and Morgantown (which is in Monongalia County). I got some really nice pictures there, but I have not managed to get back.

There’s an obvious love of the landscape here. Is this where you grew up? What is the connection you have to this area?
I had never so much as set foot in West Virginia until I had a campus visit for my job at WVU. I grew up in southern California until I was 11 and then my family moved to Long Island, New York, to the small town of Port Jefferson. I went to college in New England and then graduate school in northern California, and prior to getting the job here, I was living in Chicago. So rural West Virginia was pretty far off my radar screen. Insofar as I thought about West Virginia at all, it was mostly via John Denver’s thoroughly inauthentic song (although that doesn’t stop it from being drunkenly sung in these parts). I think I knew there was coalmining and I probably had some familiarity with the usual Deliverance-type stereotypes.

Even during my first year in West Virginia, when I lived in Morgantown, rural Preston County was something of a dark continent. I think I drove once through Kingwood (the county seat) in my first ten months living in the state. What changed things is that my soon-to-be-wife got a job at the hospital out here. She’s a midwife and needed to be close by for taking call (no one calls a philosophy professor in the middle of the night). So we looked for a house out here. The funny thing is that on her way to the job interview, she drove by what is now our house and saw that it had a “For Sale” sign. We never thought it would be in our price range, but real estate in rural West Virginia is nothing like California or New York. So we bought it. We got married on the front porch and all of our three children were born in our bedroom upstairs. We have now lived here for more than fifteen years and it is HOME in a big way. I say all this because my photography is in many ways an extension of this newfound sense of belonging. Many of my photographs are taken where the Cheat runs below our house. You can see the river from our house, especially when the leaves are down, and you can hear it when it’s running high. I walk my two dogs every morning down by the river and I can see the old railroad bridge through the trees, just slightly upriver from my daily walk. It is a place that I love and photographing what I see every day is one way of trying to express that love. If I pack up some cameras and spend a couple of hours early in the morning down by the river, I’ve already had a good day. If I get images worth printing or even just posting online, then I’ve won twice over.

I don’t just stay within walking distance when I shoot, but even when I pack the car with gear, I’m rarely driving more than around ten minutes, so it’s still close to home. And since it’s still the Cheat River, it’s all connected anyway.

You’ve photographed these valleys and hills in every season and condition. What’s been your favorite?
That’s hard to say. Every time of year offers opportunities for good images. I love morning fog and Fall foliage. I’ve also had some success in the dead of winter, especially if we have had a nice snowfall. This past winter, though, it was brutally cold and mostly really drab, so I didn’t get out much. At the peak of summer, when it’s hot and hazy, I also tend to feel less inspired. The one exception is infrared photography, which cuts through the haze and really does wonders with all the greenery.

If you don’t mind me saying so, you seem to be an “old soul” of photography. Years ago, photographers and other artists would spend a lifetime studying one subject or geographic area. It’s a tradition that sometimes feels lost in today’s era of gun-and-run digital photography. Is working this way something you’re compelled to do? An itch you absolutely must scratch?
I’ve already talked about the love I feel for this place and that is one way in which I feel compelled to keep exploring my immediate environs. I also tend to work in photography via fixation. This can be in terms of a particular place, a particular subject matter, or a particular kind of image. There were those rusty nails I mentioned, but the old railroad bridge has been another one of these ongoing obsessions. Sometimes I will stumble upon something and then I will be occupied for weeks, months, or even years exploring whatever that is in different ways. For example, for a long time when I would go upriver to a stretch of the Cheat known as the Narrows, I was mainly interested in scenic shots that took in wide expanses of the river. But one time, for some reason or other, I tried some shots of just a couple of rocks where water was being forced through. I really liked what I got and so now I will spend as much time looking at a two or three foot stretch of the river as I will the whole scene.

In general, I really like the way these familiar spots continue to offer new opportunities for making good photographs. There’s a lot of repetition to my work habits. Many rocks along the riverbed feel like old friends, since I end up setting my tripod at just that spot over and over again, even when I think I’m out for something different. I will move about, looking out at the scene before me, and just be drawn again to the very same place and then I’ll think, “Oh yeah, there’s that slightly rectangular rock,” or “Here’s that one that’s just a little flatter than the others around it.” But even when I set up in the same place, something different always results. Every semester in my introductory philosophy class, I teach Heraclitus, one of the central figures in the pre-Socratic era of Western philosophy. Heraclitus is most famous for the fragment declaring that one cannot step twice into the same river. When I teach this fragment, I always explain it by describing my daily walks by the Cheat. In some sense, it is the same river, day after day, year in, year out, but in a different sense, photography proves Heraclitus right: one can never get the same photograph again, no matter how precisely one tries to recreate the conditions under which the first was taken. From frame to frame, from roll to roll, from day to day, something changes: the level of the river, the contours of the banks, the number of stones visible, the angle of the light, the movement of the water, the state of the surrounding foliage, even the color of the water itself. One can return to the same place over and over again, but it will never look the same, never offer the same look, and in that sense, it will never be the same either. Photography, which is usually understood as the ultimate attempt to capture and preserve a moment, to freeze and so keep it forever, also shows to us this transience.

Since ƒ/D is focused on the art of pinhole photography, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask: why is pinhole photography such a predominant medium for your work? Does it give you something other mediums lack?
I kind of stumbled onto pinhole to start. I was flipping through a B&H Photo catalog a number of years back (when they still used to send out catalogs) and noticed the line of Santa Barbara 4×5 pinhole cameras they carry. They looked sort of cool, and so I started poking around online to learn more about them. I noticed that I liked a lot of the images people were making with pinhole cameras. I also discovered that you could use these cameras with Polaroid film, which made them seem even more intriguing. So I got one (or maybe a couple). At first, I was kind of excited just to get an image. There’s something about pinhole photography that invites both skepticism and wonder: you look at the camera and it’s just a box with a tiny hole. No shutter, no optics, definitely no LCD screen. I found it hard to believe at first that anything could come of exposing film in something like that. But sure enough, it works. The images are not sharp like with cameras using optics, but they have their own charms. I found that I didn’t mind the lack of sharpness compared to photographs made with optics. Indeed, the slight softness of pinhole images gives them something of a painterly look, which I really like. I also liked having so much less to worry over: what lens to use, what f-stop and shutter speed, and so on. Pinhole photography is very liberating in that way. Framing a pinhole photo is always a tentative, approximate affair, and the unlimited depth of field afforded by the pinhole frees me of worries about depth of focus while offering new ways of exploring near-far relations (I couldn’t have come close to the images I’ve made of rocks in the river, for example, using a standard camera with a lens). The exposures are generally very long, and a bit of movement, the flow of water, a shifting cloud, even a gentle breeze can alter the image considerably. A good pinhole photograph is always something of pleasant surprise, something I cannot take full credit for, as my control over the outcome is far more limited than with a standard camera: the feeling I get in viewing a pinhole photograph I’m happy with is more one of good fortune bestowed than pride or accomplishment (perhaps this is why pinhole photographers are so low-ego, and generally so sharing with their tricks and techniques). Though all of photography retains for me an element of magic (first felt when seeing an image emerge on what had been blank piece of paper), pinhole photography strikes me as especially magical, especially incredible: it continually astonishes me that an image – a detailed rendering of a scene – can be achieved with little more than a tiny hole poked in a thin strip of metal.

I’ve backpacked a number of times in the hills of West Virginia, but never exactly in your area yet, when I first saw your photos, I knew exactly where they were. The land and rivers of WV permeates everything it touches, including the people and the things those people build and do. It’s one of the few areas that come to mind where taking photos of the landscape seems synonymous with taking photos of the people. Do you feel that your methodic exploration of the Cheat and its valley have brought you closer to the people you now live around?
Living in rural West Virginia, I will always be something of an outsider. Many, if not most, of the people who live here have done so for generations upon generations and so they have a sense of place that I cannot begin to approach. But I think getting out and exploring the area, creating images in response to what I see, has at least helped me appreciate that deep sense of place and maybe tap into it a little bit. Making photographs of the Cheat River is my way of trying to express my admittedly newer-found attachment to where we live. I have over the past several years started showing my work occasionally at a few galleries in Preston, Monongalia, and Tucker Counties. I also peddle my photographs at some of the local festivals, most regularly at the annual Cheat River Festival here in Albright. Doing these sorts of things has put me out there with my work among people. I am not always comfortable doing this: I don’t have the “gift of gab,” I’m not a natural salesman, and I often feel very self-conscious about my work. I also don’t like the way appreciating and purchasing often get run together. But on the whole, I think it has been good for me to display my work and talk about it with whomever happens to walk by and take an interest. Once a young woman made a point of telling me that one of my photographs was hanging in her living room and it made her happy to see it there every day. But I also just like getting a positive response from people, even if they do not buy anything. The nicest thing ever told to me came from a very local guy, maybe around my age. He didn’t buy any of my photos but he spent a long time looking at them. Before he left he said something like, “You know, you’ve really captured the beauty of this place with these photographs. Whenever I’m driving here (Route 72, which runs along the Narrows), I always tell my kids to look out their windows and see how beautiful it is where they live. These photos really show that.” The locals at these events nearly always recognize the sites where my pictures were taken, but they are sometimes surprised at how these familiar places look (this is especially the case with the bridge here in Albright). On these occasions, I like to think of my photographs as like that dad with his kids, pointing out to them, and so reminding them of, the beauty of this place.

Site News

June Recap

July 2, 2015 Kier

June 2015 saw some great pinhole action at ƒ/D! In case you missed it, here’s what happened:

June 3: We covered Marko Umicevic’s paper negative process for enhanced tonality.

June 5: We brought you Tina Rowe’s wonderful representation of movement.

June 10: We published Todd Schlemmer’s overview on 3D printing pinhole cameras.

June 12: We travelled to Alaska with Eddie Erdmann and his serene panoramic captures.

June 17: We covered the benefits of using some very feature packed apps on your phone for pinhole photography.

June 19: We got deep in symmetry with Dikal’s pinhole photography.

June 24: We stirred the pot and looked at motion in a new way as we discussed controlling depth of field in pinhole photography

June 26: We shared Csaba Kovács’s exploration of fog and converging lines.

Finally, we’ve been delighted to continue promoting some of the best pinhole photography available:

[nggallery id=12 images=35]

All images on this page are copyright protected by the respective artists.

Aesthetic, Articles

Book Review: The Creative Life in Photography

July 1, 2015 Kier 2 Comments

In photography, perhaps more than other visual arts, it can be very easy to slip away from what makes it an art. We spend so much time analyzing films, chemistry, physics, and gear (all the glorious gear!) that sometimes we don’t leave any time to think about why we may have gotten into this mess in the first place.

So today I wanted to take a moment to discuss a photography book that left all of that behind. Not only is there not a single paragraph detailing technology in Brooks Jensen’s The Creative Life in Photography, there’s not even a single photograph! In many ways, this is exactly the photography book that many of us need.

If you’re not familiar with Brooks, he’s the founder and editor of Lenswork magazine, a publication I’ve respected greatly over the years. He’s also a very accomplished photographer in his own right. Although he’s not a pinhole photographer (nobody’s perfect), his years as a professional photographer and curator of photography have given him some very valuable insights into how to be a better photographer and how to be a successful photographer (whatever that means for you).

In Creative Life in Photography, he’s collected for the reader a number of his editorial essays from Lenswork over the years. This makes the book exceptionally easy to read – 15 minutes gets you through an editorial to think about for a day or two before you return for the next one. What follows are some of my favorite excerpts from the book. Not to worry – I left plenty out for you to discover and explore yourself.

On making great artistic accomplishments:

Great art always works on multiple levels. It appeals to the sophisticated aficionado, the superbly trained and appreciative peer, and at the same time to the masses who have less appreciation of the intricacies, but nonetheless respond at a level appropriate to their training. I am reminded of the portrayal of Mozart in the fictionalized movie Amadeus. His work was appreciated (well, actually despised ) for its fine subtleties of genius by his peer Salieri, and at the same time enjoyed by the masses for its sheer enjoyability and accessibility.

On the importance of art teaching us to see that which we overlooked before:

Landscapes were just background until artists taught us to see them. Those monks who crossed the Alps in medieval times didn’t look to the hills as beautiful examples of nature. They thought those mountains were a burden and would have liked to flatten them out into nice rolling plains that would be easier to traverse. Now we look at the Alps and say they are beautiful precisely because the artists have taught us to see them as beautiful.

On discovery and seeing:

One of my favorite quotes is from Nobel Prize winner Albert SzentGyorgyi: “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”

On finding great photographs within your own surroundings, and resisting the temptation to find greatness in unfamiliar lands:

Could it be that the great photographers make their great images because they spring from their life, whereas the majority of “amateurs” fail to make great photographs because they are too busy trying to photograph someone else’s life, someone else’s landscape, someone else’s experience? Perhaps instead of going out looking for subject matter, we should simply try to clearly see our life as it is and find the images of significance that surround us.

One passage I found particularly interesting was about his process when he does go to a new place. He found that, like myself and I’m sure many others, he would have a hard time seeing beyond the straightforward and obvious. For a time, this frustrated him. Eventually though he learned to cope with this tendency – he now sets about getting the obvious shots out of his system. He indulges the urge to get the first 10 or 20 obvious shots out of the way. This accomplishes two things.

First, it allows him to move past the obvious, rather than spend the mental energy to fight the urge. Second, he uses these shots to get more familiar with the place, so that by the time he’s done with these shots, he’s got a better understanding of what he’s seeing. Pinhole takes some time to do these photos, especially if you know you’re going to not like them later. So I adapted his process – I shoot these photos with my phone. This way I get to see the obvious, explore for the less than obvious, and get a quick check on my exposure settings.

Over the years, I’ve learned that such obvious compositions are an important part of the “loosening up” phase of my process, like limbering stiff joints after a long drive. I photograph with self- indulgent patience, but universally find these images of little use. They are too predictable.

The final piece of his book that really got me was his discussion of artist statements. He’s read a lot of artist statements in his day, and in a nutshell, detests most of them. If you’re a serious artist, his discussion on artist statements alone is worth the few bucks for the book.

June 2015 saw some great pinhole action at ƒ/D! In case you missed it, here’s what happened:

Finally, we’ve been delighted to continue promoting some of the best pinhole photography available:

Exploring the Art of Pinhole Photography