Category Archives: Artist Feature

Dikal – Space

June 19, 2015 Libby Selinsky

One of the things that makes the pinhole camera special is the infinite depth of field it provides. Dikal uses that infinite depth of field to his advantage when working with symmetry and geometric shapes. There is something special in the way the shapes are drawn out as they fit into the frame view.

Using his Zero Image pinhole camera and Fuji Acros 100 film, Dikal creates incredibly dramatic scenes with great contrasts. Dikal found himself bored of the images that have become our norm these days, with “too perfect digital cameras”, and started poking around with many other types and styles of cameras. It was when he found his way to the pinholes, like so many of us, that his creativity blossomed and the, “Dreamlike atmosphere… Atypical framings… No viewfinder, lens free, no mechanism, just a hole and a film holder,” drew his curiosity and spirit. Dikal spent six years pushing his boundaries and finding his voice with his photos. And while he says, “I don’t pretend to take beautiful photos”, we disagree and we know that you will too.

Dikal, your photographs are a great respite for me. They transcend me from the chaotic space that I live in and deliver me to a place where space, contrast, texture and shapes make sense. I can breath a bit easier when I look upon your work and I am very grateful that you have decided to give yourself the space and freedom that comes with the unknown treasure hunt that your vision provides.

ZI Suffocating
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British Museum
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Solitude
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Come to Me
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Inner Vision
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m
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=^=
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_^_
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We encourage you to head over to Flickr to check out more of Dikal’s amazing pinhole photography

Artist Feature

Eddie Erdmann – Alaskan Pinholes

June 12, 2015 Libby Selinsky

Eddie Erdmann has traveled to many places since he left his home in Turnerville, Alabama. And while he has enjoyed seeing the world; nothing has enlightened him in the way that Alaska has. Alaska has been well known for its captivating beauty and overt, untamed landscapes. To Eddie, Alaska spoke clearly and drew out the photographer that he had hiding inside. We at f/D have an immense gratitude towards Alaska for cultivating the deep curiosity and creativity that is Eddie Erdmann.

Spend some time taking note of the great scenery, from the vast highway to the creamy water flow falling through the woods. Alaska likes to show her legs and they are beautiful.

[singlepic id=183 w=600]Rails to Girdwood[/singlepic]
Taken on the Alaska Railroad tracks just north of Girdwood, with Mount Alyeska in the distance.

[singlepic id=180 w=600]Alyeska[/singlepic]
From the first roll of film put through Eddie’s Reality So Subtle 6×17, Eddie took this in August 2014 while showing his visiting mother around Alaska.

[singlepic id=182 w=600]Matanuska Glacier 2[/singlepic]
Taken on an exploration of the Matanuska Glacier in August 2014.

[singlepic id=184 w=600]Virgin Creek Falls[/singlepic]
In Girdwood, Alaska, soon after the Alyeska Ski Resort photo was taken.

[singlepic id=181 w=600]Ghost Spruce Forest[/singlepic]
A subject that pulls at Eddie every time he sees it, these spruce trees died after the earth subsided during the 1964 Alaskan Earthquake, which was the strongest ever recorded in North America (magnitude 9.2). The salt water of Cook Inlet preserved the trees, and their corpses still stand to this day.

[singlepic id=179 w=600]Alaska Highway Yukon[/singlepic]
Taken in the Yukon, Canada last winter. The highway is largely deserted at that time of year, allowing for some long exposures without interruption.

More of Eddie’s work can be found on Flickr and his personal portfolio site.

Artist Feature

Tina Rowe – Movement

June 5, 2015 Libby Selinsky

Pinhole cameras carry great variances with movement. Whether it is the camera moving or the world around the camera, only certain aspects will be picked up. It all depends on two things: the length of exposure time and the amount of movement that accrues before the photo is finished being exposed.

[singlepic id=175 w=300 float=right] [/singlepic]Tina Rowe’s photographs are a wonderful example of movement in pinhole photography. She began focusing on this aspect with a long exposure of a restaurant in Paris (photo right). “A 45 minute shot I had taken in a busy restaurant in Paris. Although people were blurred, they still stayed in their own little pools in the final image, the blurring increased the colour palette and I am pretty sure that there was some colour shift on the film from the long exposure.” This photo is where her path to experimentation with movement began.

[singlepic id=178 w=300 float=left] [/singlepic]As Tina’s experimentation grew, she found a love of movement on transportation. It started with a train ride on a rickety train in Brazil (photo left), when she took a couple of photos and came away “impressed with the way the long exposure, coupled with the movement, made the colours mix and accentuate each other while the length of the exposure meant that I ended up with an average of the forms being captured.” She had stumbled on something now – an abstraction that brought more detail of emotion than physical form.

The camera movement captures a bustling feeling. Tina brought home these lessons of energy and movement. During some forays into the heart of London, she applied her technique to the city buses, making exposures of 5 to 10 minutes as the buses rambled through town. With these handheld photos, She’s produced photographs that recreate the movement of both the bus and it’s rider. Her photographs are designed to take you on an unfamiliar ride in the seat of a bus.

[singlepic id=176 w=600]From Bus, ©Tina Rowe 2015[/singlepic]

[singlepic id=173 w=600]Balls Pond, ©Tina Rowe 2015[/singlepic]

[singlepic id=177 w=600]Middle Bus, ©Tina Rowe 2015[/singlepic]

[singlepic id=172 w=600]38, ©Tina Rowe 2015[/singlepic]

[singlepic id=174 w=600]Bus Back, ©Tina Rowe 2015[/singlepic]

More of Tina’s photography is highlighted on her website. She can also be found on Twitter and Flickr.

Artist Feature

Nicolas Turlais – Backcountry Pinholes

May 22, 2015 Kier 2 Comments

Editor’s Note: All photos in this post are ©Nicolas Turlais.

If you’ve done much backpacking in the backcountry, doubly so for the mountains, you probably know of the aloneness. It’s a sense that washes over you at times during a trip. The times it hits you depends on how remote of an area you’re in and how many people are with you. But, invariably, it comes. It’s stark, almost arresting. It’s neither good nor bad – at least for me it never was – but it has always preceded the euphoria of being deep in the backcountry. It’s an absolute recognition that you’re on your own, and it signals that your body and mind fully recognize that everything that happens from here out is a matter of your own wits.

Today’s featured photographer, Nicolas Turlais, is a Paris-based pinhole photographer that finds himself in the peaks of the French Alps. It’s a place that has always beckoned those who were willing to come find something new. Nicolas tends to venture for 5 or so nights at a time, sometimes alone and other times bringing friends along. Lucky for us, he often brings his pinhole camera.

His reasons for backpacking are not unknown to the initiated: “a taste for the effort”, the challenge, to prove that he can do it. He’s even tried it without a tent, but doesn’t recommend that approach. Nicolas takes his photos when he “feels really small” – his way of describing the aloneness. It’s not the walking that calls Nicolas to the mountains – he’s called by the loneliness, the harsh weather, the immense geological forces that shaped the space, and the gratefulness of feeling alive and comfortable in such a wild place, alone.

Please enjoy the following selection of photos from Nicolas Turlais. For more of Nicolas’s work, including upcoming work from a 15 day trip to Iceland coming this summer, take a visit to his site.

Lac du Glacier d’Arsine
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Lac du Glacier d’Arsine
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Lac du Glacier d’Arsine
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La Grande Ruine
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Lac du Pavé
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Vallée de la Clarée
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Cerbère
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Vallée de la Clarée
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Artist Feature

Luca Baldassari: A Pinhole Camera in the North Cape

May 15, 2015 Kier 1 Comment

Editor’s Note: All images in this article are ©Luca Baldassari 2015

[singlepic id=106 w=150 float=right][/singlepic]For this week’s artist feature we’re pleased to take a bicycle trip with Luca Baldassari to the North Cape region of Norway. He was was able to fundraise on indiegogo to pay his travel expenses. Luca made this trek in 2014 on his trusty Surly Ogre bike loaded down with panniers. His camera for the trip was his homemade camera that he’s dubbed the “baldaV” – a worthy 4×5 that he kept loaded with Fuji FP100. The FP100 was, in our humble view, the perfect film for this landscape, as it oozes with blues and greens, especially when exposed through a pinhole.

Luca lost his father in December 2013, and the trip was a tribute as his father had wanted to go to North Cape.

“I feel lost and [know that] I’d lost something and someone forever. I feel that now I have to face travel [held off] for a long time because of fear. I made [the trip to] rediscover who I am and [who] I lost, [knowing] it’ll never be like before. I’m leaving with the bike and pinhole with the hope and consciousness that they’ll help me to restore, redefine who I am. [I headed in the direction] to North Cape for my first bike travel following EuroVelo 7’s route, from Stoccolma, 2600km. 48 days on my own but with the support of all those who believed in my project.”

[singlepic id=110 w=150 float=left][/singlepic]Luca found the following passage from CSI’s song, “In Viaggio” particularly moving:
“Viaggiano i viandanti viaggiano i perdenti più adatti ai mutamenti
viaggia Sua Santità
Viaggiano ansie nuove Sempre nuove…
Cadono di vertigine…”

So without further adieu, Luca Baldassari: A Pinhole Camera in the North Cape

[singlepic id=117 w=500]Norway Sea and Clouds, ©Luca Baldassari 2015[/singlepic]

[singlepic id=116 w=500]Norway Nordkapp 1, ©Luca Baldassari 2015[/singlepic]

Artist Feature

Jan Geisen: Stormy Pinholes

May 1, 2015 Kier

These dark and moody photographs were made at the docks at the new building area “Überseestadt” in the north of the City of Bremen, Germany and the harbor of Brake, Germany. Jan would head there after throwing his clothes in at the laundromat. Having time to kill, he would arrange his pinhole cameras there even in the most miserable of conditions. Most of us wouldn’t bother to set out cameras in a huge storm, however Jan was pleasantly surprised in the way that some photos came out spectacularly in that they conveyed more about the storms than they did about the scene.

“I think [the pictures] are more “whole”, because they show not only the physics of light, but -by accident- even the physics of humidity or even wetness chemically reacting with the photo-sensitve paper in the camera (add to it the poor developement technique and its imprints on the negative they became in a “Berthold Brecht Way” epical).”

Photos 1 – 3
Jan set up his camera in a heavy downpour, and then waited in his car with a beer and the radio on for about 15 minutes while making the exposure on Ilford multigrade paper. During the exposure, the rain became even heavier, and a thunderstorm started, before he left his car again to retrieve the cameras. The wood box cameras had become soaked through. He headed for home, grabbing his laundry on the way, to develop the paper negatives.

On #1 there were some sprinkles of water from the rain that got in the camera. The uneven sky, water stains, and dark foreground bring the stormy situation together.

Photo #2 was taken by a camera placed underneath a small dock for yachts. This camera also had some water issues, causing parts of the image to be brightened, reminiscent of the lightning of the storm. As luck would have it, the water stains add to the linear feel of this image and help with the contrast. The lasting impression is of the moody, violent storm that had washed through during the exposure.

The camera for #3 takes in the broader scene that was detailed in photos #1 and #2, and it too took in rainwater. Again we see more of the staining and bright streaks that were shown in the previous photos. The distant buildings are softened by the rain, and one feels the blanketing of this storm.

Jan returned to the scene another time for #4, this time under different weather conditions. He set up the camera under sunny conditions, but in the distance there were dark clouds forming for another storm. The exposure was just a few minutes, but in that time the weather had turned measurably worse, and Jan collected his camera just as the heavy rains moved in on him.

Now in photo #5, Jan set up to capture another perspective – this time at the harbor of Brake, a town near Bremen – and again, the storms came too. But unlike in #5, Jan wasn’t as lucky with his timing. Just as Jan started the exposure, the hardest rains yet soaked him through, and again he waited in his car for 15 minutes during the exposure. When he did retrieve his camera, he found it face down in the mud. The final image being very dark and foreboding, with but a streak of light in the middle to give a tease of what he came for.

Artist Feature

Delio Ansovini: Still Life

April 17, 2015 Kier

At ƒ/D, our mission is to promote the art of pinhole photography. To date, we’ve been bringing daily pinhole photo features. But today we want to extend into our next branch of pinhole bliss – Artist Features!

For our first feature, we present the unique talent of Delio Ansovini! Delio was born in Parma, Italy in 1943 and spent his youth in Pavia and Vallemania. Professionally, he did his undergrad engineering studies in Pavia and Milan, before Continue reading Delio Ansovini: Still Life →

So without further adieu, Luca Baldassari: A Pinhole Camera in the North Cape

Exploring the Art of Pinhole Photography