The Weekend ...well, ends.

I've been contemplating, mulling, thinking, you know that thing one does with his gray matter between the ears. It became clear to me that once a week, I should get to wax poetic about whatever I feel like, be it politics (oops, scratch that one), cameras, philosophy, writing or just plain whatever I feel like.

So, from this Sunday on, I'm going to do just that. In what may appear as random Kerouacian train of thought, I'm just going to practice in writing what I do best...whacky ramble. Hopefully, some of it will amuse and sometimes even make one think about stuff. (Stuff, incidentally was made famous by the late great George Carlin.)

One thing that capped my month off was a.) the cover on ShutterBug. (I'll have the comp' issues in Tuesday and, unlike every other magazine I've been published in, I plan on keeping these somewhere safe) and b.) the check was nice, too. I really want to thank George Schaub, editor of ShutterBug, for giving me that cover. It came at an opportune time for my ego.

I want to thank Diana for all of her hard work making appointments, keeping the books, being my "bud" and keeping the websites straight.

Of course, my number two and three fans, Justice and Lucas. Two great kids they are! I get sunburned a lot from their erroneous thinking that the sun rises on Dad.

Finally and certainly not least, all my friends who would call themselves "clients" who have supported me over the past years. You guys are awesome! You've been there, too when my head got a tad large and I love you all.

We actually got out of the house today and drove up to Alpine. It's a cutesy little town east of San Diego up in the dry air about 2,000 feet. We took our cameras. I took it all as usual feeling a bit like the proverbial mule.

We had lunch at a Bistro...Bistro translates to expensive. Just as Ristorante also translates to expensive. This was a ristorante/bistro. Even a 'burger was 12 bucks. So I opted for a salad and Diana, as usual, observed "It's all so expensive." Ya gotta love this girl. This is the lady who reads a menu from right to left. No it's not a Dutch thing, it's price to food index. She shops for everything that way.

I looked in my pinhole camera bag (see how I sneaked that in?) and lo and behold, I only had two rolls of Superia left. For me, that's about enough for an hour of shooting. To quote Herman Munster "Darn. Darn. Darn." You see what digital does to your brain? YOu forget that you can only use film once. It doesn't reuse well.

The clouds that were at home on the ocean had disappeared. The wind was non-existent. Not boding well for pinholes. But, we put about 110 miles on the Jetta just roaming around the San Diego mountains getting lost and enjoying the incredible sunset.

And then! We drove home. We got back about 8 p.m. and both just crashed.

Now does it get any better than that? The best things in life really are free. Well, about $3.09 a gallon, but I didn;t count that. We drove. We talked. We planned.

In fact, we are planning a shoot in Pima Indian country, Coolidge, Arizona, after Christmas (we have a little gadfly to swat first) and then we are spending a few days on the reservation (Thanks, Cathy O) photographing these wonderful native Americans. We hope to get a book together and publish that in 2010.

So, tomorrow, I am back in the office, looking through another form of lens and looking forward to seeing some old friends (who are better, I hope) and seeing new unmet friends who we can encourage to get better.

All in all...it's a pretty good life. (I do miss Italy, though). Gadfly be damned.

Getting started in pinhole photography

A lot of people have asked how they get started shooting "pins." It really couldn't be easier. All you need is a light tight box, a pinhole and some film. OK. I am oversimplifying a tad, but it's pretty close.

First, you need to decide what type of film you are going to use. (Yes, you can buy or make a pinhole for a digital camera, but it just isn't the same.) I personally prefer larger formats such as 120 or 4x5. With 120 you can choose 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, 6x12 and 6x18. You can also choose transparency or negative film(s) and/or black and white. This gives you quite a range of options.

I personally prefer 6x6 or, more commonly, 2 1/4" x 2 1/4". I just happen to like square format. I also prefer Fuji Superia color negative film for many reasons not the least of which is the fact that it is a very forgiving film. It has a huge amount of latitude which gives you a lot of room for exposure error.

Second, after scanning the negatives, I can choose to create color, black and white, or sepia toned prints depending upon the subject matter.

As for a camera, you can make your own and there are a lot of sites with instructions on building pinhole cameras or, if you are DYI challenged like me, you can buy one. The Holgas (pictured at the top) are a great starting point costing about $35.00 from Amazon (click on the link to the left to have a look). (You will find out really quickly that they need to be taped up because they are not as light tight as I would like.)

Or you can opt for my favorite 6x6 which is the Zero 2000 (which comes as a standard or deluze version) from Zernike Au in Hong Kong. These are beautiful little teak and brass cameras that will satisfy even the most discerning photographer. They sell for $98 and $168. PLUS, if you decide you're not the pinhole type (whatever that type is) they are beautiful pieces for display (perish the thought.) I use mine!

Now, understand that shooting pinhole can be a tad disappointing in the beginning since you rarely have a viewfinder. In other words, you are pretty much guessing. Most of the 6x6 cameras on the market have an angle of view about equivalent to a 24mm wideangle lens so you learn after your first roll, to get in close...closer than you think...then move closer.

Wow! No focusing required. Yep. Everything is in focus from millimeters to infinity.

Then you unload your masterpieces and take them to a processor. Remember those folks? They actually develop film! Once you have your prints back, you have to scan the negatives and make some other decisions. That's where the fun just starts.

And that is where we will leave off and pick up next time.

Shameless self promotion

Now you can all see what I have been up to. Click here and comment if you like.

The new book Pinholography is now available. There are also 100 limited edition/signed and numbered copies available through me and they will be on our website www.jargonart.com as soon as I can cajole Diana to put it on the site.

You can use PayPal if you like.

Just e-mail me for details. The cover incidentally, is the Shutterbug cover for November 2009.

Thanks to all of you for your support.

Pinhole Perspectives or Chew your food 30 times.

Everyday, myself and thousands of others, drift down to a local Food Court to all too quickly fill our stomachs with everything from Greek to Italian food. We enjoy the San Diego weather while downing our Thai chicken (“Thai hot, thank you.”) yet so many people miss the incredible architecture and energy that surrounds us.

Things can easily get downright complicated including life (and food choices) in general. We are in the midst of a major “downturn” economically and even our outlook on the world can get pretty jaded. Art imitates life or vice versa (I never did get that one down), but like Henry David Thoreau, we all need to take an occasional breather and “Simplify. Simplify.”

Photography is no different. We too often get overwhelmed by technology and its attendant aberrations. Take a look, for example at some of the incredibly complex work being turned out by today’s photographers. Wow! (When do they have time to do this stuff?) These up and coming young lions are producing images of stunning quality and yet, there is something to be said for simplicity. The line between art and photography is blurring all the time.

Maybe I’m just getting too old, but one of my passions is sitting back on the sofa with a good photography book and just thumbing through the pages and rediscovering Ansel Adams, Matthew Brady, William Bell and Timothy O’Sullivan. Just slowing my life down and smelling the roses. While their photographic equipment was far from simple, their photographs (“captures” in today’s jargon) were stunning samples of simplicity itself.

It’s no wonder that pinhole photography, photography without lenses, has seen such a surge of late. While it’s been around as long as photography, it is pure simplicity. There are no lenses to “fool with,” memory cards to lose or back up drives to worry about. It’s just film. Good old fashioned film inside a box. But, more than that, pinhole photography makes the photographer slow down and change his perspective. Pinhole cameras, depending upon their “focal length,” typically have f/stops in the 135 to 295 range. Therefore, depth of field becomes incredibly deep and exposures become conversely long.

My 120 Zero 2000, for example, has an f/stop of 135 (and an angle of view of about 24 degrees). My 4x5 has an f/stop of roughly f/235 with two extensions. Exposures run in the 30 second to 5 minute range on overcast days or interior light. Reciprocity rears itself in these ranges, too. Strange things begin to happen. Motion (call it blurring) begins to become something magical, not at all the “Darn, my subject moved.” Instead, we actually search out the movement of time that can be captured by these cameras on a single exposure.

If we go back and look at the Civil War era photographs of the Matthew Brady troupe, we see these “mistakes” of Lincoln blurred, a soldier’s ghostly battlefield movements, trees swaying in the foreground and all of this giving us a sense of, well perspective. It is in many ways poetic and timeless history alive, in motion and simplified.

That same perspective is being captured today with pinhole cameras. Some of these cameras are little gems of engineering. Others, for the purist pinhole practitioner, are examples of making anything into a pinhole camera. I have seen cameras made from old books whose pages have been glued together, carved out and a hole drilled for a pinhole to cameras made from human skulls! But, within all this low tech art is one similarity, the photographs they take.

One must actually consider things like light. No PhotoShop needed! (That, in itself is kind of a freeing experience). We find ourselves starting to re-discover perspectives we never considered before. The near/far relationships that make us consider different aspects and points of view. Trees become mystical ghosts. Moving water becomes fairy tale mists. Buildings and points of view change.

One day at lunch, I decided to take my Zero 2000 6x6 pinhole out and just walk around the buildings. You begin to realize that you are probably the only person actually out admiring the scenery. Everyone else is scurrying from office to sidewalk, grabbing a quick smoke, bite to eat or chatting about anything but the economy. And, here I am with this little box and mini tripod, taking pictures. I feel like the proverbial “you can tell a tourist because he is always looking up” guy. Just taking it all in.

It really does change one’s perspective. I feel like Cartier-Bresson must have felt capturing life as it happens, in the “mean streets.” I actually like carrying my camera and making 3 second exposures while the iPhone fanatics are snapping pictures that will be forever stored on a chip being viewed occasionally by a co-worker. Something wrong with this picture, pardon the pun.

A funny side note is here I am with my little wooden box and a security guard questions me “What are you doing?”

“Taking lo tech pictures,” I explain waiting for him to ask “Is that a camera?” which he doesn’t. He’s too wrapped up in his complicated world.

“Well, no signage. Just doing my job.” And he walks away having accomplished little in securing our borders, I’m afraid. I continued taking my pictures.

Hundreds of people take pictures on their cell phones of the same scene and he probably never even noticed. Life really is odd…and complicated.

Everyday life becomes not so… well, everyday with a pinhole. Photography is fun again even with the occasional security encounter. Now lunch has become more of a new perspective than a quick bite. Some exposures actually take as long as lunch to accomplish.

So, take the advice of my grandmother and “chew your food 30 times” and take some long exposures while you’re at it. Enjoy the day!