Photography

on a roll

2012-01-27T12:03:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday afternoon I finished taking my first roll of film. Let me tell you how this happened. In the early afternoon I was creepily sitting in random spots around campus adjusting settings on my camera for minutes on end before looking through the viewfinder and pressing down the shutter. Using a film camera definitely makes me think a lot more before I actually take a photograph. Digital photography has spoiled me, but film photography is surely teaching me patience. So far, I am happy to report that I am a pretty decent student.
So after all of my campus creeping, I pressed a couple of buttons on my camera to rewind the film. When I opened the back of the camera to retrieve the roll of film I had a small moment of panic. The film was completely INSIDE the roll! (See random illustrative photo below)

http://photo.net/medium-format-photography-forum/00SU2C

Now if you are someone who used film cameras on the regular back in the day (hehe) and you took them somewhere and someone else processed your film, you may not understand my moment of panic. However, I knew that I would be the one processing this film, and in that very moment my only thought was, "HOW in the world am I going to get the film out of this roll!??!"
Turns out that my photography professor has this cool metal gadget that slips inside the part where the film comes out, and it grabs the end of the film so that you're able to pull it out. This sounds kinda complicated, so I have a youtube video to demonstrate:

Well after he pulled my film part of the way out (if he pulled of it out, the film would have been ruined, duh), he told me that we weren't developing film again until Friday! So I was pretty bummed about that! (But now it's Friday so my next blog will be about developing film!) So that's the story of how I finished taking my first roll of film!

I'm Back!

2012-01-24T22:37:00.000-08:00

Last year I used this blog to detail my experience with pinhole photography. This year, if it's okay with you, I would like to use it to document my Black and White film photography experience. I loved the darkroom last year, and I cannot even being to express how excited I am to be able to spend loads of time in there again this year! I even have access to the building after it is closed, so I anticipate spending late nights in the dark room. The library is so overrated!

Today I went out to Riverside Cemetery to take some pictures with my film camera. I think I kind of cheated because I also took my digital camera along. I did it because I'm not entirely sure that my light filter on my film camera is accurate, so I wanted to do some test shots with my digital camera first. I have the test shots from my digital camera, but I'm still waiting to develop my film from the other camera. Below you'll find a sneak peak of one set. What I'm doing is taking photographs at 3', 10', and 15' from the subject. The fence is the focus! These digital photos are completely unedited, and I'm praying that the film photos turn out well!

In the digital photos I was focusing more on getting the lighting right than the composition, but I took a lot more time with the film camera, for the record. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have! Be sure to check back for more updates!

Jess

the end

2011-05-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

I told you that I was coming to the end. Before I tell you how the class turned out, I'd like to post the final 5 images that I turned in for grading. I had to post an image of choice, one of architecture, one with a ghost image, a landscape, and one from my handmade camera. So here they are:

Image of Choice

I chose this image because of the clarity and detail in the picture. Halfway through the semester I replaced my average-sized pinhole with a smaller one, making my images much clearer, and frankly, much harder to take. After two tries, I came up with this image. The cool thing about pinhole is that there is no depth of field, meaning that everything in the picture from the foreground to the background is the same clarity. Notice how the building and the trees are just as clear as the table and chair. If I took this picture with my digital camera, I would have to choose where to focus on, and the other objects would be fuzzy. Depth of field--something I learned a bit about in my pinhole class.

Architecture

Moving on to my architecture picture. I took this picture of Newton Chapel because I love the stained-glass windows. I wasn't sure how they would turn out with my pinhole camera, and I certainly got much better results than I had hoped for. In print, the image of Jesus in the center is crystal clear, thanks in part to my tiny pinhole, I'm sure. I ended up with two shots of this building, and I'm not sure if this is the good one or not, but you get the picture! This is also one of the iconic Spires that tower over Mercer's campus, and I couldn't go a whole semester in a photography class without taking at least one picture of them!

Ghost Image

This is my ghost image, and it PERFECTLY expresses how I feel about this statue. From the very first pamphlet I got of this creepy statue of Jesse Mercer, I vowed never to rub his head as per Mercer tradition. SGA added this statue to the Macon campus years ago, and at some point it became a tradition to rub his head when walking to the Commencement Ceremony as a freshman. (It reminds me of how you're not supposed to walk under the arches at UGA until after you've graduated.) Anyway, I have always thought that this statue was really creepy, and taking a ghost image seemed equally creepy, so I thought this would be the perfect setting for it. Turns out, it was. Ironically, after taking this picture, I developed a new appreciation for the Jesse Mercer statue, and I now have a very awesome picture!
Oh, I almost forgot to say what a ghost image was! Basically, if you sit/stand in front of the pinhole camera for only part of the exposure, you will only partially show up. I sat there 15/20 seconds, which is a good chunk of time and also why I showed up pretty well. However, in print, I am eerily transparent, and I love it!

Landscape (but not really)

This is my landscape photo that isn't really a landscape. It does, however have trees and such in it and I got full credit for it, so I guess it counts in some way. When we first started in the pinhole class, he told us that anything we set our cameras down on to take a photo would take up 1/2 to 2/3 of the image. I was very careful to avoid that in the beginning by making sure that my camera was raised off of the ground for each shot. However, when I saw this brick path on campus, I thought it would be neat to have it as the main focus of the picture. I am really happy with how it turned out. I think the lines of the brick really lead the eye into the picture and towards the sunlit trees in the background. I also like how the two historic buildings on campus frame the trees as well. This is probably one of my favorite images that I took this semester.

Oh boy, did I have issues with this handmade pinhole camera. I've explained those as well as this picture on my blog before, so you can check that post out if you'd like a recap! Needless to say, I had a rough time with it.

My Pinhole Camera

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I do wish that I had taken a lot more pictures, but I am pretty happy with all of the pictures that I do have. I also got a great idea of how to display some of them, and I can't wait until next week, AKA the summer, when I can finally put it together. Basically I have an old window pane that I want to display the images in. I got an A in the class and I really learned a lot! I'm excited about my minor in photography, and I hope to continue this blog next semester as I work on various projects for that.

In the meantime, I may be around, or I may not. Hopefully I will find lots of fun things to do with my pinhole images and be able to post them on here! :)

coming to the end

2011-04-18T20:29:00.000-07:00

Today I went to take a bunch of pictures all at once since the semester is coming to a close. The first 3 weren't very successful because I haven't really worked with my pinhole camera in several weeks, but I decided to post them anyway.

This is a building on the quad that I really like. I had a class in there freshman year, but I haven't really been inside a whole lot since. It's very old, like many buildings on the quad, and I like it! I wish I had taken longer on the exposure so you could see more of the details, though.

I've really enjoyed taking photos of windows this semester. I think they always turn out really neat since there's such a large contrast between the light coming in through the window and the room. Most of the windows in the art building were open today since it was such a nice spring day, and I just had to take a photo of it.

When I saw this bench and magnolia tree today I fell in love with it. I walk by it every Wednesday morning, but something about the evening light made me love it even more. I wish that I had taken a little more time with the exposure, but maybe I can go back tomorrow and try again. The bench is really pretty and serene looking, I think.

Frustrated but Learning

2011-03-02T13:04:00.000-08:00

I finally got a new flash drive! Yay! I discovered that the 4GB ones at the bookstore were $10 instead of twenty, so I got two. I also have text documents on each one saying that if they are found I will give a reward to the person who returns them! Yay! So hopefully no one will find and keep them this time. I will also be more careful and never let them leave my side! Well, okay that's a little extreme, but you get the point.

Today I'm going to show you the pictures that I've taken with the pinhole camera that I made. I'll write a short description about each one and then see if I feel like doing anything else.

Pinhole 1

Pinhole 2

Pinhole 3

Pinhole 4

Above is the first picture that I took with the camera that I made. Below that are the 4 pictures that I took with my digital camera. I basically put it on top of the pinhole camera, lined the lens up with each pinhole and snapped a photo. You can clearly see four different sections from each pinhole, which is something that I was not expecting. I wanted the images to blend better, much like the digital images would if I put them all together in Photoshop or something. If you look at each digital image then at the pinhole image, you'll see that everything that's in the exact center of the digital image is what appears on the pinhole image. I thought that was actually pretty interesting. I would never have known that if I hadn't taken the digital images. Also, the third image from the left is significantly lighter than the other three. This is because this pinhole was facing the sun, and I should have shortened the exposure time but I forgot. That one is also really blurry. I bumped the camera...oops!

Pinhole 1

Pinhole 2

Pinhole 3

Pinhole 4

I took this picture above the same day as the first one. It was sitting on the bricks in front of one of my favorite buildings on campus. The digital images below it don't match up as well with this one because I didn't actually set the camera on top of the pinhole and line up the lens with the pinholes, but I think you can get the gist of it. You can see the steps to this building on the left, from the second pinhole. On the far right is the top of the stairs that lead down to the street. In the 3rd scene is part of the Administration Building. Here you can see why it bothers me so much that parts of the image are getting cut off instead of blending all the way around. The one tower of the building looks rather eerie with a tree limb sticking out of it! The first pinhole barely shows up on the far left, but it's basically just the brick path.

This was the first picture that I took today. First I forgot to mirror the image so that it would be correct. Secondly, the two frames on the left were clearly the ones facing the sun. Again I forgot to adjust my exposure accordingly. Thirdly, there should be a bench in one of those over-exposed sections. Do you see it? I don't either. My homemade pinhole camera makes objects disappear! I really wish I would have taken my digital camera on this journey so that you could see what I mean. There is a bench to the right of the tree, so it should show up on the far left, but it's not there. At least I didn't bump the camera this time so it's not blurry. It's just odd.

This is the last one that I took and I like it best. I can finally get a clear idea of what my camera is doing. For example, look at the trash can in the second scene. See how it's distorted? That's from the round camera. I think it's a really cool perspective. Also the bricks on the far left are really curved in the other direction. Because the paper is wrapped around a cylinder in my camera it makes it appear like they are curving toward the camera instead of away from it. Again, I wish I had taken my digital camera for you to see.

This post may not look like a lot (or maybe it does), either way, it wore me out. It was a lot to format and write about. I put a new shim on my pinhole camera that I'm borrowing for the class, and it should make my images sharper. Here is one example:

2 minute exposure
inside the art building

Hopefully I will be able to post more soon. I really like blogging about the pictures, almost more than actually taking them! I've definitely learned a lot of patience with this class so far! I also want to make another pinhole camera, so we'll have to see what happens. For my trip to Chicago next week, though, I think I'll just stick with my faithful Nikkon digital camera!

Homemade Pinhole Camera

2011-02-22T22:02:00.000-08:00

Last week I finalized my pinhole camera that I MADE myself. I have a picture below, but it's a round camera with 4 pinholes, one on each 'side,' even though cylinders don't have sides.

This is the camera! The problem that I had with it today that I cannot really fix is that each pinhole is very far from the other pinholes. This means that I don't get a continuous picture. There are clear lines where the photo from one pinhole fails to overlap with the next one. I think if the box was smaller, then the pinholes would be closer to one another, and the photo strip would look more continuous. Right now it just looks weird. Also, for some reason the box moved really easily. It was very sensitive to touch so it was really hard to take the tape 'shutters' off and on without moving the box and causing a blur. I only did two pictures today but I just wasn't very satisfied with them.

I still don't have a new USB yet so I can't even put the pictures on here. Also, I think we got new computers in the lab in the art building, so all of the pictures I had saved on the computer are gone. However, I do think that I had all of them saved before that happened. Even if I didn't, I still have the originals. Worst case scenario, I'll just have to scan a couple over again.

Today I actually took my digital camera with me to take pictures, and it was awesome! Even when my pinhole pictures didn't turn out just like I wanted them, I was still able to see what I was trying to capture by taking the photo with my digital camera. It also really helped me figure out what exactly was going on with my homemade camera. By using the pictures from the digital camera I was able to see what the pinhole camera missed between each pinhole.

Overall, I think it was a very successful day because I learned a lot of new things. I was able to finally test out my pinhole camera, and one great thing about it was that it didn't have any light leaks! It just wasn't made quite the way I wanted it to be. Since the pinholes don't overlap the images like I thought they would, I might just use the camera to take pictures of 4 different things that have something in common. That way I'll have 4 separate images on one sheet of paper, but they will be related in some way. I'll have to come up with a good idea of things to take pictures of, but I was thinking doing 4 different buildings on the quad or 4 different windows...something like that.

Enough with the talking; here are some pictures:

MAYBE I'll post the pictures that the pinhole cameras actually took a little later...let's just say they look nothing alike!

Jessica

5 in 1

2011-02-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday..which by now is really over a week ago, I took FIVE pinhole pictures. It was quite a feat. It took about two and a half hours to take and process all of them, but it was really fun. So here are the pictures with a few comments about them. I'm not happy with all of them, but I guess I learned quite a bit.

This first one is a re-take of a door that I really like on campus. It seems like I still didn't get the exposure quite right and I somehow ended up with black blobs on my negative (which look like two white smudges on the photo). Maybe I'll go back and try it again. You know what they say: third time's a charm!

This is a photo that I took looking out of the window in the art building. Maybe I got lazy and didn't want to go back outside or maybe I just wanted to see how it would turn out. I guess you'll never know. The only thing that I don't really like about it is how white and over-exposed it is at the top. I'm actually not quite sure if this was an exposure issue or if it had to do with the way the light hit the window or what. Maybe I'll just assume it was the window and grow to love it for its artistic factor.

I really wish that this picture would have turned out like I wanted it to. This photo makes me want to start taking my digital camera along with my pinhole camera so that I can take photos of the setup and show you what I was really trying to do. On campus there is a building with windows that basically go below ground level, like to a basement...but there is almost a little alley next to these windows. I would have had to climb down a sketchy ladder to go into the alley so instead I decided to prop my camera on the ledge facing the window. I wanted to tilt it at an angle some so that you could see the random things sitting inside the window sill of the basement, but I didn't quite get the angle or the exposure right for that. You can kind of see the top of a bottle in the 4th pane from the left, and there's something in the 2nd one as well, but now I can't remember what it was.

The thing about pinhole cameras for me is angles. I love this picture, even though the angle isn't quite what I wanted. It's basically some sort of cellar/basement door to another building on campus, and I just really loved the way it looked for some reason. Because of the angle I had to crop out a lot of the brick building, but I really wish that I could have kept more of it. The camera was sitting on the ground angled slightly upward--that's why the door seems to be wider at the bottom and narrow at the top.

I really don't like this picture, and I'm not sure why. I think the reason I have a hard time enjoying my pinhole camera is because I never know exactly what I am taking a picture of. I put the camera on the ledge of a window outside of the art building and tried to point it so that you could see multiple window panes...I just don't think it turned out like I expected it to, but I guess that's part of the process.

I have been really slacking off on taking pictures this week, but I just turned in my "artistic" camera that I made myself, so hopefully I will be back to taking photos soon. Also, my flash drive is still lost in the psychology building or in the hands of a stealing psychology student on campus somewhere, and I am obviously still frustrated about that fact. It makes it impossible to get pictures off of the computer in the art building and onto my computer because there is no internet access. Who doesn't have internet access? Anyway, I am starting to rant so I should probably wrap up my post for now.

I made the artistic camera, and I'm hoping to take my first picture with it in the cemetery today. I think it will be interesting. The camera is made out of a round hat box and it has 4 pinholes around the outside. Inside there is a cylinder that the paper goes around, and I'm so excited to see how it works! Well, hopefully it will work. I think that if it works at all, I will be super happy. Anyway, until next time!

Jessica

Photos...Finally!

2011-02-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

So, my roommate Katlyn was so gracious and let me borrow her flash drive, despite the fact that I have a tendency to lose them...well, at least I lost mine. Therefore, I now have photos to put on this blog. First I want to start with the photo that I showed in class today for my presentation.

Well there it is. Just in case you don't know anything about pinhole cameras...google it! Just kidding, I'll tell you a little bit. Pinhole is extremely primitive as far as cameras go. They are comprised of a light-proof box, a hole in the front, a piece of tin that has a tiny pin hole (hence the name) which covers the larger hole on the front, a slot for the photo paper to go in the back, and a piece of tape to cover the pinhole (this serves as what we know today as the 'shutter').

Here's a little about the process of taking a photo: First you set up the camera with it pointed at your subject. (Sounds pretty normal so far, right?) Then you take the piece of tape off of the pinhole, which is considered 'opening the shutter.' Depending on the amount of light you have, you leave the tape off of the pinhole anywhere from 15 seconds (full sunlight) to upwards of 8 hours (indoors). After you've left it off for the appropriate amount of time (your guess as to what's 'appropriate' is as good as mine; trial and error method works best), you place the tape back over the pinhole. Finally, anytime you're ready you go to the dark room and develop your image; this is a process that takes about 8 minutes.

For me to produce the picture that you see above, I did this exact process with a 2.5 hour exposure. That means I left the tape off of the pinhole for 2.5 hours. Now let me just go ahead and say that I did not sit behind the camera for 2.5 hours and replace the tape as an alarm went off. I actually went to hang out with some friends and enjoyed a nice dinner before remembering that I had left my camera EXPOSED! :) That's not quite the correct terminology for what I actually did, but I thought it might be a funny joke. The photo paper inside the camera is what was being exposed to the light, but I digress.

The setup for this picture is really simple. I have a small shelf by my bed that has a lamp on it, so I turned the lamp on, set up the souvenir, and left the camera to do it's work. I really was trying to see how many textures I could get in the photo. I love that you can see the texture on the wall, the grain in the wood, and the texture of the emblem. You can also see rays of light patterns on the wall from the lamp if you look carefully. What I did not think about but am very happy with are the shadows that the Texas shape and Lonestar cast on the wall. I think they really add a lot to the composition of the photo. If those weren't there, it would just be an off-centered decoration sitting on a desk. I think the shadows fill some of the space towards the right side of the picture, and the texture of the wall starts where the shadows end, making 3 parts of the photo for your eye to look at. We all know how much our eyes love 3, (and if you didn't, then you do now!)

Another thing that I was trying to test by taking this picture was to see how close I could get to the subject and still be able to see everything that I wanted. If you remember, I said that this was a shelf by my bed...yes, shelf. Meaning that it is less than a foot wide. This also means that the pinhole camera was no more than 6 inches away from the emblem. Try doing that with a digital camera! The great thing about pinhole cameras is that everything is always in focus (unless you have motion or wind blur going on--but that's not what I'm talking about). When I start posting other pictures you'll be able to see that things in the background like trees and such are just as detailed as things in the foreground like other objects or people. This is what allowed me to be able to put the camera so close to the subject and turn out with a great picture!

I have plenty more pictures to post, so I might come back later tonight and show you two pictures that I took yesterday. Pinhole cameras are GREAT for landscapes and things like that, but I tend to take crazy pictures of broken glass or windows. You'll see what I mean later, but basically I think I'm going to make this semester a process of photographing windows and doors with my pinhole camera--or at least set aside a good portion of my photos for that!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to post any questions!
Jessica

Lost Flashdrive

2011-02-07T15:42:00.000-08:00

So, I still haven't found my flash drive, which means that I cannot post pictures yet. But I did have an adventure the other day and I wanted to share that. There is this old, abandoned high school here and it's absolutely gorgeous. In the States it seems like every time a building gets old and run down people tear it down instead of remodeling or restoring it. Well this building seems to have been saved from demolition right now because of asbestos and different things. I'm sure it will eventually be torn down so I decided to go and take a pinhole picture of it before that happens. So my friend Lizzie and I load up our cameras and drive over to this old high school, which isn't in the best of neighborhoods, and we take our picture. When we come back to the dark room to process them, we find that they're over exposed. Well we were going to go back right then, but it started raining. It was quite the adventure; I don't think my words can do it justice.
Hopefully I'll be able to go back and take a properly exposed picture sometime soon, but until then I just have a fun story!
Jessica

First Post!

2011-02-04T17:04:00.000-08:00

So I am taking a pinhole photography course this semester, and it is proving to be very different from what I expected...which I will explain in more detail later. Because it is not quite what I was anticipating, I figured it might be a good idea to keep a blog in order to track my progress and hopefully see how my attitude changes over the next few months. I want to post my pictures as well as talk about some of the experiences I have with the class, so that's what I'll do. I wanted to get started today, but somehow I have lost my USB drive which has all of my pictures on it. That being said, the first round of pictures will have to wait a bit, but I will come back soon with more details about my class!