Alternate Realities

The practice of photography often emphasizes maximum control of every vairable.  Pinhole photography on the other hand offers the possibility of relinquishing control to some extent to venture into exploring the unknown and unexpected.

While one has awareness of an ultra wide view and a near- infinite depth of field, exactly how those will be expressed in the captured image is hard to accurately foresee.  I frequently mount my pinhole camera on a small tabletop tripod because I like the low angle views which that allows.  A side effect of that choice is some guesswork in aim that often results in the inclusion of unanticipated elements.         

While sunlit scenes can be captured by the pinhole in a second or two, a shaded subject typically requires an exposure of eight or ten seconds, and picture making in interiors can require many minutes to completion.  In that length of time people may unexpectedly wander through the field of view, leaving behind ghostly traces of their passage.

Much of the above was part of my experience on a recent stroll through Old Town Albuquerque with my pinhole camera.  The subjects at hand were all very familiar, but the pinhole gave me images of a novel character where my other cameras would likely only have duplicated past experience.

Redo

 I got this Vello 35mm & 120 Film Digitizer for Smartphones from B&H.  It is a lot faster than the old flatbed scanner I used for a long time, and I think it produces scans that are just as good as I got from the flatbed.

I used this outfit recently when I wanted to rescan and rework some old pinhole images.  I thought some previous scans made by just hand holding the iPhone 14 were not bad, but the Vello's film holders and the device's vertical and horizontal adjustability makes the process easier and more precise.

 

I used GIMP for photo editing of these pictures.  It has most of the same tools as Photoshop and it is free to downlaod.  There are apps which allow image adjustments on the iPhone, but I am more comfortable just importing the negatives to the photo editor and doing the inversion to positive and other adjustments there.

Refocusing

Each third Thursday the Albuquerque Museum stages a big free evening event featuring live music, multiple exhibitions and various performances.  This one included a young woman walking around on scarily tall stilts.  What I mostly came for this time, however, was the opportunity to learn more about the public school photography program which puts on the yearly Focus On Youth exhibition.  The handout we got at the door read:

Meet the Artists

5:00--7:00 p.m

Meet student artists and hear about their work and creative process.

 When we arrived in the gallery there was just a guard and a couple visitors viewing the pictures.  We decided to get something to eat in the museum's restaurant and then. returned to the gallery a little after 6:00.  By then there were quite a few people viewing the photo prints and I found three students standing beside their entries and ready to talk about them.

All three of the students had single prints in the "Non Digital" sections of the exhibition, which in this case meant film-based analog photography.  The first that I talked to shared that his camera was a Pentax slr which he had gotten from a thrift store for twenty bucks.   That was a nice conversation starter as I could share that I had bought a Pentax in 1969 which was my only camera for about twenty years.

All three of the photographers I spoke with showed pictures featuring people.  The first fellow with the Pentax had made a nice portrait of a female friend.  One young woman did a self-portrait using a hand-held simple camera, and another did a picture of a "best friend" at a distance.  All three in discussing their class experience focused mostly on working in the darkroom to make the final prints.  All expressed favorable opinions of the course experience and the preparation and expertise of their teacher.

I tried to elicit information about course content regarding photographic history and styles specifically referring to books, films and exhibits, but nothing came forth on those subjects beyond the students' own self-directed inquiry.  About all I could safely conclude was that the students had gotten a good introduction to darkroom fundamentals and that the experience was overall satisfactory.

All three students I spoke with were from a single school and had the same teacher, so that left out a lot of what I was hoping to learn about the program which appears to be active in most or all of Albuquerque's high schools.  The presence of at least one of the staff would have filled in a lot of blanks.

It seemed particularly unfortunate that there were no young photographers present to talk about the digital work on display since that is clearly  the dominant mode now and for the foreseeable future.  Here, for instance, is a picture by a young photographer who I would very much liked to have talked with. 

And here is the credit beside the print:

That a picture of such technical excellence and emotional impact can be produced by a ninth grader seems extraordinary to me and demanding of some careful consideration.

While I was viewing the Focus on Youth exhibition Margaret was in the auditorium at the Youth Panel: Border Doors Project where the program announced "students discuss the stories and the ideas behind the Border Doors project."  She said it was an excellent presentation.  Perhaps next year the photography students might be given the opportunity to do something similar.

Perspective

Much of the appeal of pinhole images for me resides in the great depth of field afforded by the small aperture of the pinhole.  The novelty of the images thus produced is due to the fact that our eyes do not have the capacity to maintain sharp focus fron inches to miles in a single glance.  Images of that character can be produced by sophisticated lens design and at great expense, but the direct simplicity of the pinhole yields unassailable authenticity.

A Bright Future

 I look always look forward to this yearly exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum.  It is a delight to see what excellent photographic work is being done by these high school students, and this 2026 show may be the best yet.

 The compositions were uniformly sophisticated and the execution to the final prints was near faultless.  I especially liked this imaginative panoramic collage by Ava Greenwood, Cibola HS, Grade 11.

 The exhibition was divided into "Digital" and "Non Digital".

 

I was not surprised when I overheard a visitor ask "What is Non-Digital?".   Was this referring to digital as opposed to film-based analog photography?  Does the Non-Digital term include the reproduction of the image using traditional or alternative printing methods such as cyanotypes?

My only complaint about the Focus On Youth project is that there is little in the way of explanation of the instructional and technical processes that contribute to the success of this excellent annual show.  It would be nice to see that kind of additional information included in a thorough online presentation. 

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UPDATE

The monthly Third Thurday event will feature the Focus on Youth exhibition. 

Rustic Repast

 Thursday morning found us eating a breakfast of blue corn pancakes at Bike In Coffee.  I made a few digital shots for the color and used my half-frame Olympus Pen FT for black & white.

 Getting to the end of a roll of film with a half-frame camera is always something of a challenge.  This time I rolled half the Kentmere 100 into a reloadable cartridge, and still got forty shots.  Even that tactic took me a couple sessions to complete.

Pinhole Day & Beyond

On Sunday I loaded my pinhole camera with Kentmere 100 and went to the Albuquerque Veteran's Memorial where I met up  with three other New Mexico film photographers.  We got off to a good start with coffee and donuts thanks to Joe Van Cleave.  I managed to. document breakfast,  but the rest of my pictures there did not amount to anything worth sharing.  That was not surprising as I never seem to perform well with the cameras when there are other photographers in the immediate vicinity

As I told Joe,  I was reminded of the Optimist's Creed which I recalled from my childhood:

Since I only used half the film roll at the Veteran's Memorial site I took the camera a few days later to Old Town to finish up the roll, and I had a bit better luck with the pictures.

I usually process Kentmere in PMK Pyro,  but I decided to develop this time with Rodinal at 1:50 dilution.  I thought it turned out pretty well, so I may try the same combination again.

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Joe Van Cleave posted some nice work recently from his falling plate pinhole camera on the 35mmc website.