The dog heads for the closet whenever I bring out a camera. I coax her out with a treat and then have to allow her up on the couch to get her to pose for a photo session.
I went with a friend to visit the south end of the Petroglyph National Monument west of Albuquerque. We were disappointed to find that the entire length of the east-facing slope is now blocked with a strand of steel cable and signs saying the area is closed to allow restoration of the vegetation. That will likely reduce some foot traffic in the area, but does not offer any protection from vandalism as one can simply step over the wire.
Nevertheless, we honored the signs and stayed on the right side of the fence for the mile or two past the rock art panels. I didn't want to return on the same path, so suggested we climb the slope past the end of the barrier and walk back along the canyon rim. I was pleased to actually accomplish that given my rather poor mobility, and even more pleased to find a fine example of rock art along the rim consisting of the common concentric circles design accompanied by a turtle. That made what had tuned into a five mile hike seem worthwhile.
We descended from the mesa down the gentler west slope to get back to my truck. About half way down we came across this interesting rippled volcanic pavement that was laid down about 150,000 years ago by oozing eruptions along the Rio Grande Rift.
I felt unfatigued the next day and, suspecting I had not gotten any good quality images due in part to the excessive brightness of the noonday sun, I loaded the dog in the truck early in the morning and drove back to the mesa. I returned to the mesa top along the easy west slope and was looking out atop the rimrock toward the mountains in about half an hour.
Turning north to follow the rim to the site of the petroglyph panel, I stepped on a rock about knee height and suddenly felt the achilles tendon in my left leg stretch to the breaking point. I ended up about ten feet downslope on my back. My pinhole camera and the tripod were back where I had fallen. The Nikon F was still on its strap around my neck; I did not discover until later that the camera's rewind lever had snapped off.
Lying on my back and looking up at the blue New Mexico sky my first thought, of course, was to wonder if I would be crawling the mile back to the truck. I was unable to flex my left foot, but I did manage to get myself into a standing position. I found that I could walk -- very slowly -- by keeping the left foot flat. I did have to scoot on my butt down one rocky slope to the sandy arroyo that parallels the west face of the mesa. Soon after we reached the arroyo a coyote started barking at me and the dog; it sounded a lot like laughter.
I think we reached the truck in about an hour. Working the clutch was quite a challenge, but we made it home safely. I ordered a replacement rewind lever from ebay for the Nikon F. The leg will likely need some expert attention before I can get back to reshoot that rock art.
I decided recently that I have not given adequate attention to the possibilities offered by selective focus. The main components of that technique to restrict depth of focus are lens focal length and aperture. With that in mind I mounted the Nikkor-P Auto f:2.5/105mm on my Nikon F loaded with a roll of Arista Ultra Edu 100. I shot most of the roll at 1/1000 which allowed a wide aperture even in the bright New Mexico sunlight.
I cannot recall ever feeling the need to use very high shutter speeds for the purpose of stopping motion blur. What this experience has shown me, however, is that 1/1000 or higher along with the associated wide apertures can offer much better control over the separation of foreground and background and better emphasis of the primary compositional interest. Of course it is also important to pay attention to the capacity of the lens being used to perform at wide apertures.
While I've mostly focused on pinhole work over the past couple weeks the Olympus 35RC also rode along in a jacket pocket.
The film in the Olympus was Arista Ultra Edu 200, which I shot at 100 ASA with the intention of development in PMK Pyro for the best tonalities and grain.
The roll of Arista included a series of hipshots made on a busy Saturday morning in Old Town.
The diminutive size and quiet shutter of the Olympus 35RC make it the ideal camera for street work, but it would have been better in this instance to have loaded some faster film which allows better depth of field and faster motion stopping shutter speeds. In the past my go-to film for this task was Tri-X. I'm thinking now that it would be interesting to try pushing the Arista 200 in development to 400 ASA or faster, perhaps in HC110.
Some blue sky and bright sun prompted me to load some Fomapan 100 in my pinhole camera. I then headed down Central to the motels near where Route 66 crosses the Rio Grande. The area is undergoing rapid development and the few remaining motels are being surrounded by multi-story apartments and shops. The El Vado, closest to the river, was built in 1937 and restored in 2018 with the help of a 2 million dollar grant from the city.
Although the pinhole thus presents a type of image to which we are unaccustomed, it might be argued that the pinhole is depicting a truer version of reality because there is nothing but air between the real world and the image projected onto the film plane. One can curve the film plane to compensate for some apparent distortion and light fall-off, but that just introduces a different set of linear peculiarities, and lens designers are always faced with similar trade-offs. In the end, it is probably all a mixture of interpretation and illusion that we are really talking about, and one of the pinhole's virtues is that it reminds us of the slippery nature of reality.
The pinhole phenomenon has been known and exploited since Antiquity. Projected pinhole images occur frequently in nature, but it takes some good luck to find them in a location that is sufficiently shaded to make them perceptible. One time this happens with predictable regularity is during a solar eclipse. If one looks then at a wall shaded by trees, the pinholes formed by the intersections of leaves and branches will be seen to be projecting a multitude of images of the crescent sun. Once the origin of such images was deduced – and people had sufficient leisure and resources – the pinhole image became a source of entertainment and functionality. Renaissance artists made use of camera obscura images as drawing aids, and the development of glass lenses greatly increased the portability and practicality of image projection devices.
Perhaps the greatest attraction of producing pinhole images is the lure of making something out of nothing – a kind of magic. A light-tight box with a hole in it and a piece of film or photographic paper wielded by anyone is capable of producing a detailed depiction of a natural scene beyond the capabilities of the finest draftsman. That was certainly part of the allure of early photographic endeavors, and it is possible to recapture some of that early enthusiasm for the photographic arts by constructing and using your own pinhole camera. Of course, one can also spend real money on acquiring somewhat complicated and artfully designed pinhole cameras, but none of them is really likely to produce images superior to those from the simplest home-made pinhole cameras if used with a bit of patience and perseverance.
(This article originally appeared on my old website.)
This roll of film actually started out on a walk through the Botanic Garden. When I clicked the shutter it fired at about 1/20 rather than the 30 seconds I intended. I tripped the shutter again with the same result. So I completed the walk with my Retina II.
