The monsoon season has arrived early in the Southwest this year bringing clouds, coolness and a little rain. More photos can be viewed as a slideshow. The first two in the slideshow are from my pinhole camera. The rest were all shot with my favorite little folding camera, the Ikonta 520.

Three more images from the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash box camera. During the decade of the 1950's millions of blurry photos were snapped with this camera because people didn't know that they needed to make an extra effort to hold it steady due to the slow shutter speed, probably about 1/30th of a second. The little push-on filters and close-up attachments also greatly extended the camera's capabilities.

My favorite subject from my favorite box camera. Margaret used to be very resistant to my efforts to photograph her, but I wore her down - took about thirty years. There is some discussion about the photos and the camera (the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash) at the Nelsonfoto site.

I was recently given a Kodak 35 Rangefinder model; I cleaned it up and took a few pictures with it. I also took another look at my earlier viewfinder model, Kodak's first domestically produced 35mm camera dating from 1938. I did a little more work on that camera's shutter and put a roll of film through it too. Both these cameras make extensive use of features developed originally in Kodak's medium format folders; they incorporated inexpensive synthetic materials and construction processes which resulted in low cost. Both models came with a variety of lenses and shutters; the Anastigmat Special lens on my Kodak 35 is as sharp as any lens produced in the 1940's. I've added a page to the Vintage Cameras section of the web site with some more comments on the Kodak 35.

This picture of a 1950 Chevrolet was made with a Kodak Retina I of the same vintage. Clicking on the front page image will open a new window displaying a photo of the same car at an Alamogordo car show; it was made with a Kodak No. 2 Folding Hawkeye Special, dating from about 1930...My grandfather had a car similar to this when I was a teenager in Seattle; not quite the same, though. His was a cream and brown business coupe with just a platform in the back rather than the seat, and his also lacked the fender skirts, headlight eyelids, and window shade of the deluxe model pictured...The car before was a green 1939 Chevy coupe; he gave it to me when he got the '50 model, and I proceeded to tear it to pieces, and never got around to driving it -- he must have thought I was nuts...I think my grand-dad's last car was a black '56 Chevy two-door -- very sleek looking with its shiney chrome trim. He was a Chevy guy.

Much of my photography is done with old film cameras, most of which require some attention before they will produce pictures. My latest project is the restoration of a simple little 35mm camera, the German Finetta. I've added a one-page article about the camera to the Vintage Camera section of the web site.

My project to document local wildflowers is moving slowly due to the ongoing drought. I'm still hopeful that the summer rains will bring out more of the poppies and other varieties that we see here in good years. In the meantime, I found this stand-in at a local pottery shop in Mesilla.

I am collecting this year's wildflowers into a folder. The flowers will be displayed chronologically as they appear. It is a dry year, and it is uncertain what flowers will be seen, and in what numbers. We will see.

The featured image on the web site portrays Margaret's new love, her violin. Clicking on that image on the site's front page will show her playing the instrument. After just a couple lessons, she is already producing some nice sounds. The violin and the following images in the series were done with the pinhole camera that I have been working with over the past year. More images from the pinhole camera can be viewed by going to the site's pinhole gallery.