With chemicals at the right temperature and the right kind of tunes on the iPod (funk and soul, of course!) we started dancing to the music as we agitated the film in the wetting stage.

Having Phoebe was really helpful. Our first two tanks had developing times that were 30 seconds apart, so I was able to start her developing process ahead of mine. With good timing and preparation we were able to finish the process together. Since I had four tanks to get through, it was a huge time saver.

I suppose the first clue that something was amiss would have been the dark, cola-like color of my developer, Ilfosol 3. I opened it about six months ago and it lives in my garage, which has seen a few temperature changes in that time. I’ve always stored my chemicals in the same place and I’ve used Ilfosol 3 when it was brown before, so I didn’t anticipate any problems, until I saw pink liquid drain out of the tank after the developing step.

Undeterred, it was on to the washing stage for both of our films.

I noticed our film looked kind of pinkish but stranger things have happened. It was when the Permawash turned bubble-gum pink that I knew something was wrong.

Yeah, that’s never happened. Still we plugged on, but when it was time for the final, magic step–the reveal of the pictures on the negatives–this is what we saw.

As the father in “A Christmas Story” says..”He looks like a big, pink nightmare”. I was frustrated. Not only were two rolls of film ruined, but Phoebe didn’t get to experience the fun of seeing the pictures on the film. I was sure she’d be my darkroom buddy forever after seeing pictures appear on the film because it’s such a great reward after all the mixing of chemicals, timing of steps and shaking of canisters.

I quickly went back over the process in my head. Maybe I didn’t dilute the developer properly? This time I made extra sure to be very, very careful when measuring and calculating. Here’s what the next two rolls looked like and where they ended up.

GRRR!!! Six rolls of film turned out to be really, pretty garbage. My fixer was fine, even after the process. Here’s a shot of Phoebe testing it when we were finished.

The stop bath, too, appeared normal. It was still the same lovely shade of yellow at the end of our session. I can only infer that the developer went bad in the garage. Fortunately, there was none left after our disastrous session.

I didn’t get upset, although I did express my disappointment to Phoebe. I told her how fun that moment is when you unwind the film and see your pictures. I told her I was bummed that she didn’t get the same experience. “Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s just the way it goes with film” is what I told her. She was really great and told me the next time I had film to develop, she’d love to help.

Another thing that needs help? The Photo Palace Bus! I know I keep mentioning it but it’s such a worthwhile cause and with only four days left, they’re still really far behind in getting their funds together. Please, if you haven’t already, check out their Kickstarter page and consider supporting their cause.

I was getting warmed up here. As you can see, it’s just a hand-held long-exposure shot, but I like the composition.

This one is zippy! I moved the camera in circles near a bare tree lit by LED lights.

The lights in this tree were further up in the sky. I must have used small, circular motions because the shapes made by the lights look like little snails.

These lights were at the top of a lamppost. They were the old-fashioned kind of lights with giant colored bulbs. You can really see the difference in color temperature between these and the LEDs.

I have more light painting shots on the way. I loaded my Canon 70′s film SLR with Fuji slide film (which I’m getting cross-processed) and am eager to see what I captured.

Remember the Photo Palace bus? Well I got this email from Anton, one of its creators:

Hi Friends,

Well with two weeks left in the funding campaign I really am hoping for a miracle. We are only 20% funded and somehow we are supposed to raise the rest in just 14 days.

I was going to make a video update talking about the educational component of the venture, but with 30 minutes left at my job (which is where I edited the last video because my computer is not powerful enough) my Final Cut file crashed and the info got lost so there’s no time to start over…

In the update I was going to say how many wonderful things we will offer to the film community at large: art shows where people can see a gum print and a tintype and a bromoil print, workshops on pinhole cameras and cyanotypes for kids, more involved classes for adults, lectures on the history of film and how it affected the developments in photography, setting up community dark rooms all over the country…. there was a lot there, but now it’s all lost in the digital realm (if I was working with film this would not have happened…). In any case – imagine me looking rather desperate in my packed-up darkroom pleading for help It was going to be a good movie…

I really hope that this goes through and we’ll be able to get on the road by summertime. PLEASE help us out by doing another wave of postings here and there and everywhere about this project with a link to it. If you tell the people – ‘hey, I support this!’ they may listen closer and support it as well, right?

Below is the photo of Rollov Film Center – the space where I taught about a dozen students for the past year. It’s all cleaned up and ready for my departure. Please help make this campaign a success

Sincerely,
Anton

Yikes! Please help spread the word about this fantastic project and if you haven’t yet contributed to the fund, hop on over to their Kickstarter site and do so. It’s such a fantastic way to let people know that film is NOT obsolete and that there are lots of us who still love kickin’ it the lo-fi way. Besides, I really want to meet these two fellas when they come to my town!

It’s price, around $300, is pretty steep for a point and shoot film camera so I attempted to order one from the Lomography Society with piggy points, however they were sold out when I finally accumulated enough, so I purchased one from eBay instead. The price of this camera has come down a little bit in the past year or two, so if you’re looking for one eBay is a good place to start. Mine arrived very quickly from Japan and when I opened the instructions I discovered they were written only in Japanese. A search of the internet turned up this page from Moominsean’s blog that was extremely helpful. While it appears there’s no English version of the manual (because the camera was originally available for sale in Japan exclusively) his blog contains a translation of some very important steps. The writing on my camera’s buttons are in English, thank goodness. I know a couple of non-Japanese speaking photographers who have the version of this camera with Japanese writing on the buttons which would look pretty cool, but would be another layer of frustration.

Initial impressions of this little camera are that it is very lightweight, almost cheap-feeling. Kudos to the Fuji folks for including batteries for the camera in the package (a lithium CR2 3volt). The lens (f 2.8 to 5.4) goes from wide to telephoto (28mm to 56mm) with the push of a lever. My lens action was smooth and very quiet, but not as quiet as the actual click of the shutter and advancing of the film, which are virtually noiseless. It’s like a stealthy little spy camera.

I used 800 iso Fuji color negative film for my first roll since it was the fastest film I had in my supply. These first few pictures were taken in my kitchen and living room in the evening.

Overall, the pictures aren’t bad at all considering I’m not using 1600 speed. When I zoomed in to focus on the orchids in the top picture a little red light kept flashing when I depressed the shutter halfway, which I thought meant the picture was out of focus but clearly my subject is not blurry.

Next, we took a trip to the local big box hardware store.

Wow! I know this lighting would have totally confused a normal camera. I’ve tried taking pictures in this store with a 35mm point and shoot before and have gotten crappy results. These were outstanding.

On New Year’s Eve my little camera went on a trip to Bethany Beach.

The sun was hiding just behind the building in this shot, throwing the surfer (all decked out for NYE) into dark shadows.

Behind the counter of a diner. Sun was streaming in to the left so the scene was partly lit with natural light. I love that there’s no icky green-ish tint here from the fluorescent lighting. I got that weird blinking red light again when I was taking this shot. I’m beginning to think that it’s not a matter of focus but of being in low-light picture-taking mode or NP as they call it in the manual.

That night I saw one of my favorite bands at a local bar and got some pictures in a really dark setting.

That last shot was outside. I think my results would have been much better with some 1600 speed film but these results still far surpass what I would’ve gotten from an ordinary camera. There is very little blur in the band shots and the detail found in the places with good lighting is amazing.

Finally, I was anxious to get some pictures outside in full sunlight since I’ve heard mixed reviews about the Natura Classica’s performance in those conditions.

This was the beginning of a 5K that I ran on January 1, 2012. I don’t see anything wrong with these results. Here are some pictures taken from a walk on the beach. I was thrilled to able to capture beautiful images of the inside of a sub lookout tower.

In this dark picture, I was holding the camera out into the space of the tower as far as my arm would allow since you can’t actually climb into the towers. The only available light inside the tower comes from the slits that line it’s sides. I got much better results by keeping the camera close to the side of the tower and therefore, closer to the light. This is pretty much the same picture but with much better exposure and detail at the top.

Overall, I am hugely impressed by the Fuji Natura Classica. I love taking pictures without flash partly because I suck at using a flash and partly because I just love natural lighting. If you are the same kind of photographer the Fuji Natura Classica is well worth the investment. I failed to mention earlier that the camera does come with a flash that you can turn on and off in the menu but with results like these, who needs one?

I thought I’d share some of my favorite iPhone shots from the holidays.

These were iPhone shots in Hipstamatic taken with my iPhone Holga lens turret on the ‘Quad’ setting. It was fun to goof around with the different effects while the lights were flashing.

One of my personal favorites, my son Elias was disguising Stewie with a ‘stache. I ran this one through Lo-Mob for the blown out color and sprocket effects.

I’ve been a little food-obsessed lately, probably because the scale told me to stop eating garbage and drinking so much beer. Damn scale! The top two shots are of Trix cereal as seen through the macro iPhone Holga lens turret. I saw one of these brightly colored nuggets sitting on the counter by itself and thought it was a button. When I looked closer, I realized it was cereal….wow.

I’m not much of a baker, but my two daughters love to make cookies and cupcakes, especially at Christmas (no wonder the scale is mean to me). The Hershey’s Kiss peanut butter cookies are one of my absolute favorites. We make them totally from scratch. After I set them on this napkin I saw how neat the patterns looked. The original picture was nice, but running it through Percolator took the picture to a whole new level.

Now, onto New Year’s Eve! I’ve never gone out on NYE and normally fall asleep before midnight but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to hang with some very close friends and go see one of my favorite bands at a local bar. There were lots of photo bombs that night…..my friend James is a great photo bomber/creeper, as seen in this shot.

I decided to bomb his photo next….it ruined a classy shot, but it was a helluva good time!

Even the kids got in on the action. Here’s my friend Loretta’s daughter photo bombing a shot of my son Elias and her other daughter Emme. She just ran right into the picture. It’s one of the funniest shots of the evening.

At the bar I took some low-light pictures of one of my favorite local bands, Sweet Leda.

All shots taken through Hipstamatic except for the next-to-last one. I used Fusioncam for a wicked-cool double exposure of the stage lights and the band.

Finally, I got a little message from WordPress, the lovely folks who host my blog. In 2011 I participated in the Post-A-Week challenge and I think I only missed two weeks of postings (because of vacation). My stats were staggering! I’m going to continue posting once a week this year as well. It was a bit of a challenge at first, but I’m glad I participated. Many, many thanks go out to you, the reader! I’m glad you all find my thoughts mildly entertaining enough to check in once in a while.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Orlov and Kalem, both graduates of San Jose State’s photography program, are trying to raise $16,000 by February 1, 2012 so they can take their 1978 vintage yellow school bus on the road. Visit their kickstarter site to support them. If they don’t reach their goal by February 1, they get ZERO DOLLARS so it’s important to get your pledge in before the deadline. This is a sketch of what they hope to create from the vintage bus.

The two main goals for The Photo Palace Bus, according to their kickstarter site are

• The Photo Palace will provide traditional photographic education and hands-on experience opportunities in every corner of the country. The goal is to preserve the traditions of analog photography.

• Using the north-light studio and incorporating street photography we will create a 10.000-negative portrait series about New Americana. From pop to fringe – all aspects of culture will be addressed via portraits accompanied by narration and quotes.

Impromptu and scheduled art exhibits; free lectures, demonstrations and workshops will be the core of The Photo Palace’s curriculum. Topics such as photo history, gelatin, silver and alternative printing techniques as well as studio and location photo techniques for portraiture and still life photography are just some of the subjects that will be covered.

The vintage yellow school bus will be equipped with darkroom equipment, a viewing area, a fold-out North-Light studio which can be installed on either side of the bus and living quarters on an upper-level, which will be created by installing the bodies of two VW buses on the roof of the school bus. Here are some Polaroids taken the day the two bought the bus.

Orlov and Kalem are following in the footsteps of some of the pioneers of the trade, most of which had no choice other than to have all their materials on-hand at all times. Early photo techniques, like wet-plate collodion, depended on having a darkroom set-up within feet of the place the photo was taken. Even after the invention of dry film photographers continued the tradition of setting up darkrooms in the field so they could be fully immersed and integrated with their projects.

Anton Orlov moved to California from Moscow when he was 17. His passion for photography has taken him to Central America, Asia and all across the continental US. He operates a darkroom facility in San Diego where he offers workspace to photographers and private lessons in analogue photography. His favorite camera is the Rolliflex TLR. These are a few of his works, which are being offered as thank you gifts.

Ryan Kalem works in primarily large-format photography. This format forces him to slow down the process and really think about all elements of the photo. During The Photo Palace’s tour, he will take up permanent residence in the bus, which will give him a deeper understanding of the area and people he is capturing. Here is one of his gelatin silver prints that is also being offered as a thank you gift.

You can follow the adventures of the construction of the project at The Photo Palace blog. This is a picture of their vision of the bus’ interior.

By becoming a backer you’re not only supporting The Photo Palace financially, you’re also helping to plan the route! Orlov and Kalem state that your pledge ensures that the vintage bus will be rolling into your town or wherever you want them to go. I don’t know about you but personally, I’ll be super-excited to meet the photographers and see the bus first hand when they roll into my little corner of the world. Until then, sit back and check out this video.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/351976604/the-photo-palace-bus/widget/video.html

It looked innocent enough when I opened the package so I figured I’d give it a go around dinnertime one weeknight (what was I thinking?). Then I opened the directions

They were in a language that I didn’t even BEGIN to know how to read! My husband and I had a good laugh about this for a few minutes before I dove into the project (directions are available in English on the web but I didn’t find out until I was finished the project. Thanks to Nic Nichols of The Four Corners Store for sending me the file).

In retrospect, assembling the camera just using the pictures was much more of a learning experience for me. I’m more of a visual learner and think the descriptions in English would’ve caused me endless frustration however, there were a few steps that just left me scratching my head.

For example, putting the body of the camera together was relatively easy compared to the guts. When I got to the shutter mechanism, it was pure experimentation that finally got the springs and doo-dads to work the right way. This piece came out of the package looking very much NOT like the one in the directions. After careful inspection, it appeared as though that little plastic piece in the middle of the arc needed to be removed in order to get the spring to nestle into just the right spot.

Turns out I was right…yay!!

Hurdle number two came when trying to mount the springs correctly so that the shutter would fire. After a good thirty minutes I figured it out, despite this cryptic picture.

I had the camera mostly together when I discovered an extra piece. Doesn’t that just figure?

I disassembled the camera almost completely (after a few choice words that my children shouldn’t have heard) and could NOT figure out where this left-over part was supposed to go. After some discussion with toy camera buddies Nic and Andrew, I figured out that no, it wasn’t something I had forgotten to put on the camera, it was in fact an extra part included with my kit. How kind of the Recesky folks!

The last hurdle was to get the film to stay taught while shooting. To accomplish this I mounted a piece of foam to the door backing. It held my film in quite nicely, but looking at these pictures from my first roll, you’ll see it may have been a little too tight.

It appears the door has some wicked leakage around the back hinge. These leaks appear to coincide with the advancement of the film, since they’re at pretty regular intervals and are straight lines. There were a couple of shots from the roll that I liked. I can see this camera’s potential for beautiful, fuzzy, selective focus in these shots despite the distraction of light leaks.

If anyone has any good suggestions of a material that would hold my film taught without bulging the door out, I’d love to hear them!

One more thing I discovered involves advancing the film. Take a look at this.

These arrows help you keep track of how far the film is advancing. The one in the middle turns from one arrow to the next as you are turning the knob. In order to advance the film one full frame you just need to turn the knob from one arrow to the next, 180 degrees instead of 360 degrees, which is what I was doing. My method got me lots of blank frames full of light leaks.

I learned a few lessons constructing this camera. 1) I discovered that, despite instructions that put Ikea to shame, it was a lot easier just using the illustrations and 2)I have a much better working knowledge of how a simple camera is constructed. I look forward to more fun with my Recesky and to sharing really good shots with you very soon.

After figuring out how to get the damn thing open I shot a roll of film (which I haven’t developed yet). When I tried to get the camera open to retrieve the film, it was jammed. The back just would NOT come off. Disgusted, I set it on a shelf until this afternoon. I decided to pry it open using two small screwdrivers and discovered that the full take up reel had problems fitting (even though I used 620 film and spools). That, coupled with the monumental effort it took just to open and close the camera rendered it inefficient to use as a picture-taking camera. It’s destiny was to forever sit on some decorative shelves until, I had a lightbulb moment.

I’ve had the idea of making a light out of a camera since I saw one a few months ago. I knew it would be pretty simple and it truly is. Here’s how I did it. You need a camera in which the aperture can remain open and a light source. In this case it’s my old piece-of-crap Brownie and a little reading light that I got from the dollar store.

To keep the Brownie’s aperture open you simply need to pull out the little lever on the side (look below the red crayon) then push the exposure lever down.

Then, position the light so that it aims directly through the open lens. You may need to stuff some paper or other soft filler behind the light so that it doesn’t move out of place.

That’s it!

It’s not very bright as you can see, but it’s much more interesting looking than your standard silver and black model flashlight.

I’m really glad I was able to give a new life to this old beauty. It may have fallen pretty flat as a camera but it lights up my nights as a light and my kids are having a blast with it. Plus, I think it might look quite nice dressed up in some festive decor and placed on my mantlepiece or even on my Christmas tree!

The call went out this summer for images that “explore, complicate, and represent in compelling ways the concept of Play.  These might include, but are certainly not limited to, photographs that deal with imaginary play, word play, adult play, children’s play, animal play, games, or the various kinds of materials and/or spaces associated with play. Similarly, photographs might represent play from the perspective of a child’s imagination, or from a toy’s perspective, or they might take up questions about what it means to play or explore the matter of who is allowed (or disallowed) to play”. Artists from 63 countries answered the call and along with their photos, each wrote a short essay on how their photos reflected the theme of the book. Edited by Jody Shipka and Nic Nichols, the book is getting some fabulous reviews from those in the toy camera community. Here are just a few of their thoughts:

“Play! is a fabulous book . . . the images really blew me away. The artists and the editor have created Play! with the best of intentions and it reminds us all to remember what’s truly important in this world: film. Play! makes me excited about toy cameras again.”
Amanda Moore, Juror, The Holga Show 2008

“Play! is reminiscent of childhood, full of blurred moments. Toy cameras lend themselves so well to these youthful subjects. They’re long ago memories of times & places we hold dear. Play! takes you right back, but in a dream.”
Steph Parke (stephparke.com), former Editor, Light Leaks Magazine

“Play! is an amazingly diverse collection of photos by very talented photographers.. By using toy cameras, the photographers convey the memory and dream of play that lives inside all of us.”
Mark Olwick (olwickphotography.com), acclaimed Holga photographer

You can buy play on Blurb.

I am proud to say that I am a part of this wonderful project and will have these two photos printed in the book. I took them with my cheap $5 underwater Snap Sights camera.

I took my Brownie with me inside the voting booth and held it up as high as my arm could reach.

Take yourself back to last November. Here in the US, the Republican party was trying very hard to unseat many of the incumbent Democrats. It was an ugly campaign season full of such elementary-school-style tactics as name-calling, lying and whining.

Here in Delaware the hot race was between Christine O’Donnell, who was a Republican Tea Party supporter. The big story of the election was the revelation that sometime in the not-so-distant-past, she hung out with Wiccans, which for someone running an extremely conservative and Christian-based campaign was pretty much the nail in the coffin of her chances of winning. She ran ads where she looked straight into the camera proclaiming, “I’m not a witch….I’m you”. You can’t make this stuff up!

Chris Coons was O’Donnell’s opponent and the eventual winner of the election

As you can see, it fits on the back of your iPhone just like a case. It offers no protection whatsoever, so you must be very careful while using it, but the array of special effects lenses is worth the danger. You can choose from these filters:

Red Heart

Orange

Yellow with a hole in the middle

Green (makes you look like a ghost hunter!)

Blue with a hole in the middle

Double lens

Triple lens

Quad Lens

Macro lens

…and the last hole on the dial is so you can take regular pictures.

This thing is so much fun. I spent a lot of Thanksgiving taking funky pictures of all the happenings around my house. I think it’s especially fun to use the filters with an app, like Hipstamatic. Check these out…

At only $30 USD from the Four Corners Store, it’s a great (and affordable) tool to add to your iPhoneography kit.