Fort McKavett...not so long ago

I like the idea of making a photograph that looks like it was made half a century ago.
In this instance, the photo was made with a homemade matchbox pinhole camera using 35mm film.


This is a view of the Parade Grounds at Fort McKavett.  The exposure was about 2 seconds long...more or less because I wasn't counting. 

It's gritty and sort of gives you the feeling of what a frontier fort was like back when it was used to protect the settlers from Indian raids.

Ruins at Fort McKavett

Everything wants to be something else.....

In this instance an empty can of diced tomatoes that was used to make salsa.

4 x 5 sheet film, 100 speed Black and white
 3 seconds exposure

Last Day of Winter Sun

This is the track of the Sun on the last day of Winter.
Pinhole solargraph.

Good-bye Winter, Hello Spring!

all for the love of matches...

I made a matchbox pinhole camera last week while taking some time away from the world wide web.

Some match box plans have 35mm roll film as the supplying device, but I decided to just give matchbox pinhole a quick try and simply cut a short section of 35mm film to use in the little box as a single shot shooter.

True, it's a pain to load each little section of film and then develop it, but I like the results and have committed myself to building a regular style matchbox pinhole camera very soon.

Here's one of my test shots!
Enjoy!

and then there were boats

I'm going to take a few days off from blogging so I can catch up with work and also to just unplug from the world wide web for a while and read and cook and garden...and just be a hermit.

a new look...

A few people said the other page loaded too slow, so I'm going to try this one for a while.
Let me know what you think.
Slow pages are the pits....

another version of the farting horse...

TGIF!

Today's pinhole photo was made with a Holga Wide Pinhole Camera.  This camera is one of my current favorites mainly because it's small, uses 120 roll film and will make 6 x9 or 6 x 12 photos depending upon which mask is inside.

It's a dream to use, and today's offering was made by hand-cutting some Harman Direct Positive paper to use in it as a single shot camera in the 6 x 9 size..

It's kind of neat to develop this paper and have a positive print!  It's not quite as fast as Polaroid, but since Polaroid is no longer around, it's just as fun, albeit a little more work.

Oh, the exposure was 60 seconds in partly cloudy skies.

Have a great weekend.

takin' it easy...

Today I decided to take a day off from doing pinhole stuff and instead dedicated the day to building and repairing birdhouses and feeders.

My yard has been full of Chickadees, Nuthatches, Robins and Bluebirds so figured it would be best to take care of my feathered friends.

First, I built a Bluebird box out of some old scrap I had in the shed.

As you can see, it's nothing fancy and since I've had some practice building pinhole boxes, making a Bluebird box was pretty easy.  This is old rough cut cedar boards, so it has a rustic look and the birds really like it.

The box above is one my husband and I built about 7 years ago and it's the most used and favorite box of all the birdhouses in our yard.

Not only do Western Bluebirds make nests in it, but Mountain Bluebirds have been using it the past 2 years.  We have probably fledged about 35 birds out of this one box!  And to make it even better, a bat uses it to roost in during summer when the birds are finished with it.  I should charge rent!

This bird house is for the Swallows.  Mainly Violet-Green Swallows.  The entry hole is very odd, but we built it to plan and the birds fly in like kamikazees! It's really something to see!

The two boxes above needed some minor repair and some weatherproofing so I tended to that so the birds will have nice baby raising quarters when the time comes..which will be here soon.

Tomorrow I'll probably get back to work on some pinhole boxes and a 35mm conversion I'm working on for a friend so check back in a day or two to get an update....although I may just take the weekend off, it kind of depends on the weather.

At any rate, have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by.

sprites, fireballs and horse farts....

I'm on a roll and posting three days in a row! Woo-hoo!

Today brings us another test with the Lefty Leonardo pinhole camera.
I've been trying to figure out if the old expired box of Delta 400 sheet film I have is absolutely toasted so shot another sheet of it today.
 
The developed film is really rough looking with all kinds of grit on it that won't rinse off no matter how long I have it in the water.

Anyway, this is another example of shooting with the Sun in the frame and it causing all kinds of glints, flares, sprites and fireballs.

To add to the ambiance of the photo, this horse that normally comes to the fence to investigate what I'm doing and usually tries to eat the camera, decided to play coy today and mostly had it's backside to me...plus it farted as it was just standing in the field ignoring me.  I'm not sure what to make of that, but didn't take it personally!  I'm just really glad the wind was blowing the other direction today!

I'll keep using the film as it looks better when it's scanned, but as far as using it for printing...I think it's too far past its prime.

Enjoy your day and thanks for dropping by!

when sunlight gushes through a tree

...another photo with the lefty Leonardo pinhole camera.
This time with some Ilford Delta 400 sheet film that expired in 2000.  I've had the film so long that I don't remember where I got it.

The film has been sitting in its original box in a file cabinet just waiting and waiting...
Granted it's kind of rough looking and the emulsion has some kind of weird grit action going on, but for testing a camera it's just about perfect.

The Sun was off to the upper left and glinted and glared into the little pinhole which is okay by me because I like to know how teeny little holes handle such powerful rays of sunlight.

I like the swishy, gushyness of the look and sometimes it works well in a photo...other times it just looks messy.  I think the example above is borderline.

The exposure was 10 seconds
The sheet of film was developed in home brew caffenol for 7.5 minutes.

Enjoy your day!

Year of the Horse and riding along with daVinci

It's the year of the Horse and I built a celebratory 4 x 5 pinhole box!

I decoupaged some daVinci horse drawings on it and also made it a left-handed box because daVinci was a lefty!  It seems that lefty's are thought to be geniuses so I hoped/wanted some of that genius to rub off on me and built this pinhole box.

 This is a front view.

 

Here's a view of the top.  The box was hand built with some vintage plywood I had in the shed so it's got a lot of character built in already!

And here's the first test shot out of it!   A 15 second exposure in heavy shade on some 100 speed B&W sheet film.
Developed in home brewed caffenol, using the Delta recipe for 7.5 minutes.

 

Hope you like it! 
Have a wonderful day and as always, thanks for stopping by.

P.S.  In reply to a comment a few posts back about using Gulf of Mexico water to make caffenol and it being funky...indeed! There are no words to describe that aroma.....funkadelic to a whole 'nuther level!  I'm surprised the neighbors didn't report it! :-)