i've been doing so many projects lately that i haven't been finishing any of them before i start a new one. most of the projects seem to do with death and creepiness and putting myself in stressful situations. so i decided to take it easy with a project i'm calling "vs the water". the images are just shots of bodies of water that have man made objects "fighting" the water. below are a few of my first ones, all shot on the willamette river in and around portland, or. the camera is a homemade curved back 4x10 camera. i really hope i actually continue with this project, it's been really fun and a nice change of pace.






speaking of "change of pace", for all of you in a artistic freeze this article may help. some times it's nice to do something you would normally never do. chase jarvis - 9 things to do when you're feeling stale.

one more

this last weekend i decided to have a pinhole self portrait day. my last post was from that day and here is the last shot. this was done with the filing box camera i made. i never spray painted the inside so the negs are super dark, but my epson found some information on the film and photoshop did the rest for me. anyway, i need to fix the problem with my camera really bad.

exposure was 3 minutes.

couple self portraits

i should in bed. but instead, here are a couple self portraits i did. i have one more i need to scan, but it's 4-4x5 negs and i don't want to scan them right now. both images are made with cameras i built 5, maybe 6 years ago. i'm glad i used them because i refell in love with them and will start using them a lot more.

this one was shot with a converted kodak t-max100 4x5 50 count box. exposure time was 1.5 minutes.



this second one was shot with a round camera made out of something that escapes me now. it looks a little like a bomb, so i just call it my round bomb. exposure time was 1.5 minutes.

first shot from filing box camera.

here it is! the first shot from the filing box that i turned into a pinhole camera. they turned out super dark, i think the plastic isn't as opaque as i originally thought. that problem is easily fixed with a bit of flat black spray paint. so this image is pretty photoshop, which i don't mind but i feel better about my shooting skills when i don't need to photoshop so much. all-in-all i really like the final image. hopefully i can shoot with it more during the weekend. so more to come!

filing box pinhole camera

i've wanted to build a pinhole camera out of an object that was manufactured by a company and not hand made by me. i went to fred meyers and looked through their storage section and found a 9x11ish plastic filing box. it was already black inside and seems to be opaque enough. here's what i started with.



this was way more simple than i was originally planning, i'm not complaining just a little shocked i guess. i went through and taped up all the areas that were or seemed like they would leak light. again, very easy and there were not many places that need taping.



i had to cut a hole for the pinhole. the plastic was fairly soft so it was easily done with an exact-o knife. i just measured half way from the top and bottom, and from the left to right.



i'm going to be using 4x5 film in this camera, so i cut a piece of cardboard the same size as a negative holder that fits 4-4x5 pieces of film. then i glued the negative holder on to the cardboard. this way i can just load the film into the holder and tape the cardboard on the inside back of the camera/ box.
after all my years of making pinhole cameras, i never once thought of doing this until i learned about warren harold. i recently feel in love with his work, so i thought i would give his process a try.

so here's the specs for this camera:
focal length: 9 in.
pinhole diameter: .021 in. (i want this camera to be a little blurry, so the p.d and f.l don't really match up)
f/ stop: 431