After a lot of gray days, nice clouds came my way a few times this week and gave me a few new pinhole photos from Owen Conservation Park. Owen is a short walk from our house and is a favorite subject of mine.
Here are a few new pinhole photos…
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You may recognize this tree, it is the same one from a post a few weeks ago only on this day I had much better clouds. It’s always okay to try the same photo again. It can always be improved upon.
Okay, this was a little experiment. I bought a 1950 Kodak Brownie Hawkeye on eBay and reversed the lens in the camera. (took it apart and put the lens in backwards) It makes the lens sort of a closeup lens and soft on the edges. (a brownie’s focus is normally fixed at infinity) Then I cross processed the film. Taking slide film (E-6) and processing it in color negative (C-41) chemistry. Intensionally processing the film in the wrong chemistry.
To put it simply, it’s sort of like a real life Instagram filter from back in the days when a phone was only used to call someone.
If nothing else this was a fun little exercise.
And the significance of using a 1950 Kodak Brownie Hawkeye? it was the camera I took my first roll of film at age 10. More about that on this blog post.
The Memorial Union Chairs seemed like a good subject for my first trial run with the cross processing.
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My eBay find used to take these photos. A 1950 Kodak Brownie Hawkeye in mint condition in the original box. The same camera model that I took my first roll of film with.
Here’s some random pinhole photos from Madison’s State Street and Owen Conservancy…
State Street Bike
The Orpheum on State Street
Probably my favorite place in Madison, Owen Conservation Park, a short walk from the house.
It seems odd that I discovered a conservation park I didn’t know about just 5 miles from the house, but considering Dane County has around 300 parks I guess it’s not surprising. Pope Farm Conservancy is an interesting concept in a conservation park. Not only does it protect wildlife and the prairie landscape it also is preserving Wisconsin’s farm heritage. There are several working fields in the park and some rock fences built by the first settlers and a lot of interpretive signs commemorating the agricultural and natural history of the area.
Here’s a couple of pinhole photos from Pope Farm.
The rock fence was built up over time as the farmers removed rocks out of the field left by the glaciers thousands of years ago. Every year some new rocks emerge out of the ground by frost action and need to be removed to till the land.
I had the gift of some great clouds to work with while shooting. The long exposures of the pinhole blur the clouds for a nice effect in this sunflower field in Pope Conservancy.
What started as a college prank with pink flamingos in the 70’s continues on today, the plastic pink flamingo has become a part of Madison culture. It’s even been voted the city’s official bird by the Madison City Council. When I heard Bascom hill was going to be filled with pink flamingos as part of a fundraiser, I couldn’t resist getting some photos. Here’s a few new pinhole photos.
1400 pink flamingos filled Bascom Hill on the UW campus.
Near Bascom Hill is another iconic Madison image. The Memorial Union chairs.
Here’s some new pinhole photos from my wandering last week. I spent some time driving the country roads in the hills west of Madison. It reminded me of my days of looking for “wild art” photographs at the Greeley Tribune. (what you do on a slow news day when the editors were desperate for photos to fill the next day’s paper) You just get in the car and take roads you haven’t taken before looking for a photo. Sometimes that can lead to something good, sometimes you just waste a lot of time.
A country road with my new brown paper bag “filter”. Not a photoshop filter… Just a brown paper bag.
And of course while driving around rural Wisconsin a barn is eventually become your subject matter.
I revisited the small hilltop chapel in Indian Lake County Park and tried to incorporate the unique sun flare you get with a pinhole camera.
I returned to try and work the sun flare some more on another day.
my second attempt with the flare shots didn’t work out, but I tried this angle with with the sun reflecting off the cross. I guess I like the first day’s photo better. That is the way reshoots go sometimes.
I’ve always liked the look of fall colors on black and white. It gives an infrared look to the photo.