A BLACK AND WHITE PINHOLE PORTFOLIO FROM WILLAPA BAY

A BLACK AND WHITE PINHOLE PORTFOLIO FROM WILLAPA BAY

As most of you know, I was a resident at the Willapa Bay AiR for the month of October. Photographing with my 120 Pinhole camera onto color negative film, I wanted to make a personal record of the Long Beach peninsula, a place I have been going to regularly for over 30 years. Two miles wide and 28 miles long, the peninsula is bounded by the Willapa Bay to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The roar of the ocean is a constant. The people who live there make their living from oysters, cranberries, fish and the tourists. Leadbetter National Wildlife Refuge, on the north is a wonderful place to hike and walk. Cape Disappointment is on the South end along with many camp grounds and the Lewis and Clark museum.  

I set out every day to photograph, often taking no more than 12 photographs a day (one roll). I looked at and listened to the ocean and the birds and the bay. Here is my first take on the images. Thirty-four of them are in this portfolio and I am amazed by how each one speaks to me. As always thank you for looking. Please visit the Willapa Bay Peninsula and love it as much as I do.

 

Willapa Bay iphone photographs

Willapa Bay iphone photographs

I learned in August that I had been offered a residency at the Willapa Bay AiR. I am very very happy about this. I’m going for a month beginning October 1st. At Willapa, they feed and house me and I just do my work. I recently bought an Ondu 120 pinhole camera (My Zero is on it’s way out) and it is a fit. I love the way it feels in my hand and so far it works fine and dandy. I have also made about 30 long exposure tins that I can put up around and

leave in place for a month. Of course I will also do some urban night photography.

I have been going to the Long Beach peninsula since 1985. My friends, Jo and Bob had a beautiful place in Seaview and I was welcome. Later, I went there with my daughter and we had many adventures with Jo and Bob and their family. Oysterville, the location of the AiR, is beautiful–old and full of ghosts. I have hundreds of photographs of this place from all the years past. They are typical of me: a mishmash of time well spent, of my daughter who was my partner in crime and the landscape, always the landscape. May I do that landscape justice with the pinhole, in this familiar yet odd place full of memories and ghosts.

UPDATE: I am at the Willapa Bay AiR!

Three weeks have gone by already. I am impressed by the seriousness of the people here. There are 4 writers, a painter and me. We are treated very well–Chris, the chef, cooks our meals daily. I feel so grateful that I have been given this time to work. Thanks to all the spirits past and present but especially thanks to Cyndy Hayward and Jeff McMahon for making this incredible place happen.

While my iphone photography is not pinhole, most of the iPhone images were made at the same time as the Ondu, the Zero, and long exposure cans were. The pinholes, the iPhone and the DSLR are cameras that are important in my grand scheme of things. I have only posted a few of these iPhone images to Instagram. I post them here because my pinhole work is film and negatives on paper and won’t be ready for another few months and I want you to see what I am doing now. My iphone is my diary. You want more images? Follow me on insta. neuhauserat1C and/or go to www.thepinholeproject.org and join the project.

 

UPDATE: It is now January of 2022. I have uploaded all of my iphone photographs from the Willapa Bay AiR and deleted those that were  posted below and replaced those images with more than new ones more than you probably want to see. i shot over 600 iphone photographs during the month. I edit them differently each time I try. This edit is my top thirty or so. I have to remember these are iphone photographs. The thinking is that the iphone is inferior. I do not believe it. I will load the film images into this blog soon which are finally almost done. Hopefully you will see some similarities between the camera types. And I will learn something.

Pinholes from Civita di Bagnoregio (a portfolio) 2019

Pinholes from Civita di Bagnoregio (a portfolio) 2019

I lived in Civita di Bagnoregio for 32 days from mid-November into December of 2019.  I received  a fellowship from the Civita Institute to photograph the old Etruscan hilltop town with my pinhole cameras.  I took my 120 film pinhole camera (the “Zero”), my 4 x 5 inch pinhole camera (the “Leonardo”), 35 long-exposure (30 days)  metal tins–homemade pinhole cameras from various containers, round tins, an old Saltine tin, altoid tins, and several tins that were from different origins, all of which I exposed onto paper (Those long-exposure images are the subject of another post).  With the two bigger cameras, I shot color negative film and those are the ones shown here.  I worked everyday shooting the 120 film camera with medium format negatives.  That camera is versatile.  I set it to shoot a rectangle and advanced as if I had shot a square.  Overlap occurred and in some instances, two or more negatives were butted against each other.  I also double exposed several negatives.  This technical information is important because it is what I hoped I was doing.  In other words most of  these images are made from two or more negatives side by side on the film.   Negatives that were together on the film were scanned and printed digitally.  Not every image was on purpose.  Some are plain old happy accidents that I am, well, happy about. All of the negatives are fabrications, not actually how it “looked” because I exposed different places together that I thought would look good.   I was lucky to be in Civita before the pandemic hit and lucky to leave right before it became widely known.  Civita and Italy have withstood centuries of plague, earthquakes, war.  The strength of Civita is in the buildings, the cobblestones, the people.  I hope that that strength comes through.   Everything here has been  printed on 17  x 22  inch  paper as artist’s  proofs  and most  are  available for  $100.00/each.  Please  inquire.  There is only one of each image available at that price, The featured print is a part of the portfolio.   Titled:  Road to Tunnel (with Cloud) UPDATE:  I have sold 11 of these images that I call Artist Proof Prints at 100.00. There is a slight discoloration or exposure problem in each.,I have nine left.  Inquire with your interest.  The corrected edition prints start at 400.00 per print.  They are made in an edition of 10 and the price goes up to 750.00 each as the edition sells out.

Some More Pinholes from Civita

Some More Pinholes from Civita

Well, I have been working steadily on all the images from Civita.  So many I do not know what is good and what is not any more.  I would like to add at least  10 more images so I can get around 25 uploaded and make a portfolio.  What have I learned so far?

  1.  My scanner is dusty.  I spend a lot of time cleaning it and getting rid of dust on the files.  I love working with Photoshop and really do not mind the dust.  It is a way to zoom in to about 300 percent and look at all the details.  It makes me homesick for Civita.  But in order for it to be good photograph, for me, the dust has to go.
  2. I love the exaggerated color.  It is so powerful this color.  I am not enhancing in Photoshop.  There is no need to.  And while in this surreal place, the colors did pop out and make me stop sometimes and catch my breath.
  3. I need to return to Civita in a different season.  In the winter when I was there, a big fog hovered over us.  That mixed with rain, made colors pop.  A different season will mean different light.  I would love to see how the evening light looks on film..

Of course I have learned so many things working on this project other than the three items above  For example a question I am seeking the answer to:  What makes a good diptych?  How does one shoot to ensure that what you get is what you saw?  There are many more questions to be answered but this is not the place.

I feel incredibly lucky to have these images.  I am often surprised by them and do not think that they were made by me.  But I did this, I took these images.  People have asked me, why take photographs that are jumbled together and not “real”.  They are not always easy to look at I understand that sentiment.  But they are also different than the millions of other photographs taken of this touristy place. The fact is that they are very real.  Everyone who knows this place, Civita, will recognize the streets, the cliffs, the buildings, the church, the fog. I did my best to simply take photographs as I saw them.  Thanks for looking.

 

 

The featured image is the entrance to the tunnel that runs under Civita.

Other possible titles:

  1.  Etruscan Caves
  2. Street View
  3. San Donato #5
  4. Lone Cypress
  5. Street View, Landscape and Tiled Roofs
  6. From the Garbage Storage Area
  7. Apartments
  8. Cats
  9. San Donato Disappears
  10. Gate and Street on the Edge
  11. The Valley and the Tunnel Entrance
  12. Fog in the Valley from the Santa Maria Gate (Single Image)

 

Some Pinholes from Civita

Some Pinholes from Civita

I spent  a month in Civita di Bagnoregio, an Etruscan hilltop town in Italy on a fellowship from the Civita Institute, (civitainstitute.org). Since I arrived home mid-December, I have been scanning and editing images. I am still not done but three days ago, finished scanning the 120 color negative film that I shot in a little pinhole camera called the Zero. It took a beating in Civita, the cobblestones, and the tuff rock outside, and the stone floors in the houses are all unforgiving.  I dropped the camera, it broke, I taped it back together and kept going. It gave me 32 rolls of film with about 190 files. I shot so that each image related to the one before or after. This was a difficult thing to do but I wanted to overlap the images so I shot with the camera on a rectangular setting and advanced it as if it were set to a square. This way I did not get any lines between the frames of the negatives–and I made 16 images to a roll instead of 12.  I could not see any of these images because the film had to be developed once I returned to the States.  Also pinhole cameras do not have a viewfinder and I had to become astute at knowing what the cameras would see. Two things helped me get great negatives: the Pinhole Assist app which enabled me to use my iPhone as a light meter and the wonderful people  at the Shot on Film Store in Lake City, WA (www.shotonfilmstore.com/), who developed my film and did a great job.

So what did I photograph?  The old Etruscan hilltop town of Civita where people have lived for thousands of years:  this is what was before me.  The pinhole exposures are at least 10 seconds and no people showed up in my photos.  Mostly I photographed every morning at sunrise until about 9:30 when the tourists started to arrive.  I photographed the town, the streets (cobblestones with no cars), the landscape, the drop off at the edges of the town, the hilltop and the ancient church, the walls, the stones, the light, the fog, and of course the incredible color. (Overexposure exaggerated it). Doing this  was a joy but  made me quite nervous at the same time.  Was I getting the correct exposure?  Did I really think I could overlap the images and it would work?  With the amazing amount of wind and rain would anything be discernible?  What would the townspeople think of these images?  The town is a museum but lived in as well. It  isn’t the way it actually is became my mantra. Each day I would photograph with my Zero for a few hours, come back, eat breakfast, clean up the apartment and then go back out around noon to take some more photographs. The afternoon was more difficult with the number of tourists in the town and the light. In late afternoon I would eat some lunch, then work on the computer for a while and as soon as it got dark, go back out again and take night photographs with my DSLR.  (see previous blog post   janetneuhauser.com/civita-a-month/).  Then a nice long Italian dinner and bed.

Now, as I scan and look and scan and look, I am slowly understanding what it was that I did.  Mixing the landscape with the architecture made sense, but it was something I had not done before.  I am posting thirteen images (including the featured image) that show the variety of the 120 pinhole images that were captured. All are from the Zero camera 120 on color negative film (except the first one, a double exposure from the 4 x 5 large format pinhole still color negative film in which I exposed the full moon outside my kitchen door all night long, then  the walkway to the entrance in the fog on the same sheet of film).   I find the editing process to be as satisfying as the shooting.  Thanks for looking.  (PS  Click on the first image to get a slide show).

 

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The featured image is the top of the entrance to the  Altar of the Virgin Mary down off the trail by the cliffs.  Working titles of the others top to bottom, left to right are:

  1. Full moon trail and Walkway (Double Exposure/4 x 5 negative)
  2. Door
  3. Patio on the Edge
  4. San Donato #1
  5. Street, Buildings, Valley
  6. By Giovanni’s Stairs
  7. Partly Real
  8. Lions Gate with the Gate of Santa Maria
  9. An Imagined Space
  10. Arch and Fog
  11. Landscape with Buildings
  12. Walk to the Cliffs at Sunset (single image)