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.

 

New Long Exposure Pinholes from Willapa Bay AiR

New Long Exposure Pinholes from Willapa Bay AiR

I have never taken long exposure pinholes all that seriously. I think they are serious photographs and I love the way they look but for once I am finding them to be not only fun but creative too. I made about ten multi hole pinhole cameras and about twenty altoid tin cameras. It rained so much of the month I was in the Willapa Bay area. I knew some of the pinholes were getting wet but I had not reckoned with the tide and the high mark the tide would come to on the Bay and make my pinhole cameras soaked. I made plenty though and I let go of my perfectionist streak and went with the errors and problems inherent in this type of photography. I give you some here. Two of these images are by Jeff McMahon the operations manager and Cyndy Haywood, the director of the Willapa Bay AiR. All of these images were exposed for an entire month. Enjoy the images and take the time to join the Pinhole Project (www.thepinholeproject.org) and get a camera exposing for yourself.


Jess on Halloween

Jess on Halloween

I’ve been looking back on all my portfolios and blog posts and decided to go about things a bit differently lately.  It is thus that I give you Jess (my daughter) dressed up on Halloween. A bit of cool air for Halloween. just saying its breezy these days.

We usually started with the fall weather.  Halloween was happening and we would have long discussions about what Jess wanted to be.  For the first Halloween in Washington State I actually sewed a clown costume.  After that I did not sew again.  But we would narrow it down to three or four or five costumes and begin to look in thrift stores for parts of a witch or accident victim, a fairy princess, or a vampire.  All pieces could be used again.  We did not actually put the costume together until the day of Halloween after school was out. Jess and her boyfriend continued the tradition dressing up as Cheech and Chong. I always  photographed Jess on Halloween which has now turned into a part of the Kid Pictures. Please go to the portfolio  Kid Pictures to see photographs of Jess and the other kids we knew. There are more images but this is time sensitive and I am not in touch with my hard drive. Next year.

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.

Oh South Dakota

Oh South Dakota

I just returned from a momentous trip to South Dakota where I stayed in my Uncle Ray’s house and rested and recuperated.  I am now ready to begin work on this site. The ranch where I went has been in our family for three generations; (that is almost 120 years).  It is a quiet place, about 75 miles from the nearest town including 30 miles on dirt roads.  My grandparents house still stands  beautifully in its oldness. My father was born there.  I  am amazed at how much knowledge Randy and Leanne (my two cousins who run the ranch) have and how hard they work. They are both ranchers and farmers.  It is a complex and tough job, with very little financial rewards.  They are my age and need to retire.  They are actively seeking someone to take the reins from them.  It is a different life from the one I know. but everyday there is so much to do,  The days fly by and I think Leanne summed it up when she said, “you can live anywhere these days and  I am never ever bored here.  It is my home.”

Of course I photographed a lot.  Down in the breaks, the landscape is spectacular.  The Breaks which contain Deep Creek run down to the Cheyenne River.  The landscape is deceiving because one feels the flatness of it and the vastness.  Driving right up to the edge of the Breaks, one does not realize that in just a minute there is a huge drop-off..  Down in Deep Creek there are lots of cattle with many calves.  They were not afraid of us and stood in the skinny roadway and looked very seriously at us.  I wondered who they thought we were.

i  remember my grandmother always having a camera ready to go by her back door.  Among other things she was a serious amateur photographer.  She told me once, when I was a child   “Have  the camera ready because you never know when you will need it.”  Her photographs are rich and beautiful and an inspiration to me. She photographed her children, visitors, the landscape, the animals.   I felt her presence strongly and found an old lard can which I will make into a pinhole camera.  I checked the back of the bathroom door where she kept a strap that was used to paddle all the miscreant children (but never me). It was gone.  I was given a beautiful coat she made and a dress of hers and two cigar boxes of my grandfathers.  I could still smell the cigars in the boxes, and still love that smell even though the cigars caused his death. I spent a whole day alone there, sitting in the old house, remembering.  I went up to the attic to find a bunch of children’s toys on the floor.  I was happy that children still played there as I once did. When Leanne had time, she took me back to the house and we looked at the old Bible among other things. Grandpa had written the births and deaths of people in the family in the Bible.  I felt heartsick that I had not been there more but I felt lucky to have this place as a part of my history and lucky to be able to go visit. Another important part of the trip was going and coming back.  My friend and I camped in the National Forests.  So many of them have been  burned and we camped in several burned out places.  It snowed one night!  There was a moose in a camp one afternoon.  We felt it was a good sign that no grizzlies were around. I was so amazed at seeing the moose that I  did not think to pick up the camera to take a photograph.  I was glad to camp in the burned out  places.  No one was usually around and the air was cool and the light beautiful.  I took lots of photographs of these places.  I will write more about the trip in future blog posts.  All of it is still new and I am still awed. Some bad things did happen but many good things as well.. Here are some photographs of the ranch.  I am still editing the pinhole images.

First four images:  My Grandparents house, the Shed, the Stairs and a field of winter wheat. Last three Images:  Landscapes along the way there and back.