Jul 9, 2016 | Blog
The Pinhole Project continues with over 2000 images made in the last two and a half years. What I love about the Project is the willingness of the participants to try different cameras and wait for sometimes up to three months to see the image they have made. While a certain breath mint tin makes a fantastic camera and has been used for the majority of the images in the Archive, several photographers have ventured into new territory and made cameras out of a variety of tins with several holes, sometimes placed evenly around the front of the tin and sometimes randomly placed. The beautiful thing about the Pinhole Project is that anything goes and almost always everything works out well, even images that have been soaked with water and are damaged, even cameras that have fallen down and been put back up several times.
This post celebrates those participants who tended and placed their multi-hole cameras or whose cameras persisted despite all odds and were put up after falling down, again and again. The two holes harken back to the old stereotype cameras of the 19th century and the old landscapes which took lots of time and effort to expose. They reinforce my love of the diptych.
One of the great experimenters has been April Surgent who took cameras with her to a remote scientific station in Antarctica a few years back. She was a novice at making the cameras and inadvertently at first poked several holes in the piece of brass shim stock where one hole usually is poked. She made beautiful images with sun trails floating across the sky like flights of birds in dreams. For a full account of her journey, take a look at an earlier blog post on here work: http://www.janetneuhauser.com/april-surgents-pinholes/
Another major player in the two hole pinhole camera world is Eric Riedel, a fellow Sunny Arms artist coop member. Eric has made over 20 exposures over the last few years and his images are stunning. He generally exposes the images for just three weeks. Here is a pinhole image he made in collaboration with Barry Christensen.. it is four hole camera–Eric and Barry each exposed two holes.
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sabelle Ranson has experimented with several two hole cameras. Here is one of her’s:
I have been working with a three hole camera; here is one of my recent 90 day exposures from the Sunny Arms Artist Coop, where I live and work in Seattle. The yellow lines in the foreground are car lights coming in and out of the parking l
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he featured image is by Steve Neuhauser who made a 60 day exposure in his boathouse, where he lives with a two hole camera.
Look for a new website for the Pinhole Project coming soon. It is now under construction….
Feb 15, 2016 | Blog
I am happy to announce that ten images from my Nighttime Portfolio have been chosen for the Blue Sky Gallery’s Pacific NW Viewing Drawers. The gallery is located in Portland, Oregon. These images are a part of the 2016 juried selections for the Viewing Drawers program and will be available at the Gallery for a year. Blue Sky, www.blueskygallery.org/ is a fantastic place, a must see in Portland for anyone who cares about photography. I am honored to be in these hallowed halls.
My Nighttime Portfolio is made up mostly of images made in the Seattle neighborhoods of Georgetown and South Park over the last five years or so. I began the series because I felt a need to document the rebuilding of the Argo Bridge a few blocks from my studio. As the old Bridge was demolished so was the quick walk and/or drive over to Georgetown from South Sodo. I simply did not have time to photograph the Bridge consistently during the day and I found that at night, the workers were gone, the train yards were still active and no one seemed to care if I was out there wandering around with a camera and a tripod. It was a great setting in which to stumble about and shoot my heart out. Many students accompanied me on these forays as well and I thank them for that. Below are the ten images chosen for the Viewing Drawers. They will be available from April 7th on. Stop by if you are in Portland. PS: the featured image is titled, Lucille Crossing, 2013.
South Park Bridge, Rebuilt, 2014
Under the Argo Bridge, 2012
Behind the Hanger Cafe, 2013
Albro Street between 13th Avenue South and Stanley Street, 2015
Off Airport Way, north of the Argo Bridge, 2015
13th Avenue South. 2014
Alley off Stanley Street, 2014
Along Airport Way at South Vale Street, 2015
Corner of Stanley Street and Albro Avenue, Looking North, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 | Blog
It’s been two years since the Pinhole Project began and well over 2000 people have made an amazing array of long exposure images. Very, very inspiring. I intend to do a blog post on some of the images soon. Bear with me while I update the archive and create a website just for the Archive in 2016. In the meantime, I have been shooting with several pinhole cameras/devices recording the image on film or digitally. The images here represent new work with a few of these cameras. Last summer I shot with the 4 x 5 pinhole, my old buddy, onto color negative film while on the Northern California coast. These images are different than the ones I made two years ago there with the same camera. They frighten me a bit: a cross between faded Kodachrome postcards of my youth and an off-beat surrealist future where the world is unpopulated and lonely. The image below, Salt Point South, is a ten minute exposure during the golden hour, crashing waves flattened out and all the world with a magenta cast . I love standing by the camera during the exposure, knowing I won’t forget the smell of wind and the glorious light. This image is of course not “reality.” It is 20 minutes of time compressed onto a sheet of film exposed though a tiny little hole punched in metal on to sheet film. I did not even get to see it for almost a month.
The image above, Usal Beach, was made on a close damp evening, another long exposure, around fifteen minutes. There were a lot of people around that beach, walking through, unrecorded. The place had a kind of creepy air to it, four miles down a bumpy dirt road, once a “doghole” where loggers lived and worked a hundred years ago, creating a company town which has totally disappeared. Now the place is run down, full of ghosts and garbage, discarded bullet casings and strange cries in the night.
This past year I have also been making images with several homemade camera obscura boxes that project an image through a pinhole into the back side of the box. A hole drilled beneath the pinhole holds the lens for DSLR. It is a wonderful way to record the pinhole image without film. Inspired by one of my heros, Abelard Morell and his camera obscura room photographs done around the world, I decided to try my own hand at homemade portable obscura boxes. I am interested in the way the images feel contained yet expansive at the same time. And I like that while I am making these images I can stand in front of the camera and create a self portrait of sorts. Here is diptych from my old haunt, the Argo Trainyard, just a few blocks from my house. This image was made from two images taken side by side, both long exposures on a windy afternoon and I was able to stand in for the first exposure. For the second, I had to shield the box from the wind.
Another image made with a similar box/contraption, taken outside my front door, with my neighbor standing and chatting during the five exposure.
Both of the above images were inspired in part by a project that I almost got to do but in the end did not–I was hoping to make an old grain silo into a camera obscura. These boxes started as models for that project and evolved into life forms of their own. I do have a self portrait from that silo experience; the pinhole in the silo projected the image of me onto the wall opposite as my DSLR teetered on an upturned bucket inside recording the projected image.
There are many more experiments. I give you a few of my favorites. Why do I like these images better than a tack sharp image made on a tripod with a DSLR or a film camera? What do these images have that those other images do not? I don’t know the answers yet, but I do know that I like to record the passage of time with long exposures — more than a minute and less than oh say 90 days. I like the fact that I have to keep the camera (DSLR) and the camera obscura box together both on separate tripods and move them around together as one big contraption. With the large format pinhole and film I like how the time exposures change reality. These cameras make photography difficult and rewarding — wonderfully so in a world where photography has become so very rote and predictable. Lensless photography is simple but not easy, modern yet historical, unpredictable and thrilling.
Note: The featured image was taken with a great big old cardboard obscura box, with the DSLR. An early experiment, the box had a light leak on the corner which created a lovely red line. And there was some junk inside the box that could have been taken out but wasn’t. Heres to the happy accident.
Nov 22, 2014 | Blog
I am honored to be chosen as part of the Seattle’s Photographic Center Northwest, PCNW Presents program. They have selected ten photographers to represent for the next two years and will be showing the work in the gallery where people can buy it. This is a big first for me, to have gallery representation in my hometown, and I am humbled and grateful. And I am in very good company with the likes of Jenny Riffle, (http://www.jennyriffle.com/) and Glenn Rudolph (http://www.glennrudolph.com/), both amazing NW photographers. Others include Sylvia Plachy, a photographer I have admired since the 1980’s. For more detailed information on all the photographers, go to http://pcnw.org/exhibitions/pcnw-presents/ Over the next few months the two photographs below will be hanging in the gallery. Stop by and take a look and also visit the show in the main gallery, Well Read: Visual Explorations of the Book. It will make you think differently about books in general.
I have taught at PCNW for the last seven years and have always said that it is the heart and soul of photography in Northwest. I love teaching my ten week class at night: an introduction to the DSLR and “serious” digital photography. I think there is still room in the Monday night class that starts in January. And I will post whenever the PCNW Presents photographers have work on the wall. Stay tuned.
Featured image for this post Georgetown Backyards from the Albro Bridge, 2014 One of my newest night photographs, captured with a DSLR this year.
The two images below while both night photographs were each captured differently. The top image, The Road to Grant’s 50th, is a digital capture made with a DSLR. The image below is made on color negative film, exposed in a pinhole camera. Despite the differences in capture, they have many similarities that may or may not come through on the computer screen. All the more reason to go to the gallery!
Title: The Road to Grant’s 50th, 2012
Print Size: 22” x 15” Frame Size: 22” x 28”
Print Type: Digital Capture Printed on Crane’s Portfolio Rag Paper with Archival Inks
Title: Due West: Lost Coast, California, 2013
Print Size: 22” x 15” Frame Size: 22” x 28”
Print Type: C-41 color negative film exposed in a 4 x 5 inch pinhole camera; Negative scanned and printed on Crane’s Portfolio Rag Paper with Archival Ink
Sep 6, 2014 | Blog
As most people know, I am a high school photography teacher. It was never my intent. I enjoyed teaching after graduate school but never wanted to “deal” with teenagers and definitely did not intend ever to have a steady job. Then, there was no other way but one way to support myself and that way fell into my lap. I became a high school photography teacher and it became my day job. Now, when I think of the term day job, I think of the many manual labor, demeaning low paying jobs I have had over the years and the high school teaching job does not fit into that description. Still I go to it everyday during the school year for eleven hours each day door to door. I ride my bike there and that gives me a way to re-enter my home and studio with the day job left behind. I am able to live in two different worlds pretty successfully; in fact I enjoy both immensely. The teenagers I have taught have been rewarding, frustrating, sometimes sad, tons of fun. They keep me young in my 21st year of teaching high school. I am good at it, though my students (some of them anyway) might say different. But in the summer, as soon as school is out, I have almost ten consecutive weeks to work in my studio on anything I want. I get a rhythm and because I live and work in the same place, I get a lot done. Summer is a blissful time, I go to bed late, take a catnap in the afternoon, work in the studio or go on a road trip and take pictures. It’s a beautiful life. And then, the day job calls out from it’s slumbering heap in the corner, and I can’t believe summer is over. True, in some ways I am grateful for the discipline of the day job. It keeps me honest, in a routine that is healthy out of necessity. I become responsible, eat well, do yoga and go to bed early.
I will be the first to admit I get a thrill out of my day job. After all, teaching is fun and I really enjoy turning teenagers onto photography. They are not afraid to make mistakes and they love to express themselves, to be heard. So as I begin another year of teaching, I am looking for ways to merge both lives. I intend this year to loosen my grip on myself; enjoy every minute more and let both types of work, teaching and making photographs flow freely. I am continuing to work with color negative film in the 4 x 5 inch pinhole camera. I give you two here both made in the Catskills, New York State, this summer. More to come as I finish processing.
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