About Town

I’m just getting back into the swing of things after a wonderful, long relaxing weekend on the northern coast of California, Sea Ranch to be exact, where my boyfriend’s mom recently moved (the product of vacationing there every summer for more than 20 years and her retirement dream fulfilled). So much relaxing and cool sea breeze– it was an especially grumpy Monday morning back to work.

Hopefully I will get to printing some of the pictures I took there, but I thought I would share some pictures I finally printed from the spring first. I haven’t shared much black and white photography on this blog, but traditional darkroom b & w photo was my main art all through high school and college. I have gotten a little away from it, but I still love it.

In recent years, I have been most interested in experimental photography, which for me means photography focused more on trial and error conceptual results, often using non-standard equipment, and less focused on large fine prints. One example would be the pinhole photography I did quite a while ago, and also the photos I’m about to share now, which I took with a Holga Camera: an inexpensive, 120 size, simplified camera that is known for producing uncontrolled results with light leaks etc.

The camera feels like a plastic toy, has two light settings (sunny or cloudy), and four focusing settings illustrated with small pictures (mountain, group of people, three people, one person from shoulder up). I really like throwing my results up to chance. Just like with pinhole photography, it’s a miracle to me that I actually capture a photo.

Anyway, here are some photos around my neighborhood, taken with my Holga, I was very interested in sun and clouds that day:

Some Blogs I Like and Pinhole Photography

I thought now would be a good time to tell you about some blogs that I like because you might like them too. I have been reading Lisa Congdon’s Art Blog for a while now, and she and her blogging story are very inspirational to me because it is largely through blogging that she has changed her whole life and is now a selling artist. I have also stumbled upon Anna Maria Horner’s Blog which gives a peek into the life of a designer, mom, and altogether creative person who is succeeding at paying the bills with her creativity. Anna Maria writes lots of great anecdotes from her family life and designs some incredibly beautiful fabrics. I also love food and crafting, and my friend over at Errant is always up to something interesting in that area and documenting it with excellent pictures. I have also just added a new blog to my reading list, Sourtimes is a new crafting and art blog with lots of cool textile and art projects and interesting photos.

Now, I want to show you my most recent photography experiment. Last Spring, I took a pinhole photography class at The UC Davis Craft Center where I volunteer and will soon be teaching. I got really excited about the simplicity of taking pictures with just a box with a pinhole in it. Most of all, I got excited about what you can do with motion. The camera (loaded with just photo paper instead of film) is not very sensitive to movement because the exposures take quite a while (mine were around 1-2 minutes in pretty good sunlight) so it takes quite a while to capture an image and therefore the camera does not catch everything you do. The camera is also very vague in it’s focusing because there is no lense (I’m sure you could make a very accurate pinhole, but I like experimenting). From my interest in motion, I decided I wanted to take pictures of myself with wings and document the transition from arms to wings. It sounds weird, but I am a little weird, and I like the strange results.

The pictures may seem blurry to you, but I find the vagueness of the results to be really interesting. I like that they just give an impression of what’s happening. It’s really fun for me, after years of doing traditional photography, to throw everything out the window and get back to the most basic form of camera. There are five in the series, and I am make them into a sort of book by sewing them onto board covered in tea dyed rice paper and somehow linking them together. The sewing is the most time consuming, but I have finished that, so now I am just contemplating how to finish the book.