As some of you may know I recieved a BFA in Art and Design from Northern Michigan University in May of 2009 and returned as a post baccalaureate Art History student in January of 2010.  While an undergrad at NMU the Melissa Matuscak, the director of the Devos Art Museum, let me browse through the museum’s George Shiras III photography collection.  I was told that the previous exhibition of his work had been in 1990 – 20 years ago – and that she was wanting to have another exhibition of his work.  My interest was piqued within seconds.  What could be better than a project that merges so many of interests?  Art History, photography, and restoration all in one project.

It took quite a bit of time to get all the details worked out, but in November of 2009 I told Melissa that I would be returning for three semesters and she offered me the project through the Beaumier Heritage Center.  I got to work on it in February of 2010 and worked right up until the day the exhibition opened last May.

So what did we have to work with?  Just under 40 silver gelatin prints made from reproduced 5×7 negatives provided by the National Geographic Scoiety.  Many of them had curled and were in rough shape.  The frames they were housed in, as you can imagine, were old and just a little tacky and really did not carry any air of sophistication that you would expect to see at a professional exhibition.

The negatives, like the prints, were also in a sorry state – more than likely from improper handling 2o years when being used for the initial exhibition.  After talking with Dan Truckey, the director of the Beaumier Heritage Center, and Melissa we decided that what was really in order was a high resolution digital archive of these photographs as well as an exhibition of freshly printed, mounted and framed photos.  I lucked out, I got to do all of the photography and almost none of the historical research, that was conducted by an intern at the Beaumier, Lindsey Strzyzykoski.

Over the course of the semester I used a large format Epson scanner to scan all of the negatives at 4800 dpi.  As I said in the previous paragraph the negatives were largely in very poor condition and required extensive digital restoration.  A good majority of the images took just less than an hour before they were printable, but there were many that took as much as four hours for each one.  I have been working with Photoshop for eleven years – I am very comfortable with the software and create a very efficient workflow.

The restoration, although well within my realm of capability, created the most trying time for me during this project.  Aside from purely visual issues I had to consider philosophical issues of the restoration of historical photographs.  Shiras was by no means a wonderful printer and often relied on the National Geographic Society to do his printing for him.  He was more documentary in his approach, as he and his assistant John Hammer are the folks who literally invented nighttime flash photography in the 19th century.  He photographed wild lands and wild life at night.

So what was I to do?  Should I enhance the images to create a more contemporary aesthetic or do I leave some blemishes and marks that imply age and historicity?  What I did know is that I had to maintain some sort of visual consistency.  I ended up employing a combination of the two.  I removed most of the blemishes from most of the images leaving the ones that I felt carried the strongest implications of historicity.  Meaning I set out to remove the dust and emulsion problems that were distracting, but left the ones that seemed to me to be more “natural” in their occurrance, that includes scratches on the negatives caused by mishandling 20 years ago.

I also had to consider the larger print as a whole.  Shiras’ original images were very contrasty, often with predominantly black grounds with little to no detail or the exact opposite predominantly white with very little detail.  I had to consider this when printing his work.  I chose to continue in this vein and produce contrasty images, although I did have to tame it down in several photographs to make them visually pleasing.  I ended up printing all but five of the images at 13″ x 19″.  Not huge, but not small either – It’s what the budget allowed for and I think that it was perfect.

The five images that I did not print were printed by The Lab in Minneapolis.  Their work is absolutely stunning, they conduct themselves very professionally, and they are very affordable.  They printed for us three 2′ x 3′ prints and two 3′ x 4′ prints and I could not be happier with the results, as I said the images are stunning and are very powerful when viewing them in person.

Once everything had been printed, information panels made, etc. Lindsey and I designed the show in two days.  The two of us and her fiancé created the historical displays, hung the work, ate some food, and had a lot of fun.  The images below are a few of the 37 prints that were on display up until last week.

*Notes on the pictures.  These images are from a PowerPoint that made before all of the images had been restored, as such several do not appear to be finished.  Although these images are now in the public domain, please be courteous and contact me before using them.

Share this Article

Yesterday was one of the best camera buying days ever.  I bought 11 cameras of variable quality for $5.77.  I hit up two thrift stores in the area, both of them St. Vincent DePaul Thrift Stores.  The first St. Vinnie’s had a “1/2 off everything in the store” sale.  They had a good number of cameras, but only two of them forced me into buying them the BG Helioflex and the Ricoh AF-7.  I had to have the BG because I absolutely love the cheap plastic cameras that are designed to mimic what most people consider a proper camera, an SLR.  Most of them that I’ve shot do actually take fairly decent pictures.  The Ricoh AF-7 was necessary because the brick shaped “electronic” cameras of the 80′s really do it for me, they’re ackwardly beautiful.

The second St. Vinnie’s proved to be the jackpot.  They didn’t have any sales going on, but apparently their cameras are always 50 cents plus tax, yes fifty cents!  I felt like a kid with ten cents standing in front of a penny candy machine.  They had all of their cameras piled inside of a laundry basket.  I had to dig through them to get to the bottom.  I ended up buying 9 of them. I had to pick up all the Bell+Howell point and shoots as they’re so easy to manipulate and modify, remember my tutorial from last Spring?  I also had to get the Instamatics.  Whenever I find instamatics at a great price I buy them, I’ve got a small collection of them and I love each and everyone.  They’re great shelf pieces, as they don’t really resemble the cameras people usually display proudly in their living rooms.  I bought the Kodak Pleaser Instant Camera because I didn’t have an instant Kodak in my collection.  It looks crazy and fun and I’ll never be able to use it.

I had to have the Canon SureShot WP-1, it’s water proof (unless I prove otherwise) and I’ve never gotten the chance to play with an underwater camera before, not even a disposable one.  I live four blocks from Lake Superior this will give me a reason to get in.  I’ve got a few ideas, if only the water temperature would rise a few degrees.

A view inside. It does actually look water tight.

There a quite a few reasons for buying the Fuji DL-50.  The primary reason was because it looks and feels like a big 110 camera.  It folds up like some of the 110 cameras I’ve played with.  It’s fully electronic and the photographer doesn’t have to spool the film you drop it in and it takes care of the rest.  I’ve not used it or even loaded batteries into it, so we’ll see whether or not it works.

Over the past few months I’ve picked a couple of other cameras as well.  Most of the thrift store cameras here in Marquette cost between $1 and $8.  I do my best to only buy the $1 cameras.  Occasionally the thrift stores will make mistakes and price a camera incorrectly.  The camera below on the right hand side is a Bratz Movie 35mm plastic still camera.  It’s one of the most poorly made cameras in my collection.  The door does not stay closed well, it’s nearly impossible to spool film and it’s definitely not light tight.  To top it all off, the flash is fake.  It’s there purely for aesthetic mimicry.  The other camera will look familiar to most toy camera die-hards.  It’s one of TIME cameras produced in the 80′s and 90′s.  This one is one of the latter models made, probably from the late 80′s or early 90′s.  TIME gave these away to people who bought a magazine subscription.  The flash did not come with camera.  I bought that at another thrift store for $3.  I had to tape four layers of plastic shopping bag to it to mute it down; it was so harsh.

I recently bought these cameras from St. Vinnie’s as well.  There is a Fujica Compact Deluxe, an Olympus 35RC, and a Konica C35.  The Fujica was bought from an ebay seller, it came in a huge box of photography odds and ends.  It’s nearly mint, as good as a used camera can be.  There was half shot roll of Kodak in it.  I had it processed and I got a couple of shots from the roll.  Two of the photos are perfect and were great additions to my collection of pictures of the past shot by other people.

The Olympus and Konica were both bought for a $1 each.  I just about crapped when I saw them on the shelf for $1 each I was so excited.  They’re nearly perfect and gorgeous.

Last week I went thrifting and found this guy at St. Vinnies.  It’s an absolutely gorgeous SX-70 Alpha 1 Land Camera.  It was priced at 25 cents.  I had to buy it.  If there hadn’t been some unused nasty film inside the camera I would have never guessed that it had ever been used.  The metal has no scratches anywhere and the leatherette is absolutely perfect.  Definitely a great buy.

Share this Article

Today was the day, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.  I’ve been getting geared up for today for a couple weeks.  The weather here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was dreary, damp, and chilly.  The sun rarely poked through thick gray clouds and it rained and drizzled for most of the day.  Definitely not the ideal day for the longer exposures necessary with pinhole photography.  I made the best of what I had and it turned out to be pretty fun anyway.

I ran through two rolls of film through my DIY Bell & Howell pinhole.  The first was a roll of Fuji 200 and the second was a roll that I grabbed out my ’12 pack, take away bag’ from the Four Corner Store.  I tried to snag a few pinholes from inside my apartment, but the films both had too low of ASA and I didn’t expose them for long enough, it’s tough trying to make a 15 second exposure with an eight month old who won’t sit still.  Oh well, we had fun playing with camera.

Once Frankie and I were done playing and she went down for a nap I headed out into the drizzle.  I didn’t shoot very long, just long enough to walk around town for a while.  I did manage to get a handful of shots that I like (check out the gallery below).

I wasn’t the only person in the household to take part in the festivities, my wife Mary shot a roll as well.  She got started earlier than I did though.  She shot around the coffee shop this morning and got some great indoor shots.  One of them is a shot of me in front of a coffee cup.  This picture made me laugh.  It reminded me of what could be a contemporary Communist Propaganda Poster.  It has the bearded revolutionary sitting in front of a cup of coffee, the beverage of choice of armchair philosophers everywhere.

Unlike me she was lucky and got some great indoor shots of our daughter, Frankie.

She was also able to get out a bit to grab some outdoor shots.  I feel bad for her though, the folks down at the one-hour photo put a scratch in the emulsion that spanned almost the whole length of the roll.  If we print any of these, that’s going to be a bitch to remove in photoshop.

Sean’s Gallery

Mary’s Gallery

Share this Article

Some very exciting news, my DIY 35mm pinhole tutorial has been reposted at Four Corners Dark you can view the post here.  If you’re unfamiliar with Four Corners Dark you should go check them out.  They are without a doubt the best toy camera blog ever.  Their new online store, the Four Corners Store has just been opened and they have some good stuff.  There aren’t tons and tons of products, but there were a few things that I had to have (more on them in the future).

Thanks to Nic at Four Corners Dark for reposting the article.

Share this Article

Yesterday afternoon I installed my senior exhibit in the Devos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University.  As you may or may not know I am currently an undergraduate photography student drudging through my final semester.  This small body of work is the foundation of my newest series “Recollections.”  My regular readers will recognize a few of the pieces on display, two of my homemade cameras and one picture.

Let me briefly walk you through my show.

My regular readers will recognize the first two cameras (left to right), they are the 35mm foam core that I constructed about a month ago and the Neretta Snap, completed early in the year.  The one on the right is my newest build, it is called the 6×7 Black Box.  Like the Neretta, it is a basswood camera and took way too long to make.  I did not follow a plan and it took more than 50 precisely cut pieces of wood, fitted together over the course of two weeks.  The back is a somewhat functional Mamiya ProS 6×7 back, the lens is none other than 60mm Holga lens, and the shutter came from a super old Brownie.  It is my greatest homemade camera to date because of the images it is able to capture.  The picture “Out of the Darkness,” as seen below was made with this camera.

The three pictures on the right have all been shot and printed within the past three weeks, the first was one of my first exposures from the Neretta.  The four pictures in order that they appear in my show from left to right can be found below.

“Approaching the Edge”

“Out of the Darkness”

“Conscious”

“Sanctity”

The pictures were placed in this order to highlight the implied narrative in the titles.  Although not shot in the order they are displayed in, when grouped like this they effectively articulate my philosophy behind this body of work.  I had to omit two pieces that I intended to show with this series due to space limitations (even though, the director of the museum was very generous with the amount of wall space she gave me) and visual inconsistencies.  I’m not all that broken up about it; I’ll just have to shoot more so that in the future those inconsistencies aren’t a problem.

Here is my philosophical statement for this series. I know I hate reading most of them too, relax though it’s not that long.  It’s verbose (kinda), but definitely not long.

“I don’t trust my memory and I don’t trust yours either.  The act of remembering is a cognitive process of storing our pasts to aid us in the present.  Our ability of recall is flawed before the memory is ever formed.  Each and every memory formed is based on our perceptions at the time it’s made.  Perceptions, in their own right, should not be trusted as they are based on past perceptions and emotive responses towards the realities presented to us by our environment.  In time our views and perceptions change which pulls our memories out of their original contexts and places them in our present context.  Over time our memories become clouded and fuzzy, which forces us to reconstruct them in a present context with present perceptions.  This means that the details in the memories aren’t entirely truthful, we’ve filled in the blanks.

My work with photography is an embodiment of my views on the formation and recollection of memories.  My homemade cameras represent the cognitive process of memory construction.  When building them I intentionally push the focal range beyond infinity so that only a narrow region of the image is in focus.  This region of the image is the retained memory, surrounded by the clouded details we no longer remember in their entirety.  The pictures I produce are not necessarily my memories.  They are representations that can be shared by anyone.”

I’m really excited about this series and can’t wait to get more work done on it.  In two weeks I won’t have to show up to class anymore, so I should have a good amount of time this Summer to work on it.  I’m really curious to see where this series leads me.  What ideas will it create in me, what spin offs will it lead to?  It’s very exciting.

Share this Article

Here is the newest addition to my small arsenal of home made cameras.  This was just a fun, quick Saturday project.  It was inspired by the paper and cardboard pinhole cameras that you see available from time to time.  For the past few months I considered buying one or two of them, but at about $20 a piece I’ve been hesitant.  I’m all about economy when it comes to photography and I just figured I could make something comparable for a fraction of the cost.  Add to that the fact that I already have half a dozen pinhole cameras I thought it would be interesting to make something like the paper pinholes with a lens.

This is the product of that mentality.  The camera is primarily made of black foam core, glue, and black duct tape to make it light tight.  The lens came from my camera parts box, it was originally on an Olympia type camera, the shutter came from an old Holga 120S that I chopped for parts a few years ago, the spool came from a broken point and shoot and the rewind spool came from a broken slr.  The shutter release button was a problem up until the end of the cameras construction.  I couldn’t figure out what to use, none of the buttons from my junk box would work.  So, I pulled out the screw driver to an eye glasses repair I had.  I cut the metal off with my dremel and filed it down a bit and put it on top of the shutter, perfection.  And it even looks like a shutter release button.  The winding knob is a cabinet knob that I had and the rewind knob is wooden craft part (I can’t imagine what a “normal” crafter would use one of these for).  The cabinet knob is glue to the spool and wooden knob is glue to a dowel rod which in turn is glued to the metal rewind spool.

The back of the camera doesn’t open like most cameras do because I don’t have any hinges laying around.  So, I built the back to operate like a dark slide on medium format and large format cameras.  It slides in and out of place.  It was too loose at first so I had to add a bit of thickness.  I decided to glue the front of a coca-cola box onto the darkslide and cut it down to size.  Perfect fit and it adds a splash of color to an otherwise monochromatic camera.

I’m betting that the f/stop is approximately f/5.6, but only experimentation will tell me for sure.  I shot a roll of sensia 400 through it and I have it spooled in my developing tank, but have not had the time to process it yet.  I’m going to cross precess the roll in D-76.  I’ve never processed color film in black and white developer and thought this would be the perfect opportunity.  An experimental camera with experimental cross processing.

Share this Article

I found myself at the dollar store this morning, I’m sure you have one in your town as well. It’s the place where everything is $1, everything. I love dollar stores, I rarely buy anything at them, but I love them nonetheless. They are chock full of things that I never knew existed and things that I know I would never ever want. They did have several dozen of these though. There were black ones, gray ones, green ones, red ones, yellow ones, and I think pink ones (I can’t remember as the green ones stole my attention immediately). I instantly fell in love with the neon green ones and had to have one.

I shelled out my $1.06 and left, realised that I didn’t have any film for it and went back in to see if they had any for $1. I was super excited, film for $1? Any film that cheap would have to be the best. It would be too good to be true. I tracked down a clerk. “Do you have any film for that camera I just bought?” “No” she said, “They don’t make film that cheap.”  I think she was right, although, $1 film is the kind I would want to use.  Come to think of it when buying in bulk, my Superia usually amounts to about $1.25 per roll.

So I had to wait until I got out of work and school to load her up and take her out shooting. While I was loading some Fujifilm Superia 200 in it I got a phone call from a friend telling me to meet her and Mary at the coffee shop. Sounded good, I could shoot on the way. I only live four blocks from the greatest coffee shop on the planet (Dead River Coffee), so I had to shoot everything on the way to make sure I could fill that roll up before it got dark. The coffee was great and so was the conversation.

My favorite shot that I got this afternoon was of my buddy Colin. He’s the group tech savant. Anything computers, technology, etc., He knows it guaranteed. Here’s the picture:

This camera is something else.  After I bought it I noticed that the lens does not directly line up with the shutter, they are off center.  The focus is very, very soft.  I don’t think there’s one sharp detail in any of these shots and that’s OK, I’m really intrigued with how shitty this camera is. The instructions that were included with this camera are joke.  They are the size of half a note card and have 4 steps.  They were poorly translated and the graphics are great line drawings.  Further there is a slight vignetting in the corners of the pictures, it’s the strongest on the brightest sky shots.  The tag line on the packaging is classic, “Capture the moment, treasure the memory.”  This sums it up perfectly, although, I’m pretty sure I’m going to treasure the memories with this camera more than the memories captured in the pictures.

I definitely got my money’s worth.  If you find one of these cameras, buy it’s worth it.  If for no other reason than it’s fun.  The rest of the images are displayed below.  There are some sky shots, car shots, road and alley shots. All very fun.

Share this Article

I am not that satisfied with the images, but now I have good basis to begin taking better pictures with the camera.  I’m only going to show of two because they are the two most succesful images that I got back.  I did not use a light meter when I took these shots, next time I probably will.  The focus is exactly what I expected.  The camera lens was intentionally pushed an extra 5mm from the film plane, which offers a nice soft focus at infinity.

Now that I have a better idea of what to expect as far as image quality goes I will be using the Neretta Snap more often.  From now on though, I’ll probably have to send out the 4×5′s because the lab on campus took almost one month to return eight sheets.  That’s ridiculous and I refuse to allow that to happen again.  So I will have to stockpile the exposed sheets until I have a decent collection going.  Another reason that I will have to send them out is the damaged corners on every single sheet that was returned to me.  They hung the sheets to dry in the drier with steel clips which gouged up some of the corners on my slides.  Damn!

Share this Article

P.S. tune in tomorrow.  I got some of my 4×5′s back that I shot with Neretta Snap and I’ll be posting a few of them tomorrow after I get them scanned.

Share this Article