Boston Without A Lens III

In addition to the Populist comparison I've posted the balance of the two rolls I shot over the past semester, including a couple candidates for my Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day shot. Some highlights:

After mentioning both the pit class I lectured to and the smaller listening section I teach every week, here's some illustration of them.

This will likely be my submission for WPPD, I took it just after midnight, since the Citgo sign was off already. I took a couple shots of it that night but probably won't get the roll developed in time.

I also added some shots from Wisconsin in the wintertime. The extremely short exposures seem to have a different feel than my normal urban and interior shots.

As per usual, the rest are on my Flickr stream. As may seem obvious, the Wisconsin shots aren't in the Boston set. I'll get around to making another one.

Populism Redefined

Musical Perceptions is doing their Top 51 Classical Music Blogs semi-annually, and for the second time I fall short of cut. They're using Technorati authority as their criteria, which some may say is a self-propagating blogger-circle-jerk sort of thing. (But that's loser talk.)

So it only took me five months to get through two rolls of film in both of my Populists. Yes! A second iteration! My dad's instructions lead to the new version, which adds a tripod mount and simplifies the clicker mechanism. My Populist has a slightly smaller pinhole, leading to faster exposure times at the expense of sharpness. Here are a couple shots of the MFA's lobby to compare.

Old Populist. 3.5 minute exposure.

New Populist. 1.5 minute exposure. I was originally going to also do a 3.5 minute exposure with the Populist DX but I guess that one was a whiteout.

F-Stop A Billion

I don't like to obsess over my statistics, but I notice a sizable percentage of people coming from f295.org, a large (the largest?) pinhole photography web forum. Hopefully not just for my bummer story about gallery openings. A welcome to you all anyway, maybe you guys are interested in modern music as well? I should really change the header to swap out "foodyism" with "pinhole photography". Equal in dignity and pretension, savvy?

My posts on the topic of film in boxes are collected here, but the real gold is all in the Flickr set. Feel free to leave comments about my lack of skillz, but for in depth knowledge of The Populist you'll need to go to the source.

Furthermore, subscribe to the feed or by e-mail to be notified of future tragedies. Note: these are all of my tragedies and not just the photography related ones.

Fotografuję, żeby pamiętać

A lot of rediculously awexome bands were formed at art schools: Talking Heads, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, to start. But how many really awexome bands came from music schools?

Exactly. By the way, the answers would have been Dream Theater (Berklee), Alarm Will Sound (Eastman), and Kneebody (also Eastman). One drawback of attending a conservatory is not being able to bounce ideas off of students of other disciplines. If not for all the art majors I hung out with last year, I would have no idea that I hate Matthew Barney (kind of) and no idea what post-feminism is. Not that anyone does.

Being a bit of a pinhole photography enthusiast and of vaguely Polish descent, it would have been silly not to attend "Made In Poland: Contemporary Pinhole Photography" at the Art Institute of Boston. The problem was that it was a little silly, upon arriving for the gallery talk I immediately got the sense that I was at a party that I wasn't really invited to. The crowd was easily divisible into three groups.

1) A close-knit fifty-something group of curators and art collectors

2) Ferocious cliques of Art Institute of Boston students

3) Pinhole photographers who only speak Polish

The exhibit was fantastic, but didn't really have any sort of confidence of why I was there. I showed the Populist DX to anyone to who would listen, but the responses ranged from detached curiosity to dismissive to the point of insult. Highly discouraging to say the least, in retrospect I should have returned on Saturday for the Meet the Artists/Portfolio Sharing event but since I lack one those too....

Whatever, fuck 'em. I can't recommend the exhibit enough, Poland is touted as a budding center for contemporary pinhole work and the pictures certainly supported that. I'd try to single them out but each of the seven artists presented approached the box-o-film so distinctly and uniquely that I'd drown the blog. Their individual websites are accessible from the exhibit site.

The curator's note echoes a lot of the reasons that I like pinhole photography, other than that my dad gave me a sweet camera: an inherent inclusion of the passage of time, and a refreshingly proletariat economy. This latter point was the real cause of frustration with a couple people at the exhibit. (Along the lines of: "Isn't this one of those kits you can buy?" "No, motherfucker! You make it!") Anyway, with such stunning examples to draw from maybe I'll try something other than pointing at something I see on the streets.

The exhibit runs until March 4 at the Art Institute of Boston and returns for round 2 from May 25 to September 16 at UMass Dartmouth.

Boston Without A Lens II

I did do some more shenanigans with the Populist II (PDF) before coming back and haven't gotten my dumb ass around to posting them, until now!!!!11



This is Huntington Avenue right in front of the Shaw's by the Pru. Almost a decent compromise of movement and clarity. I like it anyway.



Earlier in the year I took a bunch of pictures at night with my cameraphone, but couldn't figure out how to get them off whatever memory it has. So I took most of the pictures again with the Populist, this is actually a much more attractive picture of Mass Ave.



One thing that'll be cool when I back is that the second part of the Sensorium exhibit at MIT will be up. My dad is the one that gave me the camera, and he digs 2001 so I'm glad that I was able to get a picture here. The three of us are actually sitting on the couch discussing whether the camera will be able to sit there long enough to get an exposure without getting confiscated or otherwise fiddled with.

As before, these are the greatest hits of the larger Flickr set. (I added them to the same one as last time) I have about half a roll of film to burn in Wisconsin before I can use the new and improved Populist III that my dad recently developed.

Boston Without A Lens

Having begun an apprenticeship in the lost art of complaining, CVS has provided a CD with (most of) my pictures taken with the trusty Dvoracek II. Some highlights:



The front steps of the fair Conservatory



The library where I work, as seen by Hunter S. Thompson



Ghost party.



The First Church of Christ, Scientist. Very bizarre in the middle of Mass Ave. It's like the Vatican except no one cares.

The full set is on flickr. I also have yet to mention how great and awexome it is that gapless playback has come to the iPod. Listening to Trance this afternoon was like listening to it for the first time again.