I have to admit, I am tired of using Photoshop to create a pseudo Holga shot using javascripts found in flickr.com so I decided to just go ahead and hack my Holga CFN and give it a second life since all it has been doing is gathering dust. My plan—to hack the hell out of my holga and turn it into an EOS lens for my Canon 20D.
Read instructions at Litratista
Via MAKE Blog
Jörg Colberg interviews photographer Jay Parskinson about his Aspiring Models project:
But the project is also interesting from the purely photographic perspective. Doing photographic portraits is very tough – if you don’t believe it try it; and I somehow thought that shooting portraits of people who want to earn money from getting their portrait taken but who have not much actual experience adds another complication to the whole project, since both the photographer and the model have to worry about the photo.
I talked with Jay about these and other aspects of his work…
Read interview at Conscientious
Paul Butzi writes in The Online Photographer:
Different isn’t synonymous with bad. Instead of viewing every difference between silver-based photography and digital photography as weaknesses in the new technology, it’s far more productive as artists to pick up the new technology and ask ourselves, “Where can I go with this that I couldn’t go before?” The best path forward isn’t to refuse to pick up digital cameras until the results are exactly like those we get with film, and it isn’t to mindlessly adopt the new technology and forget the lessons of the past, either. The best path forward is to pick up the new technology, embrace its different strengths and weaknesses, and extend our hard won knowledge rather than discard it…
Someone talking sanely about silver vs. digital? Am I dreaming?
The sanity continues at The Online Photographer
Horseman have just introduced their LD bellows system for Canon and Nikon digital SLRs.
"Whether you are using a Canon® or Nikon® digital single lens reflex, Horseman now gives you an opportunity to add full bellows functions—like in a medium or large format view camera. The Horseman LD comes in two models that accept Nikon or Canon DSLR bodies, maintaining all their normal functions. Up front, you can attach any standard medium or large format camera lens…"
This isn’t my ultimate fantasy ideal, which is movements controlled by a thumb pad on the back of the camera with one-touch zeroing of any plane, but still: HELL YEAH!
Coming soon are a conversion kit that will allow you to shoot 4×5 film and a slide adapter for pro digital backs.
It’s available now for about US $2,500.
Check it out at the Horseman product page or read the press release.
Via PhotographyBLOG
David Usborne writes in The Independent:
A group of low-paid people in the US—many of them illegal immigrants—were given cameras and photography classes and asked to capture their lives.
…
Due out in shops across the United States this week, Unseen America offers highly unusual and often poignant glimpses of the ordinary lives of low-salaried workers in the US, the majority of whom are immigrants and often without legal papers.
…
It began when Esther Cohen, the executive director, organised free photography classes for blue-collar workers across the country, many of whom had never taken a picture in their lives. Cameras, donated by supporters, were given to them and they were encouraged to capture images that represented their lives in America…
Read the article at The Independent
Order from Amazon.com or from Amazon UK.
Wow, I’ve been set back to my childhood days…ever built a pinhole camera? Check out www.sitzer-records.de > lazy comet> video pinhole camera. This homemade low budget clip is great fun. I love it! there’s a competition going on, so dump your digital camera and get analogue again! plus pinhole camera is one of my favourite tracks right now. Makes springtime mornings (afternoons and nights) the best time of year!
Build your own camera and send us the pictures until 31st July (contact address on the homepage). The first 3 places will be winning a fantastic Lazy Comet package.
Read more at Sitzer Records (Deutsch)
Via Pinhole Visions
"Rebecca Hinden is obsessed with the red eyes that you see in photograph. For her latest project she’s made up red eye goggles that let you see red eye without having to take anyones picture and develop the photograph…"
Get the video with iTunes or download the MP4 file directly.
Via MAKE Blog
It turns out that when I reviewed the HP Combi-Plan T 4×5 daylight sheet film developing tank and called it a "dodgy, leaky piece of shit", I may have vastly under-stated my case.
It was nice today: the trees in a local apple orchard were flowering, it was warm but not hot, and the light was good. I loaded up some Velvia and FP4, grabbed my field camera, and spent half an hour waiting for a cloud to move out of the way of the sun.
It’s been a while since I shot B&W 4×5 and I forgot that I never actually ordered the rotary tube I was looking at to replace the Combi-Plan. Oh well. You know how sometimes you have a bad experience with something, time passes, and you start to think that it couldn’t really be as bad as you remember? The Combi-Plan can’t be that bad, can it?
It can. Now that I’ve given the tank another go, I think it’s still dodgy, it’s still leaky, and still a piece of shit, but that doesn’t really begin to cover it. This time, most of the sheets escaped their carrier channels and were floating around loose inside. One sheet had a few chunks of emulsion scratched out, which could be my sometimes questionable film holder loading skills, but my money’s on it floating around and scraping against sharp film carrier parts.
I’m frankly amazed that this thing is actually sold. If I hacked something this bad together, I wouldn’t even lend it to a friend, let alone attempt to charge money for it. Either the company who make this have never used it or they’ve got balls the size of the moon. This product needs to be melted, dunked in piss, and stabbed in the face with a fucking schoolbus.
UPDATE: The scratches are my fault. I forgot to affix the thing that holds the film in place to the top of the film carrier.
Operation Photo Rescue are seeking volunteers to digitally restore family photographs damaged in hurricane Katrina. If you have retouching skills, why not lend a hand?
An email from the organisers reads:
I had hoped to begin distribution today (Wed 5/03), but to say that we have been swamped is an understatement. During the whole week that we intially spent in Pass Christian, MS, we gathered 500 photos from around 50 or so families.
On Monday here in Metairie, we collected that many in a single day. Yesterday, we collected from 43 families.
Today, we have collected from (best guess) 70 families. We still have nearly an hour to go and people are still coming in. This is by no means an accurate count, but my gut feeling has me thinking that we’ve already collected around 1,000 photos since Monday. We still have two days to go.
Anyway, that’s the quick update. Thanks to all who responded in readiness. We’ll start distributing soon, but with the way things are going we may have to wait until we close up shop here at the end of the week.
In the meantime, I’ll keep you all posted.
Dave Ellis
Operation Photo Rescue
Volunteer at Operation Photo Rescue
Via Digg
Check out this lucid and easy-to-follow tutorial on matting and framing your artwork.
I spend a great deal of my expendable income on artwork and to allow myself to save money to eventually buy more, I mat and frame it myself. So, in case you find yourself in similar shoes, cutting your own mats is easy as pie…
Read tutorial at The Small Object
Via MAKE Blog