Curious Camera Competition

This weekend, ArtsEye Gallery in Tucson opened the 4th Annual Curious Camera show. Curious Cameras can be vintage, pinhole, plastic, instant, or phone cameras - all nontraditional and all a heap of fun. I'm honored to have my photo "Behind Bars," taken with a Polaroid Spectra camera and Impossible Project film, featured in the show as one of 30 honorable mentions.

Behind Bars

To see the full exhibition online, please click here: Curious Camera 2012 Gallery. Thanks!

Light

The doll, lace, and cameo are back! I've been inspired by the concept of Japanese Noh theater masks, which are fixed but appear to change their expression according to the angle of the light... or more correctly, their angle in relation to the light source.

 I arranged the doll on a piece of dark fabric on the floor and added a layer of lace and the cameo. Daylight was streaming into the room from below, so to speak (from the direction of the doll's feet). I like the spooky look that resulted from this setup.

For the next photo, I rotated the doll 90°, so the light was coming from the side. I wanted to see how this change would alter the look of her features. (And I also added a pearl necklace.) 

I was surprised by how different her expression looks in the second photo. Her face and features seem rounder in the top photo and more elongated in the bottom one. To me, she also looks spooked rather than spooky. What do you think?

Rainy Day

 Having fun with dolls, jewelry, fabrics, and a Polaroid Spectra camera loaded with Impossible Project film. The perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon!

Cameo

Mademoiselle

Velvet

8 Exposures on the Impossible Project Blog

If you haven't had the chance yet, be sure to check out the Impossible Project's blog and read the latest 8 Exposures interview. You'll find a rather familiar interviewee this week...

Impossible Project Blog: 8 Exposures with Britta Hershman

 

A big THANK YOU to the Impossible Project!

Magnolia, Double

My magnolia was overdue for a new portrait!

Double exposure on Impossible Project PX600 Black Frame film.

Lace

I'm working a project involving dolls, lace, various fabrics, and a few other props. I've been using primarily 35mm film, but today I switched to my Polaroid camera and Impossible Project film. Here are the first results!

 Dentelle Noire

 Rêve

F-Stop Magazine: Optimism

Check out the December 2011 issue of F-Stop magazine here, and don't miss the group exhibit entitled Optimism. I'm excited and honored to have contributed!

Look for the following four photos: 

Direct links to the images in my portfolio:
Sunsoaked
Leafburst
Blossom
Upside Up

Impossibly Roman Cyanotypes

A few months ago, I had the good fortune of visiting the Eternal City with a Polaroid camera (loaded with Impossible Project film) in tow. Rome is a city near and dear to my heart, and it was a thrill to revisit some of my favorite hidden corners, as well as the city's iconic monuments. The difference was that this time I could capture them in a whole new way, with a Polaroid camera. I enjoyed taking the original images (See Rome, Instantly), as well as the process of printing them as cyanotypes on watercolor paper.

Same Eternal City, but a whole new way of falling in love with it!

The Spanish Steps and the church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti

 The Flavian Amphitheater, a.k.a. the Colosseum

 

The view from the top of the Spanish Steps

 

Trajan's Forum, with Palazzo Venezia, the church of Santa Maria di Loreto, and Trajan's Column in the background

 My beloved Piazza del Popolo

Rome

One of my favorite places in Rome is Piazza del Popolo. A vast open space, paved with cobblestones and bordered by an ancient city gate, three churches, numerous sculptures and fountains, and a monumental park descending from the Pincian Hill, it's part outdoor living room and part outdoor museum. And of course it's also a living, breathing Roman square, with scooters, taxis, buses, and cars zipping around its edges. 

The near-twin churches of Santa Maria in Montesanto and Santa Maria dei Miracoli hold particular charm for me... I can't seem to photograph them enough!

Cyanotype on watercolor paper, toned in coffee.

Original image taken with a Polaroid and Impossible Project PX600 film. 

Silky Waters

The calm before the storm.

Well.. okay, not directly before the storm. This was taken a couple of weeks ago in Poquoson, VA. It's an interesting area with beautiful seascapes. I'd like to go back soon, hopefully finding its quirky beauty unchanged by the hurricane.

For Chocolate L♥vers

My newest photographic obsession has a sweet tooth.
If it has chocolate in its name, it has to be good, right?

Right!
Even when we're talking about film.

It turns out that Polaroid made a Type 100 peel-apart instant film for Land Cameras that comes in a special chocolate version. It's no longer being produced, and the stock that is still available today is already a couple of years expired. But that doesn't seem to detract anything from its deep chocolate darks and caramel-colored lights... or from the thrill of taking a photo and holding a freshly developed, still damp and gooey, chocolate-toned print in your hands just 90 seconds after having pressed the shutter.

Train tracks near Lee Hall Depot

Here's how it works: After pressing the shutter, the film is pulled out of the side of the camera, an action that breaks the pockets of developing chemicals and spreads them over the photo. The photo, protected between two layers of paper and plastic, then develops for a short amount of time, 90 seconds for the chocolate film. Then the two layers of paper are pulled apart in a smooth motion, with bated breath and much anticipation. With a little luck, a developed photo will be revealed inside.

I took my Polaroid Land Camera loaded with chocolate film to the the tiny lighthouse at Buckroe Beach...

...and to the tall, dignified, and still functioning light at Fort Story: New Cape Henry Light.

Birds at Buckroe Beach.

I was hoping one of them would model for me from up close, and I had meant to come up behind them in hopes of having them move closer to the water. But they were so quiet and serious, solemnly facing in the same direction, that I didn't have the heart to disturb them and instead photographed them just as they were.

With a little luck, the film can be used indoors... although the results will be dark. Here, Tibetan monks are working on a sand mandala during the American Theater's Tibet Week.

Who says chocolate is only for dessert?

Rome, Instantly

Fun with Impossible Project's black frame film:
Piazza del Popolo and the view at the top and bottom of the Spanish Steps, respectively.

I love Polaroid cameras.

But I have to admit that they're not always practical, since they're neither slim nor lightweight. But when paired with the Impossible Project's silver shade instant film, they can produce unique and fantastically imperfect travel memories... so I decided that carrying one with me would be worth it. I packed a camera and two packs of film, which I burned through in the first few days of our trip.

One of my first Roman Polaroids: Trajan's Forum, with Trajan's Column and the Church of the Santissimo Nome di Maria in the background.

A must-see (and must-photograph): the Colosseum

And, barely visible, but it's there: the Pantheon

Our visit to Rome wouldn't have been complete without a stroll through Piazza Navona, admiring the Baroque fountains and the original watercolor art for sale.

The Piazza del Popolo has become one of my favorite spots to photograph in Rome. With its spacious size, odd shape, central obelisk, and peripheral statues and churches, there is no shortage of sights (and people) to see. Here, the near-twin churches of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto mark the end of Via del Corso and the beginning of the piazza. There is something timeless and iconic about them that I just love.

Another area we enjoy exploring is the neighborhood around the Spanish Steps. Most of the area is a pedestrian zone, making it the perfect place to window shop, stop for coffee, observe local produce markets, and just enjoy walking around.
This photo was taken from the top of the steps, looking out over the city.

Instant Triptych

I was photographing white blossoms against a gray sky.
But the photos turned out blue.
I love them just like this.

First Landing State Park

First Landing State Park is one of my favorite places in Virginia Beach. But I usually enter from Shore Drive, continue to the parking lot, and explore one of the trails through the woods from there. But the other day I discovered another entrance, from Atlantic Ave. at 64th Street. From there, the road leads to a dock and boat launch with this view. So tranquil! I photographed the scene a couple of different ways.

Above: a pieced-together Fuji Instax Mini collage.
Below: iPhone photos combined into a panorama with AutoStitch. Border added with Adobe Photoshop Mobile.

Instant Beach Panorama

Five Fuji Instax Mini images translucently overlapped in Photoshop.

Project 365

To kick off the new year right and make sure I always keep a camera handy (haha), I've decided to participate in Project 365, with the goal of taking at least one photo each day in 2011. Some of them may be dedicated DSLR photos, while others might be mobile phone snapshots or instant pictures. The important thing is that there's an image for each day... and I think I'll share a few of them here just for fun.

The above collage is today's image, consisting of three Fuji Instax Mini pictures arranged in Photoshop. I've had a one-track photograpy mind lately — I seemingly can't take enough photos of bare, wintry tree branches, especially when there's a whitish gray sky behind them. So many shapes, so much contrast... I love it.

Rosewell Ruins

Of all the things I've been looking forward to exploring in Virginia, the Rosewell Ruins have occupied the top spot on my list. So when the local photography club organized a trip to visit the ruins, I was thrilled to go along and share the experience with other photography buffs.

After stopping at the Visitor Center to orient ourselves, watch an informational film about Rosewell, pick up maps, and chat with the knowledgeable museum curator, we headed through a few fields toward the ruins themselves.

The ruined mansion is surrounded by fields and woods near the York River... a peaceful and secluded setting that makes it easy to transport one's mind back to centuries past.

It didn't take us long to walk over to the mansion itself. Its construction dates back to 1725, making it one of the Colonial Era's architectural gems. It first belonged to the Page family, one of the First Families of Virginia: an illustrious and exclusive circle of high-society colonists who settled in Virginia in the 17th century. The Page family included a governor of Virginia (John Page, 13th Governor of Virginia) and associated closely with the Jeffersons. Legend even has it that Thomas Jefferson, on one of his visits to the mansion, worked on a draft of the Declaration of Independence in this very house.

Rosewell Mansion was built primarily of brick, and the grandeur of its three stories can still be intuited from the lofty heights of the ruins today. A catastrophic fire in 1916 left little more than a shell of the structure's former glory, and time and the elements have contributed to further decay.

Today, efforts are being made to prevent the ruins from collapsing further. Horizontal support beams and new mortar in certain spots are two of the readily visible elements designed to preserve the historic structure for generations to come. And the efforts are worth it. Even in its run-down state, Rosewell is a beautiful and spectacular place to visit.

It's exciting—and also a little eerie—to scramble into the ruin, explore the cellars, look up at the towers, see where the floor levels once were, and imagine what life may once have been like in that very spot.

Inside the mansion.

One of the cameras I had with me was a Polaroid Sun 600 camera I found at a thrift store. It was loaded with the Impossible Project's PX 600 Silver Shade film. This particular film is surprisingly sensitive to temperature and light, so there's always an element of uncertainty and surprise. But in this case, the mild weather and shady woods turned out to be agreeable conditions for this feisty and unpredictable film... and the photo turned out!

Rosewell Ruins

Picture in picture: the fresh instant photo on a bed of dry leaves.

Rosewell Ruins is worth a visit... both for the beautiful natural surroundings...

...and the picturesque remnants of a colonial mansion. I had a great time on this first visit, and I can't wait to go back.

The Impossible Project

In 2008, to the disappointment of Polaroid fans everywhere, Polaroid stopped production of its popular instant films. But now there is new hope, and it bears the optimistic title of the Impossible Project. What was thought to be impossible is now being done: Drumroll... Polaroid films are back!

While they can't officially carry the Polaroid name, they're already being produced in color and monochrome for a couple of Polaroid camera formats, and they're attracting a growing following. The one I used here is for a 600 camera: the PX 600 Silver Shade film.

Although the Impossible Project purchased an entire Polaroid factory, the chemical mix is all new. The resulting film packs are still being developed and improved. They're extraordinarily sensitive to temperature and light, and they're also somewhat unpredictable, which adds an extra thrill to the experience of taking a photo with this most extraordinary instant film.

Trinity Church, Newport, RI

I took the first two images in Newport, Rhode Island, and Trinity Church in the historic heart of the colonial town was my intended subject. For some reason, the first photo didn't turn out. But when the camera spit out this second image, I made sure to cover it up immediately and give it as much darkness as possible while it was developing... and it turned out! I don't think 3 minutes ever take longer than when waiting for a Polaroid to develop... which is another part of the ritual and the excitement of using a piece of photographic history.