Every once in a while I get a chance to break the rigid bonds of routine and view my life from a different vantage point. I think it is sometimes referred to as a vacation. Since the tagline for Found Photography is “exploring reality through the lens of observation,” I thought I would share some of my observations from last weekend’s vacation. I don’t have photos, but the following events are the type of warm out-of-focus memories that often accompany a good photograph.

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I wanted to give you a quick Found Photography update. First, check out the photo I just posted from my Lego camera of an inflatable giant. I finished rebuilding the Lego camera using software called BrickSmith so watch for a post in the next couple weeks talking about that and giving better instructions on how to build a camera out of Legos.

Thanks to the folks at Liquid Treat for recogninzing this site in the “Magic Potion” section of their newsletter. You can read the archived newsletter here. While you are there, subscribe to this fun newsletter. It’s free.

If anyone is curious about how the popularity of my Lego Camera translated into traffic, you can read my article on Be A Design Group called “How Not to be a One-Hit-Wonder.”

Finally, I added a “Recent Comments” heading to the sidebar on the main page. With the increased feedback that this site is receiving, this should help track the conversations a little better. Thanks to everyone for their comments, I really enjoy them.

In my research for my “alternative photography” contribution to the Be A Design Group group post, I came accross the world’s largest camera. It was called the Mammoth and it was built in 1900. It weighed 900lbs and made an 8 x 4.5 foot negative. I haven’t been able to track down any photos taken with the world’s largest camera, but here is a link to a page that tells more about George Lawrence, the camera’s inventor. That page has some links to other pages that show some photos taken from his Kite Arial Photography experiments. Fascinating stuff. Check it out if you get the chance.

The shopping cart has reappeared several times in my recent artwork. I have taken several photos as well as used a screen print of a cart in some of my paintings. I wanted to tell you the story behind my use of shopping carts, and share with you some of my thoughts about my shopping cart theme.

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Today was one of those days that starts out mediocre and gets worse as the day goes by. Hoping to salvage the last hours of my evening, I worked on my new pinhole camera. I recently bought a Polaroid 545 back on Ebay, and have been building a camera around it. So far, I am pretty happy with it, and I will show it to you more in the following posts. Tonight my challenge was to build a simple shutter system. Everything I have tried so far has been built of cardboard and tape, and it just hasn’t worked as well as I would like. Looking through my junk, I found an old floppy disk. I rigged it up to a ballpoint pen, and the result appears to be a pretty sturdy homemade shutter system. The nice thing is that it gives me a bulb mode. Click the pen once, the shutter opens. Click it again and it closes. Perfect for a pinhole camera. A good end to a crappy day.

The next set of photos from my black and white archive are of sunflowers. I took this photo in college and used it repeatedly in my screenprints and paintings. When I read Robert Frost’s poem, Design, it became the theme of my senior exhibition. Here is the poem:

Design by Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth– Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth– A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?– If design govern in a thing so small.

Thanks to my new Canon 8400 scanner, I have been able to work on archiving some of my old negatives. The first set of scans I will be showing are from my trip to Arches National Park. I took a few pictures throughout the park, but the arch above was the one that really took my breath away. The length and the thin arm of stone made this arch seem fragile and elegant. The thick to thin shape really made for interesting compositions. I heard a rumor that since my trip, several of the arches were destroyed by vandals. I will try and research that claim, but if it is true it is truely a tragedy. This was one of the most amazing natural monuments I have ever seen.

I hadn’t heard of Kite Aerial Photography until I visited Scott Haefner’s website today. Scott makes some really cool images by attatching his camera to a kite. I was surprised to see that he uses the same camera as me. The Nikon Coolpix 5000 is such a versatile camera. While you are at Scott’s site, check out his 360 panorama’s.

I resisted the Flickr buzz as long as I could. I signed up and in no time, I became a fan. Actually, that was a few weeks ago and I am just getting around to posting about it. I will talk about it in more depth later, but meanwhile here are a couple links.

I started a Flickr group dedicated to digital pinhole photography. Flickr groups are a great way to find people with similar interests. There are already six members in my group and we have a nice little discussion going.

Come to Found Photography first, but you can also see my photos on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/foundphotography/.

Long live Flickr!

I had three days of beautiful scenery, nice weather, and fun photography. I found some great Colorado locations and I am looking forward to sharing some of my shots with you. I get the slides back tomorrow afternoon, so stay tuned.