🔗 Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day
“We will extend the submission date to include your photograph in this year’s gallery until June 30th.”
Tomorrow — April 26, 2020 — is Pinhole Photography Day! This will be my first time participating and I have plans to replace the lenses on two of my medium format cameras with homemade pinholes and shoot some panoramas and Instax Mini film (more on that at a later date). I’m glad they’ve chosen to extend the submission deadline this year. The turnaround times on film development when you have to mail out your film is bad enough as it is, but it’s definitely worse with the pandemic going on. Fortunately, I’ve started developing my own negatives at home.
🔗 Pinholica
“Photographs and musing on pinhole photography.”
This is a must-read blog on pinhole photography. Lots of great photos and ideas, as well as Camera Designs and Plans. Nick’s got me excited with his posts on stereo photography and anaglyphs: Building a 45mm 6×6 Stereo Populist, Hyperspace, and Bimodal Stereo. His anaglyph images are flat out amazing and have me inspired. I now know what I’m doing this summer.
🔗 65 Photographic Projects You Can Do When You’re Stuck at Home
“Remove dust from all your film scans! That should keep you busy…”
Lol, I don’t think that will improve my mental health. But seriously, there are a lot of excellent suggestions here even if you’re not stuck at home feeling restless. In fact, you could find inspiration here to last you for a few years.
🔗 It’s All Been Done Before So Why Bother Taking Photographs
“Photography as a hobby is quite a complex one. You have to immerse yourself in it. It takes mind, it takes vision, sometimes it even takes being extremely flexible in order to find the best shooting angle. It’s the switching of activity and quite a deep one. If you are able to catch the ‘flow’ of shooting — yes, it doesn’t materialise every single time but I hope you are all familiar with this feeling — you can totally forget about ‘the other things’ and after some time spent with the camera, you come out totally mentally refreshed. In short, for me, it’s a very effective sort of meditation.”
This is an excellent read. Aivaras makes very salient points about the creative process and the conundrum we all feel about our photography. Am I good enough? What if I’m not? Do I continue? All artists ask these questions of themselves. It is exactly what I often experience with my own photography. When I am immersed in the process, I experience great excitement and joy. I am in a flow state. But, like Aivaras, there is a disconnect between what I feel when creating and what I feel when I view my creation. It doesn’t always live up to my expectations. Which brings me to Aivaras’ main point or question: why bother? Because creating art isn’t about the creation, it’s about the creating. In other words, focus on the process, not the product. That is your pathway to joy. Going in the other direction only leads to despair.
You’ll find more from Aivaras and his photos on his blog, Beautiful Grain.
🔗 Dublin at Dusk
“Dublin at nightfall is like a movie set. I love photography which resembles cinematic stills and Dublin is the perfect setting for taking such pictures.”
I agree, Milena. Cinematic stills can have an ethereal quality to them. It conjures an image for me of city lights and rain-slicked streets or Dennis Stock’s iconic photo of James Dean walking in the rain — or perhaps a Chinese night market? Milena has gorgeous photos of Ireland on her blog that are certainly worth viewing.
