Antigraphy

I finally got my build of a Populist 60mm cardboard pinhole camera ready to shoot. The Populist is a design made by Nick Dvoracek, it comes in many different dimensions and the plans are freely uploadable on his website . I also made the pinhole myself for this camera, and with helpful advice from Nick I measured it on my flatbed scanner to be about 0.31 mm, which is just about optimal for this camera. The first picture is of a water fountain at a local Helsinki community garden, Syötävä Puisto (Edible Garden). I measured the exposures with an Android app on my phone, called Light Meter. It seems to work very well. I still struggle a bit with framing the pictures, the 60 mm focal length isn't quite the "super wide angle" that you usually associate with pinhole cameras. This one from Herttoniemi harbor could have been framed a bit further back as well. The next two shots were taken on midsummer night. It's been nice and warm here in Helsinki this year, as often mid-Jun

It took me a long while to get through a roll of FP4+ with my Smena 8M, but I'm happy with the results. It's a very compact device that is easy to have with you. And it really is Made in USSR. To me the Smena's optical quality is just as good as you will ever need. And the odd focal lenght of 43mm results in quite unique pictures. It doesn't have any kind of a light-meter, and it keeps you on your toes adjusting the settings. I guess thanks mostly to modern films' good quality the exposures are mostly usable. One thing I noticed is that the viewfinder shows a tighter view than what is captured, so you gotta take that one more extra step forward before taking the shot.

I made a new, smaller pinhole for my matchbox pinhole camera. It seems to have increased the sharpness, but it also introduced some more light leaks. Which is just as well and good. I've been reading the book by "How to do nothing" by Jenny Odell. I'm just midway through but I love it. It's one of those books that seems to be written just for you. About the meaning of life. I'm trying my damnest to stop looking for it. Because it very probably just "is". That's the paradox; you can't find it, only way to joy would be to realize that. But my brain has never been any good at accepting logical realizations, they want emotional and intuitive awakenings. There is something intuitive about pinhole photography. You can only partially decide what you photograph, and the rest is added by the cosmos. It forces you to come to terms with chance and randomness. I'm still struggling with my GAS. My mind is yelling at me to buy s

Antigraphy. Something born out of my personal need for freedom amidst this barrage of empty digital imagery. The memory of myself as a little kid, drawing stuff on cheap paper just for the fun of it. Comparing that with the adult me, neurotic with GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) and sure that if only I could get that new 5000€ lens, I would be making the perfect images and then I would be happy. What is happiness, creativity, art or life, for that matter?  I would be stupid to say I had answers to any of those questions, and the way my life has been developing, I can only cross out stuff that doesn't work; I have a pretty good idea on a lot of that stuff because believe me, I've tried. It's not about money, capitalism, perfectionism, competitiveness, selfishness... in short it's not about the "I" but it's about connectedness, openness, sharing, just-being, empathy... this is how far I've gotten in 43 years of living, I know it's not