Worldwide Pinhole Day, 2020, occurred, as always, on the last Sunday in April, April 26.
Today, the day I’m posting this, is the 17th of September, 2020…
For Pinhole Day, I chose the excellent Zero Image 6×9, and set it to 645 mode for kicks and to try to push myself some. As of April 26, we’d been sheltering-in-place for 5 weeks, and inspiration was lacking. I managed a whopping 4 frames that day… Here are three, all selfies:
Over the next months, I left the Zero Image on my work desk, installed in the guest room closet. Every now and again, the urge would strike to make a selfy. I mean, what else is there to do under quarantine?*
Every now and then? Please. Those four were made all on the same day. Check the t-shirt… Yes, “Super Cuts” is one of my favorite t’s, but these were frames 9, 10, 12, and 13, so…
Just before the selfy storm, just before taking a break to flip through the new edition of American Surfaces for the review I published awhile ago, I flopped on the bed and read a bit of On Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag’s other book on photography. I thought it might make a nice vignette.
I took one more selfy, from a very unfortunate angle, a day or a week or a month later, and then no more, until I went to Arkansas in August to visit Mom.
The view off Mom’s deck is always pleasant. I took 7 library books with me and read them all. (I was reading the Scarpetta series from Patricia Cornwell at the time and averaged one book a day while there… come to think of it, I believe I averaged one book a day from day 1 of the quarantine, even before; since last fall, I read, in order, the Bosch series, the Alex Cross series, the Alex Delaware series, and then the Kate Scarpetta series. Go me? Depressed much? Virtue signalling? You decide.)
So that was my WorldWide Pinhole Photography Day(s). Fun stuff, I guess.
By the way, I love Ilford FP4+ pushed to 400 and stand developed in Rodinal. Gorgeous. Also, I have no idea where that vertical line (that appears in some frames) came from. I expect something awry in the diy pressure plate I installed in the Zero Image camera, but I don’t quite know. It bothers me enough that I probably won’t shoot 645 in the Zero again… or maybe I’ll just redo the pressure plate out of sticky-backed felt, which should be about the same thickness as gaffer tape-covered card stock, and can be cut somewhat more precisely. Hummm…
*People are doing all kinds of things, did all kinds of things under quarantine. Many of us, though, had trouble doing anything much at all. Strange times. Here it is, mid September, and I’m still not out of it.
