Taking photos and connections: Week October 24th

Camera is built

This week I made some minor improvements to the camera itself. The final touches were put on the new focus adjusting system and now everything fits correctly. Specifically I was having trouble with the screws actually screwing. Making screws with 3d printing is something im learning through this project so i'm doing lots of tests as I go.

In the field:

I took the camera out this week to one of my spots nearby where I like to take pictures. They have a stable with horses so I was very excited to get some animal pictures. Im thinking a lot of my focus will be on nature and animal photography because its something I already have an interest in and I think it ties in with how raw the camera itself is. For these pictures of the horses, I used bracketing to try and work around the hot spot in the middle of the lens. The results were definitely interesting with some weird artifacts here and there but overall it looks good. The addition of the frensel lens has made picture taking so much easier along with focusing the camera. The focusing system is also so much easier in the field. However, a lot of the picture making process has been sped up because of design improvements, but it still takes a little bit. I think in the coming weeks I will start writing a blurb about the change in the photo-taking process for the book. Its very interesting because there is a lot more work while taking the photo and in its processing than regular digital photography. Its also interesting that once you making a device like this a big limitation becomes the process you employ to actually capture what the camera is projecting. It adds so many other variables to the picture-making process that leave alot of room for experimentation. For the future im already making a list of other ways to capture what's on the acrylic, for now however I will be sticking to a regular digital camera. Its probably the easiest to work with and the intended audience will most likely already have one.

Something else ive noticed while using the camera in public is the reactions from people passing by. When I was out doing lake photos a man stopped to talk with me this week. The camera reminded him of when he was younger. He told me about cameras he saw when he was a kid and how some looked similar to this one. He then went on to tell me about the history of the surrounding area. The river and the stories he and his friends made around it. This was a really beautiful moment where some random man that I would never get to talk to connected with my project. This connection gave him a chance to reminisce on his life and share some of his stories. I think this is the power of an object like this, an object that has history to it. This interaction reminded me of a similar one I had while shooting with my great grandmothers camera at a car show. During my shooting, I was stopped by an old man who had recognized the camera. He told me all about how he had one of these cameras and how he brought it all over with him back in the day. Another moment where I was able to connect with someone through photography. Our stories are told through photos and videos which leaves the devices that captured those to be reminders of our memory. The cameras we use can also say alot about who we are at the time. People use thier phones alot but recently more teens are using point and shoot cameras. Someday these people will get tired of these cameras, then 40 years down the line they may see one of these cameras somewhere and it will remind them of thier younger years when they carried a digicam around with them everywhere. They could think of it as a time when they wanted to disconnect from the internet and focus on taking photos of their memories without all the extra phone stuff. That's the magic right there, the camera you chose says a fair bit about you in my opinion.