So we have had a remarkable winter here in Port Clyde. Like many coastal communities, we've had tons of snow and frigid temps. However, amidst what has felt inhospitable, there has been beauty. Two weeks ago I thought I would take my pinhole (120mm Zero), and my LUMIX with a pinhole cap, and my iPhone and see if I could convey a little bit of my process.....and the beauty of the massive amounts of snow and ice we've been living with.
For as long as I have been making pinhole images, I have cherished the quiet solitude making an image offers. I drop into a meditation and feel time, placing the camera here and there; lately, that has been at water's edge.
I was on snow shoes, there was no way to get to the beach without them. Two and three feet of snow, more where the wind had blown it into drifts, lay between the road and the beach....Once on the beach I was amazed to find two foot thick chunks of ice floating there, like continents just recently wrenched apart.
It was quiet, eery, and cold. And oh so much fun to look at. I began looking for places to prop the pinhole, and put the LUMIX around my neck and stepped out onto an ice chuck to feel the water bobbing underneath me.
In the end, my focus was taken away from feeling time, and more on trying to capture the process, which, in fact, detracted from my process. My film was over exposed, but for one frame....and I'm pretty sure the film shows evidence of reticulation, as keeping chemistry at temperature in my basement darkroom is also proving difficult this winter...
Regardless, I'm sharing one iPhone image (thumbnail), one pinhole from the Zero(next post), and I need to look at the LUMIX and see if anything worthwhile happened there. In the future, I will return to the beach with just one camera to look, listen and feel. I'll be sure to share.
Happy Spring!