Heligan Pinhole Poppies

Heligan Pinhole Poppies, originally uploaded by Wulfus.

This is the best result from the first film through my second homemade pinhole camera. I've found that most pinhole camera shots tend to be rubbish but on every film I put through there is usually one gem. These experiments in pinhole photography have often produced surprising and completely unexpected results and it's the unexpected which makes the process so fascinating. The fact that the films have to go off to be processed and then put through the scanner to see what you've got makes the experience all the more exciting - gratification is delayed and the surprises almost seem bigger when they come.

The unpredictability of the homemade pinhole cameras feels like grappling with the raw science - the basic physical fact that light passing through a small aperture forms an upside-down colour image which may be captured if you place a light-sensitive surface behind that aperture. It may be tamed by lenses and view-finders but there's none of that with a pinhole camera...

The mystery of the pinhole

I made myself a pinhole camera back in the autumn and the results have been amazing me ever since. The pictures produced are nothing like conventional photographs - the focus is soft to the point of being vague, there's no viewfinder so there's no question of composing pictures and exposure is a matter of rough guesswork. The body leaks light which puts odd streaks and clouding on the images. Some would argue that the camera should go straight in the bin and 20 years I'd have agreed with them.

However, I'm older and a bit wiser now and I see the imperfections of the homemade camera as a source of intrigue and excitement... The results are impressionistic and atmospheric - something I would not be able to capture with a digital camera, even with manual focus.

The picture above was taken in Kew Gardens - I simply propped the camera on top of my bag at the foot of the tree trunk and guessed the exposure... The result was spooky and dramatic. The image below shows Tower Bridge on a beautiful April day that felt more like June. It's great to capture an iconic landmark in an atmospheric, off-beat way.



Pinhole cameras are great - everyone should try using one.

Something egg-stroadinary...

Something egg-stroadinary..., originally uploaded by Wulfus.

Easter Sunday calls for something creative - the modelling dough from the pound shop paid off here...

Return to the Bluebell Wood #1

Return to the Bluebell Wood #1, originally uploaded by Wulfus.

I've been trying to capture bluebells for about three years now... they never seem to get any easier...

Warhol's daffodils...

I added a new dimension to The Great Panoramic Mask Experiment by cutting out the yellow daffodil head and pasting onto a second layer to preserve the colour. Then I altered the colour of each background. In the past I just tinted each whole frame...

An adventure in pop art on the pier...

The weather played a very nasty trick on a day trip to Brighton. The sun shone for the whole journey down on the train and for the walk down from the station to the seafront. As soon as we got to the sea the clouds covered the sun and that was it for the rest of the day...

It wasn't particularly good photo weather after that - I'm beginning to despair of ever getting a good sunny day ever again - but I did get the longest set of frames for a composite picture which appears above. I decided to put in different colour tints to make up for the lack of sky. It's come together pretty well and my Flickr friends are enjoying it...

Ten great books

Today I feel like making a list... ten great books, although not necessarily in order of greatness, plus links to their Amazon pages should you wish to look further...

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

This is one of my all-time favourite novels. I particularly admire the way the narrative swings from "Big picture" glimpses of dust storms, people being turned off the land, roadside diners and migrant camps to the "detailed picture" and the story of the Joad family and their struggle to survive. Some critics say the ending is unsatisfactory and I'm inclined to agree that it does leave a lot of loose ends. However, after the journey the reader has followed it is quite a relief to reach the last page.

Harper Perennial Modern Classics - Best of Myles writings by Flann O'Brien.

Brilliant extracts from columns written for the Irish Times under the nom de plume of Myles na gCopaleen. Includes a brilliant description of a book handling service for rich people who want to have well-thumbed books on show to give the impression that they are cultured but lack the intelligence to read them...

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Penguin Modern Classics) by Carson McCullers.

Play the Piano Drunk Like an Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit poems by Charles Bukowski.

The Complete Poems (Classics) by Ben Jonson.

A Handful of Dust (Penguin Modern Classics) by Evelyn Waugh.

Selected Poems by Bertolt Brecht.

Ubu Roi (Dover Thrift Editions) by Alfred Jarry

Collected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics Poetry) by Patrick Kavanagh.

Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters by John L Waters.

Well that's ten and already I've thought of the first of many glaring omissions...

Whatever happened to The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger?

More will be thought of... maybe that's another blog post...

The Emergency Breakfast Van

You know the feeling - there wasn't time for breakfast and you ran, empty-bellied, out of the door. Now you're on your way but you're hungry - not just a little peckish, looking forward to a biscuit with a mid-morning coffee, but really gut-achingly hungry, the kind of emptiness that takes over your mind and makes it impossible to think of anything but food...

So why don't you dive into a cafe you pass on the way? Well, if there wasn't time for breakfast at home there's hardly going to be time to nip into cafes. Even if you did, there's probably a queue stretching into the middle of next week. Perhaps you decide to chance it, only to be confronted by that dozy part-timer who never seems to understand what you're asking for, never seems to know where anything is and, even when they've finally located the thing right in front of them that you and three other people are pointing at, they have this knack of preparing things so that you can't see what they're doing. Consequently you end up with some vital component left out or - and this is worse - something you can't abide will have been slipped in. The whole thing is now inedible and destined for the nearest bin. You go on your miserable way out of pocket, twice as hungry and five times more fed up.

What you need is someone you can call up on a mobile phone and they'll see that exactly what you want, done precisely the way you want it, is brought to you en-route or waiting for you at your destination, hot, tasty and life-saving...

What you need is the emergency breakfast van - the rescue service for people who didn't have time for breakfast at home or can't dive into a breakfast bolt-holes along the way for whatever reason. In some ways, this the kind of thing you'd expect to read about in the pages of a magical story but we all know that rushing out without breakfast is a real thing and we need real a real solution here.

The emergency breakfast van works through mobile phone and web technology. You start off by signing up online and you'll be invited to select up to three breakfast options - say, tea with two slices of brown toast with Marmite, pot of yougurt and orange juice or bacon sandwich on white bread with builder's-strength tea and three sugars. Note that these items are fairly compact, can easily be eaten while sitting on a park or station platform bench, on the march or, as a last resort, at your desk when you get to work.

How does it all work? simply send a text message with your account number, the code for your chosen breakfast and satellite navigation technology in your phone tells the service centre where you are and the estimated time of arrival at your pick-up point. If you're on a bus or train the van can meet you at your stop, if you're walking or cycling the van comes direct to you. Don't panic if you're a driver stuck in a massive traffic - a nippy little emergency scooter will weave its way to you.

What does the emergency breakfast van look like? It's something like a mobile burger van with the robust cleanliness of an ambulance and the authority of a fire engine. Its livery is yellow and white with some touches of brown - the yellow and white reflect the colours of a breakfast egg or milk and butter while brown evokes toast, coffee or tea. Some have suggested the van could be shaped like an agg or a teapot but this would be impractical when you consider that you need a vehicle capable of taking corners at speed. Moreover, going without breakfast is a serious matter and the emergency breakfast van is a serious solution... leave the novelty vans in the amusement parks where they belong.

This all sounds most excellent, you say, where do I sign up? Sadly the emergency breakfast van currently exists only on these pages and, now that you've read this far, your imagination and mine. Perhaps someone with vision and money to invest may stumble on this blog and make the emergency breakfast van a reality but until then you'll just have to set the alarm a bit earlier...

Flying success!

The BBC sets a weekly themed challenge - last week it was "Flight"... How to illustrate flight? Simple, make a paper plane with a propeller you can spin and catch the movement with slow shutter speed. I used two colours and decided to fit a double propeller to see if I might get some interesting colour in the movement...

Getting the picture wasn't easy - I had to spin the propeller with one hand while holding the camera with the other and anything over 1/30 seemed to freeze the movement a bit too much. I found it wasn't worth using a tripod because every time I twirled the propeller the plane moved slightly and would have taken too much time... it had to be hand-held job...

I must have shot about 40 frames in about five minutes, most were rejects but I got three I was pleased with for different reasons and the one above looked the most effective - I was particularly pleased with the way the two colours showed up in the spin.

Anyway, off it went to BBC online and I was really happy to see that it was used: here's a link to the gallery - if that wasn't good enough it also featured as the thumbnail on the main "In pictures" page... a very good result!