Everybody say it with me… negatives. These are negatives, remember. It what film becomes once it’s developed. This shots are recent portrait shoot.

Ok, I know the point of this project is to encourage people to use film. But encouragement only goes so far. Film is f**king dying people. Would you just sit around if your mom was dying? I don’t think so. Get on the ball. Instead of blowing you load on a new digi/shari/autoi cookie-cutter point-and-shoot, save some money, go to pawn shop. It’s not that hard people.

I was at the Hamilton Valley Thrift Store a couple weeks ago and picked up three cameras for grand total of 10 bucks. There’s a recession on people. What are you waiting for!

Time is a pretty easy thing to exploit with a pinhole camera. You’ve seen a few examples of this already. There is a pinhole photographer in the UK named Justin Quinnell. He shot some extra long exposures that took 6 months to complete. You can actually see how the path of the sun and how it changes throughout the year in his images. It’s pretty cool.

Creating a pinhole camera is pretty easy. I even wrote a tutorial about it. You can see it here complete with some more images.

Alright! I get it. Despite my best efforts, I cannot correctly operate a camera. Well, what do you do! Huh. Use a computer all day. Make a bunch of money. Spend your time doing more interesting things than blogging. Well that doesn’t make you better than me.

It makes you worse… yeah, take that!

Ok, seriously, I just suck. It’ll get better folks, just hang in there.

Mixing abstract art and photography is tricky. Let me explain. Abstract art is not dependent on the form or structure of existing objects. Most art depicts or references things in the real world, abstract art usually doesn’t. It depends on color, line and composition. The abstract art traditions, I would argue, go back thousands of years. Take a look at some Mimbres Native American pottery if you don’t believe me.

But legitimately, the abstract art movement really didn’t become defined and valid until the 20th century, which is young in art terms. It was born out of Expressionism and Cubism.

Now, photography is inherent dependent on capturing the image of things that exist. So photos, for the most part, depict actual objects. That’s not abstract, now is it. So in my experience, “abstract photography” is usually a trick. It’s photography something in a way that make it unidentifiable. Now all sorts of things can be done in the darkroom, on a computer, or to a print to make it appear abstract, but making an abstract photo “in-camera” that is appealing might actually take some talent. But that doesn’t make the photo innocent of deception.

For instance, the photo below has four real objects in it. But can you identify them? Are you drawn to the circles in the image? The lines, symmetry and composition. Does this photo stand alone as interesting with no further explanation?

The photo is of three martini glasses and an overhead light. The camera was set on a table facing up directly toward the light. The glasses were placed to surround the camera.

So what do you think? Is it abstract? Is it art? Is it interesting? I’d love to hear some thoughts.

So yeah, like I said, this is roll of film was not my proudest moment. This was another one of those double exposure mess-ups. You might see the bottom of a glass… OR you might see some steps. There aren’t too many more of these, I promise.

I’ll be heading up to Cleveland today for one of Jen’s check-ups. It’ll also be her birthday tomorrow. We’ll be trying to eating at Melt. Not the cool veggie-friendly joint in Northside, but the grilled cheese specialists that have been featured on the Food Network several times.

I’m pretty pumped about it. I’ll give you guys an update on it once I’m back.

There has been an emphasis for years on the importance of eating dinner together as a family. I’m a strong believer in this practice. My mom somehow managed to rock out at a full-time career and get home to cook dinner every night.

I don’t know how she did it, but we always had a great time over meals. That’s when we got the closest. It also helped that her food was usually mind-blowing.

It’s strange to think that a little food and wooden square with legs can do so much. It’s also incredible that almost every home in our country has a table… sitting there, waiting. Let’s get on that. And turn off the T.V. while you’re at it.