Capture by A photoblog

Jailbreak Your Pinhole Camera

A funny thing happened on the Internet the other day.  During an otherwise normal exchange with Robyn over the blog, I mentioned the discovery I just made that April 29th was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.  Had she heard of it?

Why yes, apparently she had.

'How cool is that?' I thought.  'We should do one of our own!'

Carefully avoiding the overexposed internet meme, the next thing you know, Petra Jane offered her assistance, Jonathan's on board, Robyn's coming up from Wellington, and we had planned our inaugural Capture Photography Workshop ™ . 

Here's the details.

Capture Pinhole Photography Workshop

Date: Sunday 29th April, 2012

Time: 10am - 4pm (ish)

Venue: Updated.  Workshop will be held at Minnie Street Studio, 20A Minnie Street Eden Terrace.

Cost: $25 to cover materials, venue hire and other expenses

Numbers are strictly limited, due to the small size of the darkrooms and practicality of en-masse pinhole camera assembly, processing and so on.  Even though I'd kind of like to have 100 people in a room playing with boxes, tin cans and black insulation tape.

Please register your interest using the email reply button below the post, and we'll send out more details by email on what to bring on the day.

After the event, we'll post the best of the day here, and contribute to the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Gallery.

In the mean time Robyn has kindly provided a few images from the workshop she attended last year.

This should be fun.

Night Photography

Soon after Capture was launched, a frequent contributor to Public Address System (hi Jackie!) asked me for some advice about night photography. At first, the only advice I could offer was ‘get a tripod, a camera with some manual controls, and get out there and experiment’. The great thing about digital cameras is the immediate confirmation that you’re either on the right track, or you’re not.

So for Jackie’s benefit, and for anyone else who might be interested in trying some night photography, here’s how Jackson and I went about getting the images displayed below. It’s not hard to get dramatic and colourful photographs at night. First, choose your camera. I used film, and Jackson used digital. Both mediums have their advantages and drawbacks. Manual control in the camera over the ISO rating, aperture and shutter speed may be useful to obtain good results, although the metering on newer cameras seems to do a great job in tricky situations such as bright streetlights against a black night sky. Set the ISO rating to suit – the higher the ISO number (i.e. 1600 or 3200), the shorter the exposure that is required. However, a higher ISO number will also increase the ‘noise’ that is visible in the photograph. Stop the lens down to f16 or f22 if possible, for maximum sharpness and the greatest depth of field. The streetlights will form those lovely starburst points. Finally, mount your camera on a tripod. I have got away with using a low wall, a park bench or the edge of a rubbish bin at different times, but a tripod is steady and secure, and you can place it exactly where you want. Start with exposures of thirty seconds and see what you get.

The photographs below are a tour across the Silo Park area in Auckland. We like this area, not only because it’s new and different, and that it looks strange and spectacular at night, but it is also very well lit.

Now … get out there. We look forward to seeing your night visions, cityscapes and neon dreams.

Capture away.

Introduction by Jonathan Ganley

EQNZ Services 22 Feb 2012

Christchurch photographer Gudrun Gisela has kindly sent us a series of photos from her travels around Christchurch during the remembrance services.

For more of Gudrun's work, or to contact her directly, please refer to her blog, Assorted Goodies.

Photographer Bio

In love with photography since getting a Kodak Instamatic at 18, when I took a few shots of letterboxes. It's been my aim ever since to be able to stop and capture whatever catches my interest.
 
I've lived in Christchurch since the early 90s where I gained my letters in photography from the New Zealand Photographic Society, and later studied Mass Communicaton at Canterbury University.

Although I've been photographing all of my adult life I feel that the combination of experience and technology has finally come together for me in the past year. At last I feel that I'm taking the kind of pictures that I've dreamed of.
 
My favourite photo opportunities are the kind of unexpected shots that present themselves in any environment rural or urbane.

Card Sharp

Public Address regular Ian Dalziel, apart from being a punster of the highest order, is a professional designer, and has a nice little side busines of making cards and postcards.

We are keen to promote his wares, so please read the promo below, and get in touch with Ian directly if you'd like some cards.

Ian sent me a few from my Capture photos last year as samples, along with a classic postcard series of The Bats.  They were mint!

Go Postal!

• Expose yourself to your friends...
• Share your light artefacts...
• Save the Post Office (& Jim Bolger!)
• Flattery in 2 fabulous dimensions.

(No special glasses needed!!)

Turn your favourite images into either postcards or folded greeting cards.

• Simply supply a high resolution JPEG
• Plus any descriptive text
• Printed on 310gsm card

Trimmed to either;

A: 145 x 105mm postcard
      (colour front with black personalised text back)

or
B: Folded from 145 x 210mm to a 145 x 105mm     
     greeting card in either landscape ‘tent’ or
     portrait ‘book’ format - blank inside, with
     colour front with text on back (of fold).

Image can bleed (ie cover entire surface) or have a uniform white border - note some cropping may occur as most images are not directly proportional to this size - or I can make them proportional and either leave white space or trim to closest size within given dimensions.

Pricing:

Printing Postcards (in multiples of 8) - Per card.  .50c
Plus set up (one off)    $10.00
& postage     $2.50
(ie: 8 post cards = $4.00 + $2.50 + $10.00 = $16.50)
Thereafter multiples of 8 @ $4.00 per...  

Printing Folded greeting cards
(in multiples of 4) - Per card.    $1.00
Plus set up (one off)    $10.00
& postage     $2.50
(ie: 4 cards = $4.00 + $2.50 + $10.00 = $16.50)
Thereafter multiples of 4 @ $4.00 per...

...and all plus GST 

Supply:

Email highest resolution image to: ian@applepiedesign.co.nz along with any descriptive and copyright text, etc (plus an address for posting back to you) then a PDF proof will be sent to you before printing.
It would be good to put a link to Public Address: Capture on these cards as well, to spread the love...

(Please note: printed colour may vary from colour seen on your computer (go look at a wall of TV screens to see how various devices may resolve the same colour information), probably best to leave images as RGB as my printer's conversion from RGB to CMYK seems to be more sympathetic than converting to CMYK in PhotoShop or similar)

What could possibly go wrong...  : - )

Contact: ian@applepiedesign.co.nz

More samples

Promotional Cards.

Folding vertical.

Guest Post

We welcome back Adrienne Rewi to Capture, with a series of photos from Ngāi Tahu.

Words and photography by Adrienne Rewi.

In 2006, almost 50,000 people identified themselves as Ngāi Tahu, making it the fourth largest Māori tribe in New Zealand, with the largest territory of any iwi. Throughout the South Island there are 18 Ngāi Tahu rūnanga – a representative from each makes up Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, the governing body which oversees the tribe’s activities. 

In the 7 years I have worked for Ngāi Tahu’s quarterly magazine TE KARAKA as a journalist and sub-editor, I have been extremely fortunate to have travelled to all eighteen rūnanga and marae, and to have had the opportunity to build up a huge library of Ngāi Tahu images.

The selection here is a tiny keyhole peep into contemporary Ngāi Tahu life and all images are published here with the permission of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu.