"Déjà Vu..all over again...pinhole"

This morning I was off to a late start, and the street was fairly crowded with tourist traffic and parked cars, and I was not able to photograph the structure I had in mind. So, I moved up the street and found an empty spot in front of the Déjà Vu second-hand store.

In the late 1980′s this building, which had been a dilapidated house, was converted into this wonderful, two story fine arts gallery by an artist from North Carolina. For a while it operated as a gallery, but was just not able to survive as that kind of a business. Despite the fact that we are supposedly known as an artist colony, not enough people actually come here, willing to spend that kind of money. So, sadly over the years, we have lost many fine galleries that have tried to ‘make it.’

When I made this exposure the sky was overcast and I more than doubled my usual exposure time of about 60 seconds. One of the things that happens when I do this with a landscape photo is that the massive amount of light that comes in from the sky portion of the exposure starts to bleed into the rest of the image, making it difficult to achieve a relatively even tonality throughout the image. I am not sure where those broad streaks of light in the street come from. One source might the be cars that drove by while I made the exposure, except I think they are too regular for that. Hmmmm….

Santa Barbara pinhole camera with 4.5×10 inch paper negative on Ilford MG IV RC paper.

Below is my attempt to make another ‘straight’ paper negative exposure on a 4×5 inch piece of enlarging paper. The subject is the door next to the one I posted below. With that photo I felt I had moved a bit too far from the door. My intent was to just photograph the door. Well, on this one I am obviously too close. That’s one of the little surprises when when photographs with a pinhole camera – there is no viewfinder.

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