I just received the cur­rent edi­tion of the online pub­li­ca­tion Frac­tion Mag­a­zine which includes a won­der­ful gallery of work enti­tled Seek­ing Per­fec­tion: Tra­di­tional Apple Grow­ing in Japan by pho­tog­ra­pher Jane Alden Stevens. Frac­tion Mag­a­zine is one of a grow­ing num­ber of excep­tional online pho­tog­ra­phy pub­li­ca­tions fea­tur­ing work like Jane’s series on these extra­or­di­nary Japan­ese farm­ers engaged in yet another inspir­ing tra­di­tional craft. Jane’s pho­tos in this exhibit con­sist of a mix of pin­hole and lens-based work.

Rejected Apple, Fall, Aomori Prefecture

I orig­i­nally met Jane after she pur­chased a Pino­ramic 120 cam­era for a project she did on WW1 ceme­ter­ies in France called Tears of Stone: WW1 Remem­bered.

Jane shows a nat­ural tal­ent with the panoramic for­mat and was inspired by the large num­ber of WW1 memo­ri­als she saw on a trip to France to return and doc­u­ment them. The gallery of images that resulted from that trip can be seen at Jane’s web­site.

Memento, Ver­man­dovillers Ger­man Ceme­tery, France

Jane used an orig­i­nal model Pino­ramic 120 model for the Tears of Stone project.

Jane Alden Stevens with Pino­ramic 120

Pond view taken with a P.90 lens­less camera

Since the Bun­galoft ren­o­va­tion took over my wak­ing hours at the ces­sa­tion
of the watch winder project last year I haven’t had a lot of time to do much
else. Isn’t there an expres­sion “house fin­ished — life over”?

On the Hill

But just recently I decided to restart pro­duc­tion of the P.90 cam­eras.
After hav­ing cel­e­brated the begin­nings of the finan­cial melt­down by ceas­ing
pro­duc­tion in late 2007, I have received ongo­ing inter­est in the cameras.

Pots and pans

So the last set of cam­eras from the late 2007 pro­duc­tion is being assem­bled and
should be avail­able for sale this sum­mer. Sub­se­quent to that a new set of P.90
cam­eras will begin production.

View across vine­yard and lake

I’m hop­ing to lure some cur­rent users of the P.90 into send­ing along some of
their more inter­est­ing work.
In the mean­time, I am post­ing a set of my P.90 pho­tos.
If you would like to receive the lat­est news on the P.90 cam­eras you can sign
up for the P.90 newslet­ter using the form avail­able on the right side panel of
the blog.

You’ll also find the orig­i­nal P.90 release newslet­ter posted on the P.90 page.

I made this photo with a P.90 pin­hole cam­era. In con­trast to the dig­i­tal cam­era expe­ri­ence, this kind of sub­ject (with a lot of motion) is a sit­u­a­tion in which the result is always a pleas­ant sur­prise once the film is processed.

Oaks Park along the water­front is a small amuse­ment park adja­cent to a city park and a wildlife refuge. It is over 100 years old. On a cool, misty, Port­land day in early May there were a lot of fam­i­lies out keep­ing the chil­dren enter­tained and hop­ing for the return of sum­mer weather.

I was orig­i­nally attracted to this place when I heard about the float­ing floor of the roller rink. At Oaks Park there is an indoor rink with a beau­ti­ful 100 ft by 200 ft wooden floor. Because the area next to the river is his­tor­i­cally prone to flood­ing, the floor struc­ture is made so that it can be detached from the build­ing when flood­ing is emi­nent. Because the floor rests on floats it is then able to float above the pos­si­ble flood waters until they recede. The last time this hap­pened was 1996.

In addi­tion, the Oaks Park rink has the largest remain­ing skating-rink pipe organ in the world. Impres­sive even for a non-skater like me.

The orig­i­nal design for this cam­era included a built in LCD/pushbutton inter­face and a con­trol knob to change expo­sure slits. The cur­rent project entails con­vert­ing the cam­era to use a remote, hand held con­troller oper­at­ing through a blue­tooth radio inter­face. User com­mands are entered via a touch screen LCD interface.

This view of the inter­face shows the screen lay­out. The areas labeled Expo­sure, 360 Degrees, and 1/60 sec­ond plus the two arrows at the bot­tom of the screen are sen­si­tive to a touch to the screen. The red dots indi­cate that the user has cho­sen to change the camera’s angle of rota­tion. By press­ing either of the arrows, the dis­played angle can be changed. A press to the shut­ter speed but­ton offers sim­i­lar con­trol over the range of shut­ter speeds.
Once the set­tings have been made, the user can touch the Expo­sure but­ton and com­mence expo­sure. Once the expo­sure is under way, the bar graph above the arrows will indi­cate the progress of the cur­rent expo­sure.
Stay tuned for more details as the project moves toward completion.

A stroll around down­town Port­land led me to the old cus­toms build­ing. It is a beau­ti­ful struc­ture fac­ing a down­town park. About a 15 minute expo­sure with the P.90 pro­to­type dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with a curi­ous passerby led to this image.

The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion on this build­ing was pro­vided by Bart King from his book:

An Archi­tec­tural Guide­book to Portland

9. U.S. Cus­tom House 1901; addi­tion 1938
220 NW Eighth Avenue
Archi­tect: James Knox Taylor/Supervisor: Edgar M. Lazarus

This mas­sive and some­what unusu­ally designed build­ing sits regally within a full city block and on top of a huge in-fill. The Cus­tom House was sub­stan­tially built up on its site to avoid the flood­ing prob­lems that plagued this part of town dur­ing the early 1900s, and its pil­ings go down 80–100 feet.

Var­i­ously described by as French Renais­sance or Ital­ian Renais­sance Revival, the orna­men­ta­tions of this clas­si­cal, granite-faced build­ing is fas­ci­nat­ing. Columns, scrolls, quoins, arches. den­tils, and key­stones abound. Find the terra cotta lin­tel stones over the win­dow arches show­ing inter­est­ing gov­ern­men­tal sym­bols like the staff of Aes­cu­lapius, and the dreaded glove on a stick.

Among the pro­fu­sion, one finds images of scales adorn­ing the build­ing. These reflect both the weigh­ing of goods inspected for cus­toms and the tra­di­tional scales of jus­tice. Cour­t­houses were orig­i­nally intended for the top two floors of the Cus­tom House, and rev­enue from cus­toms duties was an impor­tant func­tion of Portland’s water­front. The for­bid­ding iron­work on the win­dows of the first floor is orig­i­nal to the build­ing, and was designed to pro­tect con­fis­cated con­tra­band and bureau­cratic trea­sures like seals and paper­work.

Inside, with over 100,000 square feet, there is a lot of build­ing to explore. A 1977 restora­tion helps the mar­ble and clas­si­cal plas­ter mold­ings wel­come the eye, and a grand cast-iron stair­way rises to the fourth floor. (The top floors of the east and west wings were added in 1938.) The two tow­ers vis­i­ble from the front (west side) of the build­ing are for ven­ti­la­tion, and do not con­tain bells. In 1906, a small metal tower was built near the north chim­ney that dropped a large “time” ball at noon each day. Sailors would sight it and set their ship clocks accord­ingly. Con­struc­tion to the east of the Cus­tom House even­tu­ally obstructed the tower, and it was removed in 1925.

In 2005, the Gen­eral Ser­vice Admin­is­tra­tion (which man­ages all fed­eral build­ings) announced pos­si­ble plans for a devel­oper to trans­form the Cus­tom House into a mixed-use build­ing. The idea is to house a hotel here and per­haps also have space for the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon archi­tec­ture school. Cre­at­ing pub­lic acces­si­bil­ity to this beau­ti­ful build­ing is an excit­ing prospect; expect the huge open court­yard enclosed by the ele­gant log­gia on the west side to attract cof­fee drinkers.

James Knox Tay­lor (1857–1929) was the Super­vis­ing Archi­tect of the U.S. Trea­sury when he designed this build­ing. An advo­cate of clas­si­cal design, Tay­lor worked with Cass Gilbert (archi­tect of the U.S. Supreme Court Build­ing) before estab­lish­ing his own prac­tice. Build­ing super­vi­sor Edgar Lazarus is well known for his dis­tinc­tive Vista House design in the Colum­bia Gorge.