Creative Photography

May 2011 | Issue 01

Source : f l i ckr .com/nesster

The VF Team

Shoots on 18 film cameras from little plastic lens toys to pro SLR. Also shoots digital on a Canon EOS 450D.

ContributorsPaddy Murphy (flickr.com/spudmurf), Tim Kirman (www.

penguinmania.tk), Xenia Elizabeth (flickr.com/xenializ),

Louis Bosco (flickr.

com/midnight-specials), Lance Rothstein (flickr.com/lancephoto), Robert O’Duill (flickr.

com/38235519@N05), Stephen Eustace (flickr.

com/seustace2003), David

McNally (flickr.com/

david_mcn), Christos

Christou (flickr.

com/25thc), Nicola Clark (flickr.com/kenickie56), Scribe (flickr.com/

scribe), Pollinisation

(flickr.com/pollinisation),

Dominic Alves, ian,

Nicky, Crunchy

Footsteps, Thomas

Anderson, Robbie

Sproule, Stefan

Powell, Kevin Dooley,

Stuart Heath, Donna

Barber, Paul Bowman,

Alexandre Vialle.

Paul Murphy Editor

Editorial

Welcome to Viewfinder Maga-zine , a magazine that ce lebrates a l l forms of creat iv i ty found in photography.

In our f i rs t i s-sue we ’ l l be taking a look at one of the most creat ive pho-tographers around at the moment , Tim Kirman. We’ l l guide you through ba-s ic HDR and give a s imple introduc-t ion to pinhole photography.

Paddy Murphy, an Ir i sh photographer l iv ing in Poland, expla ins how through photographing s treet art in his new surroundings revea ls that

Inside this month’s issue

Imposs ib le Project have f ina l ly re leased the most eager ly ant ic-ipated f i lm to the instant pho-totgraphy world . PX 680 Color Shade Firs t F lush Edit ion i s the la test ad-di t ion to the Pola-roid f i lm that Im-p o s s i b l e P r o j e c t have re-invented.

P o l a -roid 600 c a m e r a u s e r s now have t h e i r f i rs t op-p o r t u -nity to s h o o t c o l o r p o l o -r o i d s s ince the Poloroid themselves ceased product ion of i t s f i lms .

The Firs t F lush Edit ion of the PX 680 Color Shade f i lm f i l l s the gap le f t by the legendary , by now hard to f ind Polaroid 600 f i lm and introduces a magica l new color pa let te within the c lass ic white frame. Ut i l iz ing a complete ly new formula with a l l

new components , th is magnif i-cent f i lm del ights with colorful images that are reminiscent of the f inest character is t ics of the legendary Polaroid mater ia l s .

T h e I m p o s -s i b l e p r o j e c t began in la te 2008 when 10 f o r m e r e m p l o y -ees of the P o l o r o i d c o m p a -ny, with a com-bined ex-p e r i n c e in in-s t a n t f i l m of 500 y e a r s , set out to to do

the imposs ib le and le t PoLaroid l ive .

A packet of the new PX 680 Color Shade First F lush Edit ion wi l l conta ins 8 exposures .

Users should be aware that the new f i lm is very sens i t ive to l ight for the f i rs t few sec-onds a f ter i t comes out of the camera .

FEATURES

This photo was taken with a Lomo Smena Symbol loaded with Solut ion VX 200 f i lm in Zabrze , in the S i les ia region of Poland. S ince moving to Kato-wice , a busy industr ia l i sed c i ty in the south of Poland, not far f rom the wonderful ly beaut i fu l Kraków, I ’ve become obsessed with the graf f i t i cu l ture here and photograph i t every chance

I get . I ’ve amassed a large col lec-

t ion of photos I ca l l ‘Analogue Graf f i t i ’ but this p icture i s my favouri te because the piece i t captures revea ls so much about the p lace where I now l ive .

Footbal l i s very important in Poland but the matches at tract the k ind of people that you were warned to s tay away from

as a chi ld . Each team has their own

‘Epika ’ , or ‘ crew’ in Engl i sh . They p laster their murals and tags on as many b lank wal l s as they can. They even tag their r iva l ’ s team but spray them ei-ther ups ide down or hanging from a hangman’s noose . Firs t t ime I saw i t I thought i t was a very s trange way to p lay the

My wall, my cultureImpossible!

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PX 680 Color Shade First Flush Edition is available online at http://www.the-impossible-project.com/

Shooting graffit i has led this pho-tographer to discover Silesian cul-ture is the painting on the wall . Words and Photos: Paddy Murphy

www.penguinmania . tk

T i m K i r m a n

Aspiring To Be Bubbles

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Feature : Polish Street Art

Paddy Murphy expla ins that there ’ s more than meets the eye with Pol i sh s treet art .

Featured Photographer

This month ’ s most inspir ing photographer creates abstract art with his DSLR.

Sean O’Flaherty Creative Editor

Andy Doyle Podcast Producer

Shoots with a Canon EOS 5D and 450D and a 35mm Pentax SP1000. Is also not a stranger to the world of the Diana F+.

Canon EOS 7D ex-pert but from time to time he swaps his DSLR for his old Praktica and Lubitel cameras.

flickr.com/analoguepaul

flickr.com/seanof

flickr.com/andywithcamera

Welcomegraf f i t i i s much more than the nuisance i t i s sometimes per-ceived as .

Also , ins ide you ’ l l f ind a ga l lery of the best photographs sub-mitted to us , here , a t Viewfinder over the las t month.

There i s a l so the la test news and we take a specia l look at a f r iendly look-ing toy camera .

The Viewfinder team a lso produce a monthly podcast ,

which i s a great accompani-ment to this magazine so whi le you ’re reading you can l i s ten to us a t vi ewf inderpodcas t . com

3

Viewfinder Magazine info@viewfindermag.com©2011 Viewfinder Magazine

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10

Creative Photography

May 2011 | Issue 01

- the VF Team

GALLERY

Picture : Deer (Legs and Ribs)Photographer: Xenia El izabethCamera: Holga 120NFilm: Lomography Color Negat ive Fi lm 100Flickr: xenia l iz

Picture : Gl impse of SunsetPhotographer: Louis Bosco

Camera: Diana F+Film: Agfa Precisa CT 100Flickr: midnight-specia l s

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World Pinhole Photography Day took place on 24th Apri l 2011 and to ce lebrate we ’re tak-ing a look at this unique form of l ight capturing and some of the homemade cameras used to make pinhole photographs .

Pinhole photography can be v iewed by some photographers as a pr imite ive means of mak-ing a photograph. However , this couldn ’ t be further from the truth. Many photographers experiment with making their own pinhole cameras to bet-ter understand the process of capturing l ight and producing qual i ty phogoraphy.

A pinhole camera i s a s imple camera that doesn ’ t use a lens . Al though there are modif ica-t ions you can do to body caps in order to create a d ig i ta l p in-hole , they are for the most part f i lm cameras , or photographic paper cameras .

I t i s essent ia l ly a l ight proof box with a p in s ized hole in one s ide which a l lows l ight to be captured on a p iece of f i lm or photographic paper .

The photographic paper ver-s ions tend ot be larger than me-dium format or 35mm vers ions . They a l so require a changing bag or darkroom for loading and unloading.

The actua l p inhole means

that the camera has a very smal l aperture . which should be about f100 or smal ler .

Al though with many home-made pinhole cameras . I t ’ s d i f -

f icul t to make a camera to a speci f ic aperture . Using a regu-lar sewing pin you need to f ind a good way to measure the pin-hole d iamater .

Once the s ize of the d iamater and the dis tance from the pin-hole to the f i lm, or paper , has been ca lculated , i t ’ s easy with a

b i t of maths to f ind out the cor-rect f -s top of the pinhole and the di f ferent exposure t imes needed in d i f ferent l ight .

But due to the large f-num-

ber of a p inhole camera , expo-sures wi l l of ten encounter rec i-proci ty fa i lure . Once exposure t ime has exceeded about 1 sec-ond for f i lm or 30 seconds for paper , the breakdown in l inear response of the f i lm/paper to intensi ty of i l luminat ion by us-ing longer exposures must be

compensated for .For those who are not math-

ematica l ly encl ined there i s a weal th of knowledge and ex-per ince avai lab le onl ine that can help in ca lcua l te ing correct measurements for construct ing a p inhole camera and indeed ex-psure guide l ines . Many of these guide l ines wi l l provide a s imple way of us ing a regular l ight me-ter to ca lculate the exposure t ime for the high f-number .

A s imple onl ine search for ‘p inhole ca lculater ’ should y ie ld enough resul ts to he lp con-struct a perfect p inhole camera .

But the only way to truly get a p inhole camera to work as best as poss ib le i s to experi-ment and experiment .

The main character is t ics of this type of photography i s sof t images , long exposure t imes and great way to learn about camera opt ics .

So as you can see this once thought obsolete method of ear ly photography can eas i ly be used to move quickly aong a learning curve with image cap-tur ing and i t can a l so be used for very creat ive purposes .

P inhole cameras , a f ter a l l can be made out of anything from old camera bodies , f i lm canis ters and matchboxes to frui t and vegetables .

Matchbox Pinhole Made using the easy to follow is-tructions found on http://www.matchboxpinhole.com/

Ollie the Obscura Ollie is a coconut pinhole camera. The hole is in one of his eyes. The hat covers the film access panel.

Cigarette Pinhole Boxes are a lways good for p in-holes . This cam-era i s made out of a box of American Spirit cigarettes.

Picasso Pinhole A multi pinhole camera, one in one of the noses and one in the lid, made from a bath soap tin.

Pumpkin Pinhole Inspired by Eric Renner’s bell pep-per pinhole cam-era experiments, this pinhole is a real pumpkin.

Polaroid Pinhole Instant pinholes are a real treat and polaroid conver-sions and modifi-cations can make it happen.

Life without the lensHomemade Pinholes

Picture : Dominic AlvesFl ickr : dominicspics

Picture : ian

Dippold Pinhole One of the many variety of pinhole cameras made from the instruc-tions of flickr user dippold.

Picture : Crunchy Footsteps

Picture : Crunchy Footsteps

Picture : Robbie Sproule

Picture : Crunchy Footsteps

Picture : Thomas Anderson

Picture : Nicky

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‘ ‘Essentailly a light proof boxwith a pin sized hole in one side’ ’

3938

TECHNIQUE

HDRHDR Photography - Increase your dynamic range using just one RAW fi le. Words and Photos: Sean O’Flaherty

Although High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, as we know i t , appears to be a fa ir ly new concept . Digi ta l HDR is a re lat ive ly new art form gaining momentum. I t s humble begin-nings , however , can be dated back as far as 1850. Frenchman Gustave Le Gray i s considered to be the pioneer of us ing mul-t ip le exposures to overcome the problem of a too-extreme range of luminance or tones .

He f i rs t used this technique with his seascapes to control luminance , combining two neg-at ives , one exposure for the sky and another longer exposure for the sea , to produce one im-age in pos i t ive .

There are two more com-monly used techniques to pro-duce HDR images . F irs t ly , us ing mult ip le exposures of a s ingle scene or bracket ing, which we wi l l d iscuss in a future i ssue , and secondly , the use of one s ingle RAW fi le and a RAW Converter .

Al though us ing one RAW fi le wi l l increase the dynamic , or tonal , range of your image, i t i s not considered to be a fu l l HDR image. The main reason being that there i s a larger tonal

range achieveable with the use of three seperate exposures of your scene. In this guide we wi l l be us ing the s ingle RAW fi le technique and us ing the cameras his togram as an expo-sure guide .

Bracket ing your exposures leads to a higher tonal range but you can s t i l l increase the tonal va lue of your image us ing a s ingle f i le and this method i s great for people who are not fa-mi l iar with HDR photography.

For this exerc ise a Canon 450D with the k i t lens , 18-55mm, a tr i -pod and a remote

shutter re lease was used. The remote i s not essent ia l but can be useful for e l iminat ing cam-era shake caused by press ing the on-camera shutter re lease .

I used an aperture va lue of f .16 , ISO 100 and a shutter speed of 1/20 for the ini t ia l image that we wi l l be working with .

I tend to use these set pa-rameters for my aperture and ISO values for a l l my landscape work, with the shutter speed changing depending on the l ight . I do this to control my image as best I can, with the

smal l aperture ( f .16) a l lowing for a very large depth of f ie ld , and the low ISO helping to keep noise or gra in to a minimum.

First ly set your camera to RAW, then put your camera on the tr i-pod, a t tach the remote shutter re lease and compose your image. Once you have your picture composed as you see f i t , with your set t ings as mentioned before , i t s t ime to shoot .

This i s where the his to-gram comes in to p lay . I won’ t go into too much deta i l about the his togram in order to keep this HDR process as s imple as

poss ib le . I used a technique known

as exposing to the r ight here . As you can see in the picture above, this bas ica l ly means that I push the data on my his togram as far r ight as poss ib le , without c l ipping the r ight hand s ide which would resul t in b lown highl ights .

This a l lows for less noise in the darker areas and a greater use of the colour spectrum. By not c l ipping the r ight hand s ide there i s more information in the image that can be recovered and used la ter for the purposes

‘ ‘HDR photography can be dated as far back as 1850’ ’

REVIEW

Disderi 3 Lens Robot

The Dis ider i cameras range come in 2 , 3 or 4 lens format . This part icular l i t t le p las t ic hero i s the 3 lens ‘ robot ’ model . An act ion sampler that takes 3 conseut ive images on a s in-gle 35mm frame. I t ’ s bui l t for capturing moments of sport-ing greatness , s i l ly behaviour and providing a unique take on what could normal ly be a very boring image.

The larger lens , in the mouth, i s roughly ha l f the frame and the two ‘eye ’ lenses take up about a quarter of a f rame each.

This camera i s not only de-l ightfu l ly cute but i f the robot ’ s innocent look doesn ’ t se l l i t se l f to you the fact that i t se l l s on ebay for less than the pr ice of a ro l l of f i lm. I f your lucky you might get i t , with free de l ivery , for as low as €1.

But va lue for money, and the robot ’ s face , are not the most a t tract ive e lements of this l i t t le p las t ic sampler . The spinning noise of the shutter i s a very soothing sound as the camera shutter moves through i t s lens-es , beginning with the mouth

and going around in a c lockwise motion.

The camera has a smal l fo ld up viewfinder on top. I t ’ s a s imple , p las t ic f rame but rea l ly there ’ s no point to i t . This cam-era i sn ’ t for framing or compo-s i t ion. This robot i s for point-ing at something and hi t t ing the br ight orange shutter button, re leas ing the whir l of the shut-ter b lade working on capturing three moments in one frame.

Ins ide the camera i t ’ s p la in and s imple . The f i lm loads as normal with most 35mm camer-as . The f i lm winder , winds on a frame at a t ime and s tops when the camera i s ready to shoot . This however does not a l low for mult ip le exposures .

Once the ent ire f i lm has been exposed the rewind sys-tem is s imple and i s , again , in keeping with the s ty le of most 35mm cameras . On the botton of this l i t t le toy i s a smal l re-wind button s imply press to re-lease the f i lm and rewind us ing the orange lever on top of the camera .

There ’ s a l so f i lm counter on top of the camera in the middle of the fo ld up viewfinder .

A handy wrist s trap i s a t-tached to the bottom corner of the camera making i t great for swinging around in the summer t ime.

The one thing not to forget , though, about this l i t t le pocket camera i s that i t i s a toy . The lens i s f ixed and there ’ s no fo-cus ing. I t a s imple point and shoot camera with the fun gim-mick of act ion sampl ing which i s great fun when shoot ing sport or even a person l i f t ing a g lass of beer .

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Gal lery

An exhibi t ion of the best pho-tographs submitted to View-f inder Magazine this month.

Feature : P inhole Photography

To ce lebrate the recent World Pinhole Day we look at shoot-ing without a lens .

Technique: HDR photography

Sean O’Flaherty guides us through bas ic HDR using a s in-gle RAW fi le .

Review: Disder i 3 Lens Robot

This toy camera has i t a l l , per-sonal i ty , two eyes and a b ig mouth.

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30

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NEWS

The planned movie about the las t ro l l of Kodachrome to be processed has reverted back to Fox.

News of the movie was wide-ly reported a f ter DreamWorks picked up the movie but , as deta i led in Variety , Fox 2000 had a ‘ f i rs t- look ’ dea l with , Night a t t he Museum d irector , Shawn Levy, who was behind the pi tch .

Fox ini t ia l ly passed on the movie but fo l lowing the news that DreamWorks had snapped i t up they changed their mind.

The movie i t se l f i s reported to be based around the s tory of a fa ther and son who make a long journey to Dwayne ’ s Pho-to , in Kansas , the las t p lace to process Kodachrome.

Kodachrome was produced from 1935-2009 but was d iscon-t inued as interest in the Kodak product s teadi ly dropped with the r i se of d ig i ta l photography.

A smal l group of , the a lways inspirat ional , Magnum Photo Agency photographers have set of f on the f i rs t in their ser ies of road tr ips around the United States ca l led ‘Postcards from America ’ .

The f i rs t t r ip , in this unique documentary experiment , takes p lace from May 12th - 26th 2011. The f ive photographers and their accompanying wri ter are on a journey from San An-tonio to Oakland.

Photographers Paolo Pel-legr in , J im Goldberg, Susan

Fox developing chrome

Magnum on the road

In la te 2010 Dwayne ’ s Photo announced that i t was no lon-ger going to process the f i lm. Dwayne ’ s was the las t shop in the world to d iscont inue the service of process ing the f i lm, due to a lack of chemica ls for the process .

Ear l ier las t year , i t was an-nounced that the las t ever

produced rol l of the Kodak f i lm was shot by Steve McCurry .

Many photographers have fond memories of the f i lm but the r i se of d ig i ta l photog-raphy has led to i t s demand disappear ing.

For one, the movie s i t s back in the development tank at 20th Century Fox.

Meise las , Alec Soth, Mikhael Subotzky and wri ter Ginger Strand embark on what wi l l no doubt be one of the most mem-orable p ieces of documentary

photography in the las t few years .

The team are a iming to work together and engage with the loca l communit ies they meet a long the way.

Ear l ier this month photog-rapher Chris topher Anderson pul led out of the tr ip due to a death of a c lose fr iend.

You can fo l low their tr ip at : (pos t cards .magnumphotos . com)

( f l i c k r . c o m / g r o u p s /

pos t cards fromamerica )

( p o s t c a r d s f r o m a m e r i c a . t u m b l r .

com)

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Picture : Robert Couse-Baker

The Imposs ib le Project have f i -na l ly re leased the most eager ly ant ic ipated f i lm in the instant photography world . PX 680 Color Shade First F lush Edit ion i s the la test ad-di t ion to the Pola-roid f i lm that Im-p o s s i b l e P r o j e c t have re-invented.

P o l a -roid 600 c a m e r a u s e r s now have t h e i r f i rs t op-p o r t u -nity to s h o o t color Po-l a r o i d s s ince Po-laroid themselves ceased pro-duct ion of i t s f i lms .

The Firs t F lush Edit ion of the PX 680 Color Shade f i lm f i l l s the gap le f t by the legendary , by now hard to f ind Polaroid 600 f i lm and introduces a magica l new color pa let te within the c lass ic white frame. Ut i l iz ing a complete ly new formula with a l l

new components , th is magnif i-cent f i lm del ights with colorful images that are reminiscent of the f inest character is t ics of the legendary Polaroid mater ia l s .

T h e I m p o s -s i b l e p r o j e c t began in la te 2008 when 10 f o r m e r e m p l o y -ees of the Po-l a r o i d c o m p a -ny, with a com-b i n e d e x p e r i -ence in i n s t a n t f i l m of 500 years , set out to do

the imposs ib le and le t Polaroid l ive .

A packet of the new PX 680 Color Shade First F lush Edit ion contains 8 exposures .

Users should be aware that the new f i lm is very sens i t ive to l ight for the f i rs t few sec-onds a f ter i t comes out of the camera .

Impossible!

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PX 680 Color Shade First Flush Edition is available online at http://www.the-impossible-project.com/

FEATURES

This photo was taken with a Lomo Smena Symbol loaded with Solut ion VX 200 f i lm in Zabrze , in the S i les ia region of Poland. S ince moving to Kato-wice , a busy industr ia l i sed c i ty in the south of Poland, not far f rom the wonderful ly beaut i fu l Kraków, I ’ve become obsessed with the graf f i t i cu l ture here and photograph i t every chance

I get . I ’ve amassed a large col lec-

t ion of photos I ca l l ‘Analogue Graf f i t i ’ but this p icture i s my favouri te because the piece i t captures revea ls so much about the p lace where I now l ive .

Footbal l i s very important in Poland but the matches at tract the k ind of people that you were warned to s tay away from

as a chi ld . Each team has their own

‘Epika ’ , or ‘ crew’ in Engl i sh . They p laster their murals and tags on as many b lank wal l s as they can. They even tag their r iva l ’ s team but spray them ei-ther ups ide down or hanging from a hangman’s noose . Firs t t ime I saw i t I thought i t was a very s trange way to p lay the

If the walls could talk

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Shooting graffit i has led this pho-tographer to discover that Silesian culture is painted on its walls. Words and Photos: Paddy Murphy

word game Hangman.There i s wide opinion that

graf f i t i and s treet art are , for the most part , a nuisance . I f you want to f ind some rea l ar t pa inted on wal l s then you need to go in search of i t . But there-in l ies the fun. Everyone enjoys the hunt .

The ser ious graf f i t i ar t i s t s , s ick of be ing associated with footbal l hool igans and branded as nothing more than vandals turned their a t tent ion to tra ins , t ra in depots and the concrete wal l s that l ine the tracks of Po-land to hone their sk i l l s .

The photo was taken in a smal ler c i ty in the Katowice metropol i s in a p lace ca l led Zabzre . Zabrze (pronounced Zab- jza) i sn ’ t a wel l -known place outs ide of Poland, indeed i t ’ s not a l l that wel l known even in Poland. Ask someone that i sn ’ t f rom around there and a l l they ’ l l be able to te l l you i s that i t ’ s got a coa lmine touris t a t trac-t ion and a fa ir ly average foot-ba l l team. What most people don ’ t know though i s that every year a loca l pr iest g ives over a few wal l s c lose to his church to graf f i t i ar t i s t s f rom the area .

I came across this wal l whi le searching for some interest-ing tags on the Internet , so I headed up to Zabrze by tra in . Along the way I got to see the vast amount of graf f i t i on the concrete wal l s that l ine the tracks . I a l so saw a few of the mass ive abandoned coalmines and factor ies that creates the s tereotype that S i les ia suf fers f rom the non-Si les ian parts of Poland.

They serve as a s tark re-minder of the fa i led communist regime. Huge industry was , and

s t i l l i s , a huge part of the S i le-s ian ident i ty . The area s t i l l em-ploys around 100,000 coalmin-ers to keep the country ’ s power supply going.

The g ir l in the photo con-trasts with the industr ia l back-ground of S i les ia . We can see three mine shaf t towers and two other service towers loom-ing in the d is tance behind her . The third shaf t tower i s in the far r ight corner and i s very d is-tant . The image shows Si les ia ’ s industr ia l image c lear ly and i t i s further emphasised with the paint ings of a gear wheel and shaf t wheel in the foreground.

Most of the bui ld ings in the background can be made out but not so much that we can safe ly ident i fy each one. We can, however , assume that they are a l l concerned with indus-

try , coa lmining and the region ’ s other great industry , s tee l pro-duct ion. Nowhere in the back-ground do we see any dwel l ings for the workers and c i t izens of S i les ia .

This for me i s one of the reasons as to why i t ’ s such a wonderful ly powerful and emotional image. This S i les ian woman is dressed in her tradi-t ional S i les ian costume, each Pol i sh region has their own and i f you ’ve ever drank the Pol i sh beer , Zywiec , then you ’ l l a l -ready have seen the tradi t ional costume of S i les ia .

The image shows that whi le industry has become such a nor-mal part of everyday l i fe , s ince the f i rs t coa lmines were opened over 200 years ago, there i s a sense of pr ide here that i s only

found in the working-c lass ar-eas of the world .

There ’ s a s trength of com-munity here that we would have been fami l iar with when we saw the coa lminers of 1980s Bri t-a in . The Iron Lady may have brought them a l l to a ha l t , but on our TV screens at the t ime we witnessed a ra l ly ing of the troops and a coming together of the coa lmining communit ies that had everyone ca l l ing for Thatcher ’ s head and support ing the p l ight of those unfortunate working c lass heroes .

Now, many of the o ld coa lmining communit ies of Br i ta in have dec l ined into ar-eas p lagued by unemployment , housing problems and a lcohol-i sm. There ’ s no s ign of that happening in Poland but i f the mines were c losed down, in the

near future , i t would have a detr imenta l e f fect on the region.

This image te l l s the rest

of Poland that , yes ok, we may have a huge amount of indus-try , but we ’re s t i l l a s tronghold of Pol i sh tradi t ion, custom and va lues . We have industry and we ’re b loody proud of i t but we a l so have youth, beauty , inte l-l igence and char isma.

Tradi t ional ly , the typi-ca l S i les ian dress incorporates b lue , white and red, this t ime the art i s t has chosen the typica l s ty le of S i les ian dress but cho-sen to paint the woman in the red and white of Poland. S i le-s ians are extremely proud and protect ive of their image, cul-ture and separate d ia lect , but they ’ re a l so immensely proud of being Poles .

The his tory of S i les ia i s short but nonetheless compl i-cated . There i s a push to ga in

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‘ ‘They serve as a stark reminder of the failed communist regime’ ’

9

autonomy from Warsaw but S i les ians are not ca l l ing for a separat ion from Poland. The red and white costume shows that f i rs t and foremost we ’re Pol i sh and Si les ian.

Next to this image on the same wal l , the image of the coa lminer , above, can be found.

Like a fool , I d idn ’ t get the art i s t ’ s name and the Internet d idn ’ t surrender any informa-t ion. The image wi l l be painted over very soon when the pr iest invi tes art i s ts to come and re-paint them for the fo l lowing year . I p lan to at tend the event and hopeful ly the art i s t wi l l pa int something just as poi-gnant and aesthet ica l ly p leas ing as this .

As for a name, wel l , I men-t ioned the S i les ian dia lect ear-l ier . I t fo l lows the grammati-ca l ru les of Pol i sh , uses Czech symbols and has an equal ly im-portant German inf luence . The Si les ian for g ir l i s ‘dz iołcha ’ , S i les ia i s ‘S ląsk ’ in Pol i sh , but ‘Ś lůsk ’ in S i les ian, so le t ’ s ca l l her Ś lůnska Dziołcha (pro-nounced S lon-ska Djoe-ha) .

Paddy Murphy

Paddy Murphy i s an Ir i sh wri ter and photographer l iv ing in Po-land. He shoots on a Lomo Sme-na Symbol , Holga 135 & Nikon F70. f li ckr . com/spudmurf

Coalminer

www.penguinmania . tk

T i m K i r m a n

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Aspiring To Be Bubbles

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Girl Reflected

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Boy Reflected

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Half Full

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Watching

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Electric

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Ladder of Light

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Winter Stars

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I am current ly in love with b lack & white photography.

Hopeful ly this wi l l expla in my choice of photographs . Many of the images I have chosen are very conceptual , in their des ign, drawing on their use of l ight ing to create the f ina l e f fect .

The resul t ing images are qui te abstract , contrast ing l ight against dark or v ice versa .

Almost a l l of these images where taken us ing my Canon EOS 450D with a S igma 50mm f2 .8 EX at tached. The only ma-nipulat ion appl ied a f ter shoot-ing has been de-saturat ing the or ig ina l RAW fi les , ad just ing the contrast and tweaking ex-posure t imes .

I f ind the resul t ing images take on a complete ly d i f ferent

form when presented in b lack & white .

‘Boy Ref lected ’ (a se l f por-tra i t ) and ‘Gir l Ref lected ’ are my favouri te images in the se-r ies . Ref lect ions taken against a large perspex box fu l l of e i-derdown feathers . The resul t-ing images are qui te e f fect ive and the experiment certa inly paid of f .

FACT BOX:

Name: Tim KirmanNationality : Br i t i shLocation: Kincar ine , Fi feWebsite : www.penguinmania . tkFavourite Camera: Holga CF or Canon 450DFavourite Film: 120 Lucky B&W fi lm or Fuj i f i lm 64 Tungsten 120Favourite thing to Photograph: Random objects up c lose and personalPerson you would most l ike to

Photograph: Marion DaviesInspiration: Sa lvador Dal i and Cindy ShermanInterests outside photography: ARGs, Puzz les , F i lm, Japan, JasperFforde and Thursday Next

Self Por trait

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GALLERY

Picture : Deer (Legs and Ribs)Photographer: Xenia El izabethCamera: Holga 120NFilm: Lomography Color Negat ive Fi lm 100Flickr: xenia l iz

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Picture : Gl impse of SunsetPhotographer: Louis Bosco

Camera: Diana F+Film: Agfa Precisa CT 100Flickr: midnight-specia l s

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Picture : #6 Starbucks Scene - Par isPhotographer: Lance Rothste inCamera: Moskva 5Film: I l ford Del ta 3200Flickr: l ancephoto

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Picture : YahtzeePhotographer: Robert O ’Dui l l

Camera: Nikon D60Flickr: Robert O ’Dui l l

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Picture : ErasmusbrugPhotographer: Stephen EustaceCamera: Nikon D40XFlickr: seustace2003

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Picture : Mi l lennium Stadium, Cardi f f Photographer: David McNal ly

Camera: Nikon D60Flickr: david_mcn

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Picture : Parts of a P lanePhotographer: Christos Chris touCamera: Lomo LC-AFilm: Agfa Precisa CT 100Flickr: 25thc

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Picture : Montmartre Vs Arche De TriomphePhotographer: Nicola Clark

Camera: Lomo LC-AFilm: Lomography X-pro Chrome 100

Flickr: kenickie56

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Picture : I f I Walk Hard Enough Maybe I Can Fade AwayPhotographer: ScribeCamera: Rol le i 35TEFilm: Lomography Color Negat ive Fi lm 100Flickr: scr ibe

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Picture : Unt i t ledPhotographer: Pol l inisat ion

Camera: Lomo Smena 8MFilm: Kodak Ektachrome 64T

Flickr: pol l inisat ion

World Pinhole Photography Day took place on 24th Apri l 2011 and to ce lebrate we ’re tak-ing a look at this unique form of l ight capturing and some of the homemade cameras used to make pinhole photographs .

Pinhole photography can be v iewed by some photographers as a pr imit ive means of mak-ing a photograph. However , this couldn ’ t be further from the truth. Many photographers experiment with making their own pinhole cameras to bet-ter understand the process of capturing l ight and producing qual i ty photography.

A pinhole camera i s a s imple camera that doesn ’ t use a lens . Al though there are modif ica-t ions you can do to body caps in order to create a d ig i ta l p inhole , they are , for the most part , f i lm cameras or photographic paper cameras .

They are essent ia l ly l ight proof boxes with a p in-s ized hole in one s ide which a l lows l ight to be captured on a p iece of f i lm or photographic paper .

The photographic paper ver-s ions tend to be larger than me-dium format or 35mm vers ions . They a l so require a changing bag or darkroom for loading and unloading.

The actua l p inhole means

that the camera has a very smal l aperture , which should be about f100 or smal ler .

Al though, with many home-made pinhole cameras . I t ’ s d i f -

f icul t to make a camera to a speci f ic aperture . Using a regu-lar sewing pin you need to f ind a good way to measure the pin-hole d iameter .

Once the s ize of the d iameter and the dis tance from the pin-hole to the f i lm, or paper , has been ca lculated , i t ’ s easy with a

b i t of math to f ind out the cor-rect f -s top of the pinhole and the di f ferent exposure t imes needed in d i f ferent l ight .

But due to the large f-num-

ber of a p inhole camera , expo-sures wi l l of ten encounter rec i-proci ty fa i lure . Once exposure t ime has exceeded about 1 sec-ond for f i lm or 30 seconds for paper , the breakdown in l inear response of the f i lm or paper to intensi ty of i l luminat ion by us ing longer exposures must be

Life without the lens

Picture : Dominic AlvesFl ickr : dominicspics

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‘ ‘Essentailly a light proof boxwith a pin sized hole in one side’ ’

Capturing l ight through a pin-sized hole is far more than just a primitive technique. Words: Paul Murphy

compensated for .For those not mathemati-

ca l ly inc l ined there i s a weal th of knowledge and experience avai lab le onl ine that can help in ca lculat ing the correct mea-surements for construct ing a p inhole camera and indeed exposure guide l ines . Many of these guides wi l l provide a s im-ple way of us ing a regular l ight meter to ca lculate the exposure t ime for the high f-number .

A s imple onl ine search for ‘p inhole ca lculator ’ should y ie ld enough resul ts to he lp con-struct a perfect p inhole camera .

But the only way to truly get a p inhole camera to work as wel l as poss ib le i s to experi-ment and experiment .

The main character is t ics of this type of photography are sof t images , long exposure t imes and a great way to learn about camera opt ics .

So, as you can see , this once thought obsolete method of ear ly photography can eas i ly be used to move quickly a long a learning curve with image cap-tur ing and i t can a l so be used for very creat ive purposes .

P inhole cameras , a f ter a l l can be made out of anything, f rom old camera bodies , f i lm canis ters and matchboxes to frui t and vegetables .

Matchbox Pinhole Made using the easy to follow in-structions found on http://www.matchboxpinhole.com/

Ollie the Obscura Ollie is a coconut pinhole camera. The hole is in one of his eyes. The hat covers the film access panel.

Cigarette Pinhole Boxes are a lways good for p in-holes . This cam-era i s made out of a box of American Spirit cigarettes.

Picasso Pinhole A multi pinhole camera, one in one of the noses and one in the lid, made from a bath soap tin.

Pumpkin Pinhole Inspired by Eric Renner’s bell pep-per pinhole cam-era experiments, this pinhole is a real pumpkin.

Polaroid Pinhole Instant pinholes are a real treat and polaroid conver-sions and modifi-cations can make it happen.

Homemade Pinholes

Picture : ian

Dippold Pinhole One of the many variety of pinhole cameras made from the instruc-tions of flickr user dippold.

Picture : Crunchy Footsteps

Picture : Crunchy Footsteps

Picture : Robbie Sproule

Picture : Crunchy Footsteps

Picture : Thomas Anderson

Picture : Nicky

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Picture : Stefan Powel l F l ickr : duchamp

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Picture : Kevin DooleyFl ickr : pagedooley

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Picture : Stuart HeathFl ickr : mistera i tch

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Picture : Donna BarberFl ickr : dybarber

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Picture : Paul BowmanFl ickr : bowmanpics

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Picture : Alexandre Via l leFl ickr : Олександр

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TECHNIQUE

HDRHDR Photography - Increase your dynamic range using just one RAW fi le. Words and Photos: Sean O’Flaherty

Although High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, as we know i t , appears to be a re la-t ive ly new concept i t s humble beginnings can be dated back as far as 1850.

Frenchman Gustave Le Gray i s considered to be the pioneer of us ing mult ip le exposures to overcome the problem of a too-extreme range of luminance or tones .

He f i rs t used the technique with his seascapes to control luminance , combining two neg-at ives , one exposure for the sky and another longer exposure for the sea , to produce one im-age in pos i t ive .

There are two more com-monly used techniques to pro-duce HDR images . F irs t ly , us ing mult ip le exposures of a s ingle scene or bracket ing, which we wi l l d iscuss in a future i ssue , and secondly , the use of one s ingle RAW fi le and a RAW Converter .

Al though us ing one RAW fi le wi l l increase the dynamic , or tonal , range of your image, i t i s not considered to be a fu l l HDR image. The main rea-son being that there i s a larger tonal range achievable with the

use of three separate exposures of your scene. In this guide we wi l l be us ing the s ingle RAW fi le technique and us ing the cameras his togram as an expo-sure guide .

Bracket ing your exposures leads to a higher tonal range but you can s t i l l increase the tonal va lue of your image us ing a s ingle f i le and this method i s great for people who are not fa-mi l iar with HDR photography.

For this exerc ise a Canon 450D with the k i t lens , 18-55mm, a tr i -pod and a remote shutter re lease was used. The

remote i s not essent ia l but can be useful for e l iminat ing cam-era shake caused by press ing the on-camera shutter re lease .

I used an aperture va lue of f .16 , ISO 100 and a shutter speed of 1/20 for the ini t ia l image that we wi l l be working with .

I tend to use these set pa-rameters for my aperture and ISO values for a l l my landscape work, with the shutter speed changing depending on the l ight . I do this to control my image as best I can, with the smal l aperture ( f .16) a l lowing

39

for a very large depth of f ie ld , and the low ISO helping to keep noise or gra in to a minimum.

First ly , set your camera to RAW, then put your camera on the tr i-pod, a t tach the remote shutter re lease and compose your image. Once you have the picture composed as you see f i t , with your set t ings as mentioned before , i t s t ime to shoot .

This i s where the his to-gram comes in to p lay . I won’ t go into too much deta i l about the his togram in order to keep this HDR process as s imple as poss ib le .

I used a technique known as exposing to the r ight . As you can see in the picture above, this bas ica l ly means that I push the data on my his togram as far r ight as poss ib le , without c l ipping the r ight hand s ide which would resul t in b lown highl ights .

This a l lows for less noise in the darker areas and a greater use of the colour spectrum. By not c l ipping the r ight hand s ide there i s more information in the image that can be recovered and used la ter for the purposes of HDR.

‘ ‘HDR photography can be dated as far back as 1850’ ’

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The f i rs t t ime I used this technique I looked at the back of my camera a saw a bad, washed-out looking image. But i f you ignore the image and re ly on the his togram, your image, a f ter post-process ing, wi l l be far superior .

Once you have an image that you ’re happy to work with, i t ’ s t ime to s tart the post-process-ing. For this , we wi l l combine two vers ions of the same image, with di f ferent ad justments , and b lending them together to one f i le . To do this I ’m us ing Pho-toshop ’s RAW Converter . I f

you are new to RAW fi les and have Photoshop this converter can be obta ined from the Adobe websi te .

When you open your RAW image in Photoshop you should see something l ike the image above. With this f i rs t f i le we are going to expose the im-age for the c louds and sky . The amount that you wi l l have to reduce the exposure wi l l vary from image to image. Depend-ing on a number of factors but mainly how you yourse l f want the end image to look.

As I mentioned ear l ier ,

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because I exposed my his to-gram, top r ight of the convert-er ’ s window, to the r ight with-out c l ipping, there i s more information contained within to recover .

You can see in the previous screenshot that I had to reduce my exposure by -1 .05, set my br ightness to +85 and contrast of +55. There i s a wide range of other opt ions to use in the converter , I mainly use the recovery and contrast s l iders when adjust ing for the sky but you can ad just the many other s l iders and var iables unt i l you

are happy with how your image looks .

When you are happy with how the image i s looking c l ick the ‘Open Image ’ button and your f i le wi l l open as a new Photoshop document .

Next , we need to ad just the exposure and white ba lance for the foreground layer . Once you have opened the f i rs t f i le with the RAW converter , go back and open the RAW fi le again .

This t ime you can see from the image above that I had to increase my exposure by only +.05, but I set my recovery to

‘ ‘Ignore the image,rely on the histogram’ ’

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21. The br ightness and con-

trast va lues remain the same and I a l so , s l ight ly , increased the b lacks . I then added a smal l amount of sharpness . Normal ly I leave those ad justments for la ter , as wel l as contrast and colours .

Once you have your second image c l ick ‘Open Image ’ again . Now that you have the two var iat ion ’ s open in Photoshop, i t s t ime to combine them and f inish the image.

With the move tool se lected drag the second image as a layer

on to the f i rs t image. Hold down shi f t and le t go of the mouse button, this wi l l p lace the layer on top of the other dead centre .

Next we need to apply the sky to the foreground layer . To do this we need to apply a layer mask to the top layer . Then, with the gradient tool se lected , draw a s tra ight l ine from the top of the document to about ha l f way down, depending on how much you want to revea l .

Very rare ly , however , wi l l th is s tra ight l ine lead to the de-s ired look, so you might need to do a l i t t le adding or subtract ing

‘ ‘Remember, always expose to the right’ ’

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from the mask, depending on your scene.

I usual ly use a large d iam-eter brush with sof t edges , and a f low of about 15%, and ‘pa int ’ in the parts of the image that the l ine , used with the gradi-ent tool , d idn ’ t br ing out in the image.

When you ’re happy with the b lending, dupl icate the layers and combine one of each.

Next , add some colour . Cre-ate a new adjustment layer and choose ‘ se lect ive colour ’ . In the ad justments panel , p lay around with the s l iders for each colour

va lue and choose the best re-sul t . This g ives you much more control over the saturat ion.

Then to add sharpness , with the layer se lected , go to the channels panel . Cl ick on the ‘b lue ’ channel , then ‘ c tr l ’ c l i ck to make a se lect ion. Se lect the b lue channel so as to only sharpen certa in areas of the image. Next hi t c tr l+shi f t+i to invert the se lect ion and ctr l+h to hide . Open the unsharp mask dia logue box, zoom to 100% so you can better see the resul ts , apply a radius of 1 .0 , in this case I set my amount to 120%.

Final ly , for contrast , add a br ightness/contrast ad justment layer . This part i s a l so down to how you want the end image to look. I only added a smal l amount to this image, but i t had a b ig e f fect .

Now your HDR image i s complete .

Remember , a lways expose to the r ight where poss ib le & trust your his togram.

I f you found this guide use-ful , then we ’d l ike to see your images . So p lease send them to HDR@viewfindermag.com so we can see how you got on.

REVIEW

Disderi 3 Lens Robot

The Dis ider i cameras range comes in 2 , 3 or 4 lens format . This part icular l i t t le p las t ic hero i s the 3 lens ‘ robot ’ model . An act ion sampler that takes 3 consecut ive images on a s in-gle 35mm frame. I t ’ s bui l t for capturing moments of sport-ing greatness , s i l ly behavior and providing a unique take on what could normal ly be a very boring image.

The larger lens , in the mouth, i s roughly ha l f the frame and the two ‘eye ’ lenses take up about a quarter of a f rame each.

This camera i s not only de-l ightfu l ly cute and i f the robot ’ s innocent look doesn ’ t se l l i t se l f to you the fact that they go on eBay for less than the pr ice of a ro l l of f i lm wi l l . I f your lucky you could get i t , with free de-l ivery , for as low as €1.

But va lue for money, and the robot ’ s face , are not the most a t tract ive e lements of this l i t t le p las t ic sampler . The spinning noise of the shutter i s a very soothing sound as the camera shutter moves through i t s lens-es , beginning with the mouth

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and going around in a c lockwise motion.

The camera has a smal l fo ld up viewfinder on top. I t ’ s a s imple , p las t ic f rame but rea l ly there ’ s no point to i t . This cam-era i sn ’ t for framing or compo-s i t ion. This robot i s for point-ing at something and hi t t ing the br ight orange shutter button, re leas ing the whir l of the shut-ter b lade working on capturing three moments in one frame.

Ins ide the camera i t ’ s p la in and s imple . The f i lm loads as normal with most 35mm camer-as . The f i lm winder , winds on a frame at a t ime and s tops when the camera i s ready to shoot . This however does not a l low for mult ip le exposures .

Once the ent ire f i lm has been exposed the rewind system is s imple and i s , again , in keeping with the s ty le of most 35mm cameras . On the bottom of this l i t t le toy i s a smal l rewind but-ton, s imply press to re lease the f i lm and rewind us ing the or-ange lever on top of the camera .

There ’ s a l so a f i lm counter on top of the camera , in the middle .

A handy wrist s trap i s a t-tached to the bottom corner of the camera making i t great for swinging around in the summer t ime.

The one thing not to forget , though, about this l i t t le pocket camera i s that i t i s a toy . The lens i s f ixed and there ’ s no fo-cus ing. I t a s imple point and shoot camera with the fun gim-mick of act ion sampl ing which i s great fun when shoot ing movement l ike ski ing or l i f t -ing a g lass of beer and or even a very obscure se l f portra i t .

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Submit to the Magazine

1. By submitt ing an image to the magazine , you give us permis-s ion to use that image on our websi te and in our magazine .

2 . P ictures must be at least 300dpi and at least 1000 pixe ls on the shortest s ide .

3 . P ictures can be taken on any camera , analogue or d ig i ta l .

4 . I f submitt ing analogue work p lease have the camera and f i lm type inc luded in e i ther the metadata , tags , or capt ion.

Submission Guidelines

How to submit your work to Viewfinder Magazine :

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Email : submiss ions@viewfindermag.com

5. You submiss ion may be re-fused without reason, as due to the nature of the publ icat ion we cannot contact everyone in-dividual ly to expla in why work was not accepted.

6 . We cannot pay photogra-phers for their work; any mon-ey earned from the Magazine i s immediate ly put back into im-proving the magazine and the accompanying podcast .

7 . You can only submit your own work. Work that i s found

to have been taken from some-one e l se wi l l not be accepted.

8 . By submitt ing a photo you are assur ing Viewfinder that you are the so le copyright owner of the photograph and as such should any quest ion about own-ership arr ive a f ter publ icat ion of the image you are accept ing fu l l l iabi l i ty and responsibi l -i ty i f i t turns out that you are not the copyright owner of the photograph.

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