World Pinhole Day

On April 24 f/action members embarked on Winnipeg's Exchange District for some much overdue gallery hopping, which included Nathalie Daoust's controversial 'Frozen In Time, Switzerland' at Ace Art gallery, Susy Oliveira's inspiring 'Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round!' at Platform gallery, and a very special camera obscura installation created by Andrew Milne and Sarah Anne Johnson housed temporarily in the lobby of 286 McDermot ave. The life sized camera obscura was created for World Pinhole Day which took place on April 25, 2010. It was pitch black when we first walked through the doors but once our eyes adjusted we were introduced to the magic. Reflecting on all the walls and floor space were the surrounding buildings outside. "A camera obscura (Latin for "dark room") projects an image from the outside onto a flat surface inside, through a pinhole. The external scene is reproduced, upside-down, with color and perspective preserved." We spent a good 30 minutes in there reveling at the wonder of it all. Shown below are some long exposures of our visit along with some shots from Susy Oliveira's exhibit at Platform Gallery.






Posted by Ailsa Dyson

How the hell do you spell dyptich anyway?....

Two separate nights, one involving hookah smoking and the other involving Touch The Universe science museum, happened to be on the same memory card. Instead of posting them online separately I thought I'd pair them up.

Also check out these rad diptychs by Michael Schmelling while you're in the mood.

posted by f/action member Duncan McNairnay

Jason Collett, Bahamas and Zeus, all under one roof. Yes!

Winnipeg's West End Cultural Centre was alive with music this past Saturday (as they often are) with amazing talent and great music. This weekend's show-goers were treated to some awesome musicianship: a mélange of talented artists blending music, songwriting and singing all in one. Jason Collett headed up the show with his friends and (I believe?) former bandmates: Bahamas and Zeus. An all-around great night at a venue I never get tired of going to.

Exploring large format

Large format cameras are kind of in a league of their own.

Not a better league than, say medium format or digital photography, just different.

I have noticed that, after a grasp of how a 35mm SLR works, I was able to basically figure out how to operate

most other cameras out there... except for this one.

Sure the basic concepts of photography still apply, but this is a different machine, with a different interface, operating system and, most importantly, different capabilities.

Looking at ground glass is one of the most enchanting moments I have exper

ienced as a photographer.... like a live still photo. Its hard to go back to looking through a viewfinder after experiencing this.

All those dials and shafts and knobs in the photo up top are the reason I bought the camera. Each one controls the lens plain and the film plain independently. This allows for in-camera distorting of the image (like to correct converging lines, or to exaggerate a shape) known as 'tilt-shift'.

The effect that I love is a 3D control of the focal plain axis. I can control the angle at which the depth of field cuts through the frame. Add this to the fact that dof can get a lot shallower on such a large format with such long focal lengths and there is a whole new world of dof.

The trouble is with so many possible creative

effects in-camera, it takes a good 5 minutes for me to set up a picture. This slows down the work pace and leads to a deliberate, methodic way of photographing. Completely opposite to SLR shooting.

In coming posts I will show what I've come up with as I try to get a handle on this type of photography.

post by f/action member Duncan McNairnay

Every once in a while...

We shoot and we shoot and we shoot and we shoot, and every once in a while the mother of all shots happens for us. I photograph live music more than anything else these days and I captured one of these shots the other night while shooting Toronto duo, USS [Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker]. The image is of Jason Parsons [aka Human Kebab] turntablist extraordinaire. USS played to the West End Cultural Centre in Winnipeg on March 23, and have won the honour of being my favorite new band. Here is the link to their myspace so you can listen for yourself!
http://www.myspace.com/ubiquitoussynergyseeker
Posted by f/action member, Ailsa Dyson