40. Basics

There is a beautiful oak tree that sits between two sections in the building in which I teach. When the building was being designed one faculty member worked hard to ensure the safety and livelihood of this tree - our state tree, a protected tree.  A few years after the building was complete, students began to cut across the space and the tree was again threatened. A local non-profit organization was called, stanchions to block the students' path were installed, and landscaping was put in to again help preserve the old oak.

The building is now being remodeled and a staircase is being added near the base of the tree. The construction crew seems to show little concern for it by piling construction materials and rebar around its base. Last week a pick up truck was even parked next to the tree. I have been watching with concern all winter hoping that it will make it. Today, with the warm and beautiful weather the leafs have started to bud. I still don't know if it will survive the abuse, but let's hope it does.

In order to create the above image I decided to go back to the basics. Photography is simply the record of light and the simplest photograph can be made with a pinhole camera - a small black box with literally a pin hole at one end and light sensitive material at the other. There is no focusing mechanism, no lens and the pinhole is equivalent to F360 (Ansel Adams has nothing on this $20 camera.) The image rendered has an amazing amount of depth from the chain link inches from the camera to the parking lot far behind. It was recorded on fiber paper coated with gelatin silver and processed in our wet lab. Kind of fun after all the iPhone images that I have been taking lately. It is not my best composition, but did I mention that there is no viewfinder on the camera?

This second image was taken a couple weeks ago with a little digital Nikon that I am not too fond of (see post 24. Technology.) I think the pinhole camera even beats out this model of Nikon. Yikes!