That is my backyard through one of those ribbed drinking glasses. Not too amazingly strange, but I’ll keep on experimenting. In fact, on Sunday I went down to the beach, hoping to snap some shots, but it was extremely windy. It almost always is at that beach. I’ll have to wait for a windless day to show you “my” beach, and either go very early or very late. Perhaps I can capture some sunsets. Then I tried going up the mountain to the nature reserve, but the weather was just as bad there, and I didn’t take a single picture on these trips. At home I tried a setup in my garage to photograph a jar of glass pebbles that I have had for the longest time, but that didn’t really work out very well either. Lots of failure, but I’m not daunted. In particular, I have never been able to photograph these pebbles properly. They look so appealing, filtering the sun into golden shafts of light, but it somehow never comes out right. Perhaps they are only for looking at in person…?

So, no more postings over the weekend, but I should try to keep up during the week. So at least let me catch up, if only for my own records. Wednesday was a teaching day. Well, so was Thursday really. Except I also gave a colloquium (poorly attended, badly advertised), and competed in Google Code Jam. Results: so-so, but unfortunately I’m through to the next round, so I’ll have to sacrifice at least half of this coming Saturday. Friday I went for a visit to iThemba Labs, a nuclear research facility near Stellenbosch. They have an enormous cyclotron which they use for producing medical isotopes, radiation therapy, and nuclear physics experiments. The place is HUGE and I had a wonderful tour of just about everything. They are interested in joint research (they have a lot of software that they need to develop and re-develop), but I’m not too hopeful that we can really help them (or they us). The software is safety-critical, but there is little research involved, and I’m not sure if these are the kind of jobs you want to entrust to students. I’m sure they’ll be able to participate in research, but they are really looking for production software. It is a great pity, because this is a unique facility, at least in the Southern hemisphere. They treat a lot of people: South Africans for free, Europeans at a price.

One last note: I planned to produce Mark II of my pinhole camera, but the weather was lousy last week, and this week does not look very promising either. Lots of other work to keep me busy, but still…I am kind of excited to see if I can make it work this time.

Just before I got home yesterday, I collected my developed film from the photo shop. Sadly, my experiment was an almost total disaster. No pictures to show. The film exposed and I can clearly see the “frame” of the camera, but no details. It is also a little difficult to tell whether it overexposed, because there is no “baseline”. I first suspected a light leak, but now I think that my pinhole lens was too large. Hmm. Well, I’m not giving up: I’ll try again later this week.

So, instead here are “oldish” photo’s, although I guess they are quite new looking. They are from 1997/8 in Tampere. The first reflects the serene city centre:

The second photo reflect the inner turmoil in the soul of a foreign student, as expressed in the organization of his flat:

I spent many months, well years, in that flat in Satakunnankatu. Fond memories.

So, I rushed back home (didn’t know if they close at some point) and looked up the second-closest site on the web. I’m feeling slightly better about the municipality now: their website is quite useful and it wasn’t difficult to find a nice map. What is more, this second dump site was excellent! Real user service! When I arrived about four or five attendants jumped up to help me unload. Well, first there was a lady with a clipboard who collected information about the dumpster. That would be the person who dumps. I think the upper bound on dumping at these sites is 1.3 tons (!) per month, so my two bags were probably under the limit.

After a couple of other Sunday errands, I came and constructed my pinhole camera:

It is extermely simple: a matchbox with a small hole (6×6 mm) cut in the “outer” shell, and another hole in the “tray” (24×24 mm). The second hole is the frame, and over the first hole is mounted a pinhole lens: a piece of aluminum with a small hole pricked in it with a pin. Well, technically this is a needlehole camera. You get the idea. Through the matchbox is threaded a rollof unexposed film. It’s the canister on the right in the picture. At the other end is an empty canister that will receive the exposed film and which I’ll hand it to be developed. All of this is held together with black duct tape, and all light leaks are sealed up securely. The shutter is a flap of duct tape.  That’s it!

I took about 8 exposures. I guess I could have taken more, but better to err on the safe side. This first “session” is just a test to see if the pinhole worked, if the camera is lightproof, and what the exposure time should be. I’m a little worried about the pinhole. I was suppose to sand it down to get rid of metal edges, but I don’t think it will be completely ruin the shots.

Altogether, the camera cost about R100, but the next versions will be cheaper: about R30.50. The bigger part of that price is the film; a box of matches costs 50c. I could probably buy in bulk, but I don’t intend to build too many more cameras, unless the results are phenomenal. Or if I do, I’ll aim for a little more sophistication. I’d love to try a bigger box version using photographic paper. Don’t know how much that will cost.

Today was blissfully workless. Instead I did some essential shopping. Very excited that I might try a photography experiment tomorrow. I would have done it all today, but I had to do some spray-painting and it took longer to dry than I anticipated. By the time it was ready, the sun was gone, and my experiment requires sunshine.

Instead, I played with scanning old negatives. I have tons, but it seems that the scanner I’m using is not up to the job. Strange, I though it was quite good. Oh well, it isn’t mine, and it isn’t intended for negatives, so that’s OK. It is a little frustrating not to see the beautiful colour images that I know are on the negatives, but my intention was to stick to black and white from the start, so that’s also OK. Here is a little sample:

It has almost exactly the primitive look that I am after, but I worry that with the low quality of the camera, my experimental images may come out much less clear. We’ll have to see, I suppose. The above picture was taken near the amphitheatre at Pompei in 1999.

If the camera I’m building is any good, I’ll look into developing the film at home. It is not difficult, but a little expensive since I’ll have to acquire all of the equipment (although I’m sure Alet will let my borrow hers), and the supplies (not sure how expensive they are…the interweb does not appear to know either). But for I’ll let a lab develop the film, so the results should be ready by next week!

So, I never got around to buying my little photo gadget. I spent 9:00 to 14:00 running errands (about 1.5 hours driving around, admittedly) and by that time I was too exhausted to go right to the city centre. I’ll explain what I’m looking for. I want to make a pinhole camera. I have the plans, and it should take about an hour or two. Just a couple of pieces of paper or cardboard, and some duct tape. (Or duck tape.) For reasons of insanity I want to make it as primitive as possible, but clear I do not want to produce my own film (yet). So the idea is to take a regular spool of store film, and unwind it in the camera exposing frames as you go along. Unfortunately, my plans say that I should rig this up using another, empty spool. But I discovered that empty spools can’t be opened unless you also plan to destroy them. So I need some gadget that I can roll the exposed part of the film onto. I was hoping that a particular camera store in the centre of Cape Town may have what I need, but at least it is not clear from the website that they do. So I’ll have to make another plan.

Part of the reason I was too tired to tackle the city centre was that I took my Canon compact to the repairshop in Montague Gardens. Despite the name, this is a semi-industrial area where half the drivers are maniacs who go at twice the speed limit (they problably drive the same route every single day in vehicles they don’t own or care for) and the other half are “newbies” who never visit the area and drive at half the speed limit. I tried to stay on target, but I was probably driving like a newbie, some of the time. The new transport system that the city is building will probably not change this particular traffic situation much. Alas. Anyways, after my trip to Canon, all I wanted to do was head home.

At least they were very accommodating. I had much less luck with the municipality. I’ve been using an “illegal” refuse bin that my cousin acquired while she was staying here. (I was in Finland.) For the last couple of years this has worked fine, but now the refuse collection department has stopped emptying my bin and I need to get an “official” bin. (They are identical by the way, except for the logo on the front.) You’d think that this is as easy as going along, proving that I live where I live, and paying a small fee. Oh no! The owner of the property (or his or her legal representative) must fill out the form and sign it. And it includes details such as ID number (henkilötunnus), date of birth, nationality, gender!, and details of your marital status. I never realized that refuse bin fraud had reached such a drastic level. Sigh. Oh, and there is a two-week backlog because of the great demand for refuse bins.

All this explains why today features yet another archive photo.

My German class in 1989. The dork is second from the left. The other guy is Berdo. I remember the girls, but not all their names. Mrs. Metzkes is second from the right. Wonder where she is now? Would have liked to chat to her again.

Is “metrosexual” just another term for “fop” and “dandy”, or are they allowed, as I believe, to be more emotional? I’m disqualified because I don’t care much about clothes. Half my t-shirts have mysterious little holes and, I’m ashamed to admit it, so do most of my boxer shorts. But I stand by the metrosexuals when it comes to crying and admitting that I cry. I find it very therapeutic, unless of course accompanied by an enormous stake sticking out the side of your stomach.

A circuitous way of getting to my real though-for-the-day: it has been a long time since I saw a movie that really moved me, even close to tears. Or any emotion. I don’t really go to watch movies much (bowling alone — just google it!) but the ones I hear about and watch are not doing it for me. It seems that there is a great sausage machine that just turns them out, one by one. Or thousands by thousands. Perhaps I’m just not on the right mailing lists. I’m not looking for a deep and pretentious avant-garde cinematic philosophy which I won’t understand in any case, but a little “message” won’t be a bad thing, will it? I watched “Så som i himmelen”, but I couldn’t really see the point. The last movie that I can recall that moved me (a lot) was “Goodbye Lenin”. It said something, not too profound, but original and not trivial either. I cried.

One last thing that is bothering me, speaking as we are of pop culture: why is it “Mr. Spock” and not “Dr. Spock”?

My perceptions of tolerance/intolerance in South Africa is, I think, based on an extrapolation of the subcultures I’m familiar with.  In other words, some of my perceptions are based on assumptions and generalizations.  Is this valid?  Probably.  If I discovered that my extrapolations do not hold, I would alter this approach and so far I have not done this.

It seems to me that we can make statements about either groups and individuals. People handle these two case very differently.  When talking or thinking about unseen individuals (e.g., “that guy in the news”), people are really talking about their stereotypes (i.e., generalizations) about groups.  There is really only two options:  make no statement, or make a statement based on your generalized experience of individuals from the group.

The dangers are that (1) we may make the wrong generalization, weighing our experience inaccurately, (2) make “phantom” generalization that are not based on experience at all but on information from secondary sources, (3) true prejudice by not recognizing that individuals are different from groups.  When we meet an individual it is important to weight our group generalizations much more lightly:  individuals are what they are exactly because they deviate from the group stereotype.  The danger of (2) is intolerance indoctrination: a systematic attempt to influence the generalizations people make.

Another aspect of the  lecture I found interesting:  it made me curious about anthropology and its research methods.  I’ll have to see what my future holds for next year, but I might attend some anthropology classes in Stellenbosch.

Also, the lecturer used photos, beautiful portraits of real people taken by Finnish anthropologists in the late 19th and early 20th century.  These impressed me greatly.  Sinisalo himself seemed to be involved in photography.  We chatted after the lecture and he mentioned that he is involved in teaching photography.  If I come back to Finland, I might explore this.  Maria also gave me pamphlet of PIRAMK (Pirkanmaa Ammattikorkeakoulu) that mentions that they present all their courses in English!  One more item:  Sinisalo’s photography students are publishing a book soon.  I saw some of it before the lecture and I’ll definitely try to get a copy before I leave. 

Another highlight, the result of Antero’s experience and foresight, was our stop at a grillausalue — a BBQ spot where we grilled some sausages and had coffee and sandwiches. It was rainy lightly and quite cold (certainly less than 5 degrees), so the food was extra-delicious. Because of the rain my camera got quite wet and I tried to keep it dry as best I could. That is not an excuse, but m photo’s are not exactly prize-winning although a couple were quite acceptable.

My camera also took a beating (or a wetting) on Sunday when I visited Henri and Jenni (and Justus and Kaius) to take some photo’s of the Myllynpuro (millstream) that runs close to their house. Now that the snow is melting it was running strong, and there are a couple of impressive waterfalls. The quite large area is now protected but it was not so when Henri was young. His stories about playing around in the woods around the stream were charming and like reminiscing even a little sad. Our happy childhood memories are perhaps undervalued and, happy or sad, they are also unique to us and make us what we are, in part. As Henri was talking I tried to detect how his experiences has taken him along his current path. Of course it is not the only factor in a person’s life, but it is tempting to think that some crucial aspects of our early years form our character and determine our future focus. I have always had this sense about many of my Finnish friends, perhaps we Finns live so much closer — allegedly to nature.

I took another set of prize-losing photo’s on Sunday, but just as with the trip to the zoo I am satisfied if I get away with one or two photo’s that are worth keeping. I think I lucked out both times.

I am now reading Robert Adams’s “Why People Photograph”. The book is written by an older, experienced professional photographer and although it is fascinating, it doesn’t exactly answers the questions that I am wrestling with. What makes photography art? Perhaps I should ask: “What makes anything art?” but for the moment my medium is the photograph. More importantly, what is the message I want to communicate to the viewer? What do I want to say? How does the artist choose his mission? Henri made a good point: photography is in some sense the opposite of painting. The painter has to consciously choose which elements to put in his picture to form his message. The photographer has to consciously choose which elements not to put in his picture. Painting is art by inclusion, but photography is mainly art by exclusion, since the photographer cannot manipulate his subject like the painter can. The former must decide what to put on the canvas, the latter must decide what not to photograph.

It could be that art cannot be defined in the way I wish, that the analytical method does not work, that it must arise spontaneously over the course of a life, and that it is in vain because it will not ultimately make a difference to what remains on my film (or web gallery or what have you). But I am indoctrinated by the scientific method and the analytical approach, and I’ll try this until it fails. Or perhaps that failure will be my art.