I spotted Extreme Ironing on Memepool. Anyone got a picture of themself using their LF camera in an extreme place? This ironing shot from Chamonix will take some beating though...

-- Gavin Walker (gavin.walker@japan.bnpparibas.com), February 12, 2002

Answers

This is really stupid!

-- (wmitch3400@aol.com), February 12, 2002.

HA!!!! that's awesome. just when you thought all possible sports have been invented...

well in the vein of extreme large format, i've always had an idea of the largest-possible-format camera: an 8x10 FOOT camera. the box would be the trailer of a semi, with a tennis-ball-sized pinhole on the back door. the film would be mounted on the trailer's front wall. so you'd back that sucker up to the edge of the grand canyon, turn off the engine, open the "aperture" and wait an hour or so, then go tank the neg in a couple of kiddie swimming pools full of developing chemicals at night in a warehouse, hang it on a clothesline to dry, and viola, the biggest negative ever made. then you could flatbed scan it in sections and digitally lace them all together, and res the image down to a 160 x 120 pixel JPEG for the web...

~cj

-- chris jordan (cjordan@yarmuth.com), February 12, 2002.

Chris;

You have no idea what you have unleashed.

A year from now there will be threads about Bokeh from tennis-ball size apertures and trailer-back negs and what developer is used, not to mention X File episodes about srange sightings in warehouses by projected light.

Thankks!!!

-- RICHARD ILOMAKI (richardjx@hotmail.com), February 13, 2002.

I'm fairly sure I've seen an article in an old edition of View Camera about some guy who turns hotel rooms into pinhole cameras (close and lightproof the curtains, ditto doors, make small hole in lightproofing). Now the resulting image is very dimly displayed all over the walls and furniture of the room. He'd like a wider audience so he takes long exposure shots of the room from somewhere near the pinhole. Its a neat effect.

Can anyone confirm that I didn't imagine this?

c

-- Colin Benson (cdabenson@hotmail.com), February 13, 2002.

AHHHHH, the wonders of photoshop...

-- Larry Sandt (lsandt@pharmacia.com), February 13, 2002.

You didn't imagine it. I don't think he uses Photoshop, he was doing this long before Photoshop was created. He's well known in fine art circles and teaches at a college in Boston. Of course as soon as you asked I immediately drew a blank on hisI name. Abelardo Somebody.

-- Brian Ellis (bellis60@earthlink.net), February 13, 2002.

The person you are thinking of is Abe Morrell ( forgive me if I have misspelled his name). He is a Boston based artist who is well known for turning rooms into camera obscuras and making a lens photo of the projected image. Regarding the extreme camera: My partners and I have a 8x8x8 foot portable camera obscura that we set up at festivals and schools. we don't take pictures with it (we haven't yet anyway) but we do take lens photographs of the projected images. Its a blast.

-- Erik Gould (egould@risd.edu), February 13, 2002.

Along these lines, Ron Wisner has some very nice shots taken with his 8X10 from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge in SF:

http://wisner.com/golden.htm

Somehow, though, they lack the panache of the Chamonix ironing shot. Nathan

-- Nathan Congdon (ncongdon@jhmi.edu), February 13, 2002.

Chris:

Why monkey around with kiddie pools when you could use a cement truck as a kind of Jobo unit?

-- ernie gec (erniegec@stn.net), February 13, 2002.

Ernie,

That's a good one. Let's see 68* for 7 minutes, the dump and re-fill. F A S T !!

Chris,

This is reported as true. Or not. Kodak had a display at Grand Central Station, years ago, a B & W mural size print 10' x 80' + -. Reportedly developed in a swimming pool on a moonless night. Anyone know for sure?

-- Steve Feldman (steve@toprinting.com), February 13, 2002.

great one, ernie! okay, so what about an enlarger to make 40x50 foot prints? i'm thinkin along the lines of modifying one of those hyatt regency hotels-- put the paper on the ground floor with a huge negative carrier attached to the elevators so you could focus by going from floor to floor...

-- chris jordan (cjordan@yarmuth.com), February 13, 2002.

Chris:

Could do,could do, but I suspect these Kenworth purists would pop an airbrake at the idea of enlarged images. "No," they'd likely sniff, "I prefer Azo & contact prints."

-- ernie gec (erniegec@stn.net), February 13, 2002.