The Camera DeMentia

Mansfield Reformatory

2008-04-20T22:49:00.003-05:00

So last weekend (April 12-13) my girlfriend and I went on an all-night ghost hunt at the Mansfield Reformatory (aka Ohio State Reformatory) in Mansfield, Ohio. This is a wonderful castle-like old prison that was built in the 1880's through 1910's and was an active prison up until 1990. It's famous as the prison where they filmed the Shawshank Redemption, and it's an absolutely amazing structure. It contains the largest free-standing cell block in the world at six tiers tall, and it is one of the most mesmerizing ruins that I've ever explored.

The ghost hunts are especially wonderful because they allow you to wander through almost the entire structure (probably 95% was open) all night long. Abby and I explored the building with a woman named Jackie. Although we didn't see any ghosts (not that I expected to), we did have some strange experiences. At one point, Abby thought she saw a shadow figure walk past her, and we all heard an unexplained female voice in the solitary confinement section of the prison.

But it's okay that we didn't see a ghost because the *real* reason that I was there was to take some creepy shots with my Holga! I attached a flash to the hotshoe and loaded up on Fuji Neopan 400 black and white film. Everyone else at the ghost hunt carried digital cameras and I admit that I had my Canon Rebel XT with me as well. However, in the end the digital camera was a pain in the butt to try to focus in the dark, so I abandoned it for the guess-focusing Holga. I also removed the mask from the Holga to increase the vignetting, which I thought might make the shots even creepier, and I was right. They were delightfully creepy!! "Blair Witch-esque" as some people have remarked.

Here are some of the best shots:

See all the photos along with descriptions and additional information at the Mansfield Reformatory Flickr Set.

Brownie Hawkeye Flash Challenge

2008-04-09T07:07:00.006-05:00

One of my favorite groups on Flickr is the Brownie Hawkeye Flash group. The Brownie Hawkeye Flash was one of the most popular cameras that Kodak produced. These art deco little bakelite beauties are still so common that you can pick them up for a song on Ebay. My BHF was manufactured in 1954 and cost me all of $5.00. And it still takes beautiful pictures too!

Every couple of months the Brownie Hawkeye Flash Flickr group has a challenge where you are given a theme and you are supposed to shoot an entire roll of film on the subject, then post your results to the group. Then everyone votes on their favorite entries and awards are handed out. In January, the theme was "Night Photography" so I taped the BHF to a tripod and went out on a snowy night to capture some wonderful images. I ended up winning the "best overall photo" category for this one:

The Weeping Bench At Night

Arista.Edu Ultra 100 developed in Diafine

For that beauty, I won a roll of film and a "Flickr Whore" button. (The rest of the shots for that challenge can be viewed here.)

For March, there were four themes, of which we were to shoot three images. The themes were 1) Food and Drink; 2) Double Exposures; 3) Lighting; and 4) "Trouble". For some reason, I was stuck on many of the themes and finally got all the pictures taken at the last possible second. Most of them turned out pretty boring (as you might expect from having to rush the shots), and a couple didn't turn out at all (light experiments that were underexposed), but a few turned out very nice indeed:

Ghost Dog

Montrose Dog Beach, Double Exposure Theme

Stormy

Montrose Dog Beach, Double Exposure Theme

Angry!

"Trouble" Theme

Rats!

"Trouble" Theme

All March shots: Fuji Neopan 100 developed with Diafine

Catatonia By Holga, Part Three

2008-03-24T12:02:00.003-05:00

I developed the last roll from my trip to Catatonia a couple of days ago. These are from a drive I took to Table Mountain and Cherokee. Here are the better shots - as always, click on the images for more information.

The Assayer's Office

The Safe

Train

Old Town Well

Cattle Death March

Old Schoolhouse

Kodak T-Max 400 120 format film, Holga 120N, Diafine developer

Catatonia By Holga, Part Two

2008-03-21T09:57:00.005-05:00

Here are a few shots from the latest roll of film I developed from my travels in my ancestral homeland. (Click on the images to go to the Flickr page where larger versions of the images along with additional commentary/info is provided.)

Twisted & Dead

Bridges Over Feather River

Extreme Water Dangers

Fuck

I.C.P.

Graffiti King

14

Iron In Stone

Canyon Country

Holga 120N, Kodak Tri-X 120 developed in Diafine

Catatonia By Holga, Part One

2008-03-18T16:02:00.012-05:00

So last month I visited my ancestral homeland of Northern Catatonia to housesit for my sister. While there, I decided to spend some time photographing my old stomping grounds with my beloved Holga. I've slowly been developing the film over time and I'll try to catch you up to date eventually, but here are a few shots from the roll I developed last night. This was the first roll I shot, as it started out still in Chicago.

Click on the thumbnails to access the full Flickr page, with additional information including - isn't this cool? - geotags! So, you can stalk me... several days or weeks after the fact! (Oooh, I've always wanted a stalker of my own...)

Winter's Grip

Huddling For Warmth

"Every One Welcome"
(Don't you dig those foreboding shadows? I wish it said "Every Body Welcome" - it would be much more fitting!)

Then I moved on to rainy northern Catatonia. Here are a couple shots from Upper Bidwell Park near Chico, CA. I dig the dark vibe of this rainy day. I kept expecting the Blair (er, Bidwell) Witch to show up.

Big Chico Creek

Naked

Tri-X 120 developed in Diafine

Ferrania Rondine

2008-03-17T10:10:00.009-05:00

While I was in Catatonia last month housesitting for my sister, she gave me a tiny box camera that had been given to her by our father. I remembered it from my childhood. It's called the Ferrania Rondine and takes 127 film (a nearly obsolete format). There doesn't seem to be a lot of information available on this little burgundy cutie, but Camerapedia informed me that it's an Italian camera that was produced in 1948. It has a fixed 7,5 cm/8.8 aperture lens, and a shutter speed of 1/75 sec.

When I got home, I ordered some 127 film from Freestyle Photographic Supplies (thank goodness, the Croatian company Fotokemika makes it under the Efke brand), and set out to take a test roll. I neglected to noticed that Camerapedia said that it takes 4×6.5 cm images, so I was a bit surprised when I realized that a roll of 127 film only gave me 8 images. I didn't quite get the focus right on some of the shots, but I was impressed with the results, all things considered. Here are a few shots.

Summerdale Congregational Church, Chicago

Built the same year that H.H. Holmes was slaughtering people in his murder castle, incidentally. And if you haven't read The Devil In The White City yet, well, what on earth is your excuse?

Summerdale Congretational Church

Summerdale Congregational Church

The Old Map Factory Building, Chicago

Crone

Efke R100 127 Film, Diafine developer

Well, It's About Time...

2008-03-16T12:37:00.006-05:00

Since about the early 1870's I've had a placemarker on The Asylum Eclectica for a mysterious feature called "The Camera DeMentia" (a name which is inspired by the Camera Obscura - the device, not the band although they are fine in a low-key sub-Belle & Sebastian kind of way). My original intent was to put up a simple gallery of some of my better photographs, similar to what I originally did back in the rather embarrassing Typhoid Mary's Asylum days under the title Shades Of Grey. (Thank you Wayback Machine for reminding me how poor my web design skills were back then!)

Anyway, as you know, time marches on, life distracts us from our hobbies, and now it's many years later and I've finally found myself embracing the world of the photographic image again. Since early December, I've been fully obsessed with photography, in that all-encompassing, manic manner of mine that frightens my friends and dismays my girlfriend. So, I thought that instead of continuing to torment them with my images, I'd move my obsession to this blog - and reformulate the Camera DeMentia to meet this pressing need.

So stay tuned and I'll be featuring some of the images I've taken both in the last few months and in the Wilderness Years in the future, as well as my current trivial photographic endeavors with vintage cameras I've been acquiring here and there. Hopefully, you'll find it somewhat interesting... or the joke is on me!