Photos From Majorica-Inspiration in your own back yard

A view of the neighbors house from our backyard.

This summer my family and I headed back to Majorca, Spain. My wife's family have been vacationing there off and on for a number of years. This time I brought along my Holga wide angle pinhole camera, a Holga 120N, and the little DYI 35mm camera. I shot Fuji Acros 100 and Fuji color PRO400H . I also shot some expired Kodak 125 B&W 35mm. The color I had processed here in the states and I developed the B&W myself. I had wanted to process the film in Spain, however no one does that anymore. It would have to be send out and maybe it would be back in time before I had to return home. I was also worried about having my film x-ray ed as I went through the airports, but I don't think it affected the film to badly.
All the photos in this post are from in front of the house we rented. I was reminded of the old adage "The best place to look for inspiration is your own yard." With the photos below you can see I had a wonderful front yard with plenty of subject matter.

The first group of images below are the rocks in front of our vacation house. Taken with the 35mm DYI camera. The lens was screwed all the way out so that it creates a cool vignette around the image. These shots of the rocks and waves remind me of old silent movie technique's.

Wide angle pin hole

Wide angle pin hole

One afternoon a small boat caught fire outside of the port. No one was hurt, but it provided a spectacular photo opportunity. The image was taken with the Holga Wide angle pinhole.

A Holga 120N shot. It is way over exposed because the bulb switch was on. I was only able to salvage two shots from this roll.

The image was taken with the Holga 120N on bulb setting.

Go Brooklyn Open Studio event

Last weekend (September 8/9) I participated in Go Brooklyn. The event was sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The concept was to have the artists of Brooklyn open there studios to the public for one weekend. The public was then encouraged to vote for an artist that they saw and liked. The votes would be tallied and 10 artists would be included in a group show at the Brooklyn Museum.
The GO project was very well run and publicized. In all I had about 50 visitors over the two days. The weather being much better on Sunday than Saturday effected the turn out.Overall  I got a pretty positive response from most people.Interestingly enough, a number of the visitors were other artists that were not participating in GO. Each one was horrified when I revealed that the paper I work on is from paper shopping bags. “But it’s not archival” they all said. I also got the comment "I wish my husband was here, he would enjoy this”.
Below are some random shots of my studio set up. I decided to present mostly "Battle of Brooklyn" themed work. After all, the 136 anniversary of the battle was just two weeks prior. For the studio, I took over our front room and hung work up and set out paint supplies on tables. Most of the time, I work in another room in our loft. But for this I didn't want people going through our living area.I could also hang everything together for a gallery like feel.

Here is my portable work table/ easel/ old door. Most work starts out here, flat on this table an then moved to the wall for finishing.

Two paintings from the Exodus from Brooklyn.

The two panorma paintings of Brooklyn in 1776. On the floor is a red milk create (center), it contains my soil collection that I use for creating paint.

In the bottom right corner you can see "the stack of generals". I have 20 paintings of Union Generals that were at Gettysburg. Some day I will create a blog post about them.

I showed a new work that I am working on about the Maryland regiment that fought at the Old Stone House. I use images of willow leaves that I write out the names of the soldiers on. The leaves are formed into willow bows, that in turn mark out the different companies that the soldiers fought with. The background is an enlarged pinhole image I took of the Brooklyn skyline facing the area of the battlefield.