Moving on

I've moved my blog to the tumblr platform, please check it out at:

brucepeterson.tumblr.com/

Toothpaste

I'm interested in the industrial design that goes into packaging, and I liked this little piece of sculpture that happened when I opened a tube of toothpaste. 

I wanted to keep the top as I found it for photography and took me awhile to get the time, so didn't recap the toothpaste...

April 15th...

I try to avoid getting these.

Lights, camera, action...

Anyone who has been to my studio knows that I've got a decent collection of old cameras. At one time I had hundreds, it was a bit of an obsession for awhile, picked most of them up at flea markets before ebay killed the flea markets - so that dates it a bit. When I moved in 2007, I had to downsize what I could keep. I held onto the kitchy consumer grade variety from the 50s and 60s, some European Bakelite beauties, and a few others. I've never shot any film with them, I just liked them as objects. 

Occasionally I photograph a few of them. I'm mainly interested in their "skin", the flat on view of the front, as you would see them if you were being photographed. Besides the industrial design and typography, I'm attracted to all the scratches and imperfections in them. When I processed this last batch I started messing around in Photoshop and came upon this negative effect - it's not a straight inversion of values, there's a bit more to it than that; but I liked the negative image, similar to what would have come out of these in their day.

Easter Candy

Tools of the trade

I've worked with one model maker on projects that require that skill over the course of my career. I love having a reason to go to his shop, he's got just about everything you need to construct something, and he doesn't throw anything away - the place is a wonderful organized mess. We recently worked together on a project where we needed to precisely bend and join small pieces of laser cut plastic. He showed up at my studio with this device - which I thought thought was an amusing custom tool. 

Back in Black

I've been shooting a few pictures on black, some are still top secret - so I can't share. The wraps are off Titleist's new ProV1 as of February, shot these and more right before the holidays.

Thank you. No, thank you.

I'm always impressed with how much you can stuff into these plastic bags without them breaking. 

Say hello to my little friend!

Pictured above is my new Sinar P3 that accepts my 39MP Hasselblad multi-shot back. It's not an inspired image, just to say I've got a view camera again. I had a Sinar P2 view camera forever, shot film with it and then converted it to accept 3 different digital backs. It worked great but it was designed to shoot film and was big, clunky and cumbersome by today's standards. I sold it a few years ago when I got my new Hasselblad. I soon discovered a problem with using a Hasselblad, and that is you're pinned to the focus ranges of their lenses. If you want to shoot with anything other than a 120mm lens and be closer than a couple feet, and get it in focus, you need a view camera. 

Most people don't know what a view camera is, a quick explanation: remember the big cameras with the cloth you put over your head - that's a view camera. They used to accept big sheets of film, this one is specific to a CCD sensor. Besides unlimited focus ranges, you can change perspective and adjust your plane of focus via the Scheimpflug principle. (I love knowing what that means, as well as "bellows extension factor".) Also have other adjustments with these beautiful pieces of Swiss made precision that you can't get with anything else. Very psyched to have a view camera again, especially a "small" one just for digital backs!