clickykbd's picks - issue 24

As promised... a long awaited best of the photo pool selection! There has been a ton of activity since I last did a picks selection, so don't be offended if your's didn't make this small sampling. Included are many great examples, but also many wonderful first efforts... Enjoy!

Photo Selections








Photo Credits:

All photos taken by users of the Camera Toss community. Hover to see author attribution, click to follow to the image's original location on flickr. Apologies for not giving attribution by name here, my bookmarklet broke since having migrated to del.icio.us.

After a long hiatus...

It is about time I devote some more attention to this blog... although really really inactive of late... that hasn't stopped all the camera tossing from proceeding at a steady clip.

The reason for the inactivity is I've been distracted by work, life, and traditional photography for a while. Been shooting alot of b&w film myself and got my own daily photo-blog up and running for sharing some of it. I'm even on the verge of purchasing a darkroom setup I found on craigslist last week. But don't fear... I haven't forsaken the art of throwing my cheaper cameras... and have reason to do so again. It has been many months for me personally but you should see some new ones soon.

I have a few announcements i'll be posting to this blog soon, and I should have some new photo pool pics up by the end of the day. Thank you everyone who has commented inquiring as to the inactivity... I'm still here... and Camera Toss, as a concept, is alive and well!

But as with any post... here's an image from the photo pool to wet your appetite. A little bit of theory too... as we've been discussing the effect of focal plane shutter distortion as exhibited by CCD and CMOS cameras that operate without a physical shutter. Perhaps a new term is called for? I suggest "Focal Plane Sensor Distortion", because if you pay attention it is not quite as simple as the slit-scan shutter induced phenomenon. Each pixel is recorded individually in time, not a slit or row at a time. We've constantly seen examples of the effect due to the extreme motion involved in a thrown camera. I've since become fascinated with it and am planning my own explorations of it. Food for thought, and experimentation!



DSC00564
Originally uploaded by tossthecam.

Math is Beautiful

20061229 066
Originally uploaded by dennyt.

Over the year of photos being contributed by the public to the Camer Toss Photo Pool there have been many that speak to the underlying mathematics (or physics more specifically) of the technique.

A few photographers, such as dennyt, in performing digital manipulations, such as color inversion, have hit upon a wonderful combination of effects that, in my opinion, really speaks to the math of camera tossing.

The image posted here reminds me of graph paper, or blue-line reproductions of scientific drawings... only with a twist. Folded onto itself... graph paper as imagined in four dimensions perhaps. And in essence, this is partially true.... for time is an important dimension of any camera toss photograph... any long exposure photograph for that matter.

Time is not a new subject to photography, and the earliest photographs were always long exposure due to the limitations of the medium, but photography has always found a way to look at time in new ways. A camera tossed photograph usually captures a very short interval of time, but just because something is small and seemingly ordinary, does not exclude it from being incredibly complex... and... well... simply beautiful.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Installment 1


Originally uploaded by nicolai_g

I've been thinking of starting a recurring blog/thread topic on the evolution of camera tossing... ongoing of course. Camera Toss as we know it is over a year old now and it actually has had some noticable evolutions. We've seen lots of things turn up that register as "new" yet still within the theme of this group over the last year.

So for our first installment, here's one that showed up in the pool. Nicolai's and one other are the first examples I encountered of folks trying Pin-hole camera tossing. Pinholes tend to be long exposure by default... but capturing something during a thrown pinhole can be quite tricky.

In the case of the photo above... the SUN was the only light source bright enough to register during a "multiple toss multiple catch" experiment. Besides a pinhole (flickr group), it also happened to be cross-processed (flickr group) on expired (flickr group) 120 medium format (flickr group) film (a flickr group). (Yes, there is a flickr-group for nearly everything if you couldn't tell).

And an earlier example... a match box pin-hole camera, tossed on Worldwide Pinhole Day by alspix a while back...


Originally uploaded by alspix

Perhaps not spectacular to examine (depending on what you enjoy) but definitely noteworthy camera tossing experiments when you know the story. And we certainly love experiments around here.

Come to think of it, while i've got you all thinking about pinhole photography. Be sure to check out this amazing pinhole project, also relating to the sun's movement:

Solargraphy Project by Tarja Trygg
at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki.

...

If you've tried something you feel is very "different" and is still a camera toss by definition... or all this camera tossing simply provided some element of inspiration... feel free to let me know via flickr-mail or email and share it. Perhaps I'll make it the subject of the next installment.

clickykbd's picks - issue 23

The Camera Toss Community on flickr and this blog are over a year old now, but that hasn't slowed down the enthusiasm and continued experimentation by new members and old alike.

Here's the 23rd installment of the photo-pool highlights, a big selection, many first-time camera tosses included, as well as photographs from those more experienced by now. If you are visiting from Kodak's 1000 Words Blog, welcome! We hope you enjoy the unique style of photography incubated here.









Photo Credits (left to right, top to bottom):
raysto, Gipsy Boy, marce_garal, brucemiller, Katie face,
jon62690, :matey:, bubestube, Reflexe, Whales tails,
lazy mookie, See_What_Dave_Sees, thunderstride1, frank drewett, dondal,
Lemon Frosted, dondal, Diluted, metró, Is_this_Graham?,
Marc Crow, Kingcow, El Ray, gvda,
completelyknown, El Ray, Is_this_Graham?, davespilbrow, QuakkauQ,
andy206uk, this_is_not_a_name,

Camera Tossing = Love!

Happy Day
Originally uploaded by eastofnorth.

The Camera Toss Blog would like to extend it's warmest congratulations to _nod and eastofnorth for their recent marriage! I came to know both of them because they were early adopters in the camera toss community on flickr. In fact, that is exactly how they met!

Who says throwing you camera can't possible accomplish anything worthwhile. Not to sound all cliche, but throwing cameras helped to make the best thing of all things in the world...

Love.

And a camera toss selection to suit the theme...



And an interesting asside, both eastofnorth and _nod have created camera-tossed heart shapes, found via a tag search on flickr. Coincidence? I think perhaps not...



And finally... being single myself. Watching all your friends up and get married can be a tad depressing... someone pass me the booze. ;-)



Photo credits (left to right, top to bottom)...

Eastofnorth's wedding guest Rainer,
...
Valentinian, marce_garal, El Ray, mappamundi,
...
the bride, the groom,
...
davespilbrow

What The Duck...

©2006 Aaron Johnson. Included with Permission.

The author/artist of the photography-centric web comic What The Duck sent me a note via this blog a couple days ago to share this relevant comic. I'm not sure how many of the camera tossing enthusiasts out there have had to visit the repair counter yet, but I am sure this was the experience they had if they did so. Fans of web comics and photography should definitely check out his strip. I read the archive and enjoyed it. Aaron has at least one new fan.

Apologies for the lack of postings lately... have a few things to share and will get around to that shortly, also the photo pool is long overdue for a highlights posting...

For now, here's some photo-pool spotlights:


Originally uploaded by yeadon_eric.


Originally uploaded by davespilbrow.


Originally uploaded by El Ray.