Summing Up What Sort of Photography I Do!

 Folks may have noticed that very little of my photography these days is "normal".  I do still take conventional photos with a fairly ordinary digital camera, but that is mostly my nature photography, and I do not often talk about that. 

Great Egret - Herdsman Lake, June 2023. Nikon P900

I also do some astrophotography, up until recently using my mobile phone, 

Milky Way, Pixel 6a, Guilderton, June 2022.

but more recently with a Dwarf II 'smart telescope'. 

Cat's Paw Nebula, Doubleview, June 2023, 98 x 15s frames, stacked in camera.

These are not so much telescopes as dedicated astrophotography rigs controlled via a mobile app, and the results speak for themselves. They can align and stack multiple frames all by themselves, and compensate for significant levels of light pollution. 

At the other extreme, I also experiment with in-camera cyanotype photography, using an 1830s era chemistry that is best known for making blueprints! 

Mandurah Canal House, December 2020, Homebuilt Camera, 60 minute exposure.

A lot of these I build my own cameras for, as the chemistry is so insensitive to light that I need special lenses to make it work, and even then the exposure times can run into the hours. The results can look quite mystical, though.

Slightly less weird is my pinhole photography. In particular my wonderful little Pinsta camera, which combines camera and darkroom into the one unit, shooting directly onto photographic paper. 

Murray River Houseboat Mooring, Dec 2022, 15s.

These still require longer to expose than an ordinary camera, but once exposed, I can have a print ready to show in less than five minutes! 

My most extreme photography, though, is my solargraphy. This is a very extreme form of pinhole photography, where the star of the show (ahem) is the sun itself. Exposure times are measured in days, weeks, months, or even years. This results in a latent image that is so strong it can be scanned without developing. In fact if you were to develop it, you would get a black sheet!

Gravity Discovery Centre Leaning Tower, 6 months Dec 2022-June 2023. 

And that is a wrap. There are probably things I do that I have not mentioned here, but these are the main ones, and the most interesting.