Chris Eaves

Back when I was running the internal communications. team at Tyson Foods, we upgraded our digital signage network (DSN) with all the bells and whistles. We then leveraged a peer network of “field communications champions” to deploy local content, and we mined that content for corporate-wide channels.

Since leaving the in-house side of corporate communications, I’ve missed having digital signage in my workspace. Well, no more. I’ve created a DSN nook in my home office.

Hardware

For the curious, here are the system details:

• Omni HD gaming monitor
• Rock 4 SE single board computer running Ubuntu
• 32Gb eMMC 5.1 module (i.e., the SDD)
• KKSB aluminum case

Software and player settings

I’m using the “Foyer” plugin for WordPress (free, but with limited scheduling options) as the DNS platform. On the Rock, I’ve made a few customizations for Ubuntu: (1) using “Unclutter” to hide the mouse when inactive; (2) disabling “screen blanking” (i.e., screen does not time out); and (3) autolaunching Chromium on startup at full screen and in Incognito mode (to avoid image caching between sessions).

Content

For weather channels, I’m using openweathermap.com for API calls (1,000 free per day) with site pages set to a custom (i.e., empty) layout template. Each “slide” is a jpg image with overlays created in Affinity Photo.

Channels

For my home office, I’m using a custom channel that includes local weather (forecast, radar, current conditions), forecasts for select cities, and images/videos. Publicly, I’ve made a few channels available for non-commercial use.

Back in 2006 I visited Toronto while I considered a Ph.D. program in Marketing. While there, I saw this new housing development and couldn’t resist taking a photo of the low winter sun illuminating the townhomes.

The weather played tricks all day, with fits of snow blowing through in waves. In between, it was quite nice, albeit cold. Still, I had a chance to snap a few pics on my Fuji X-T3.

This post may seem like it’s nothing more than an insanely long tangent,  and I understand the confusion. Truth is, what follows is core to the question of why I capture photons onto a sensor and create art. 

For twenty-some years, I’ve been a corporate communicator. As an executive speechwriter and ghostwriter, I’ve  allowed someone else’s thought structures and ways of speaking take up extended residence in my mind. I could pull out their persona and put it into a memo, embed it on a slide or translate it into a script. And as an editor, I’ve shaped my writing and that of my staff to conform to a ubiquitous corporate voice and style. I’ve sat side by side with leaders and subject matter experts to find the optimal way to communicate their message and then articulate it to perfection, or at least as close as we could get. Simply put, it is a career of writing for others.

In contrast, photography provides three releases from these constraints. (See? Even now, in a freeform post, I’m operating within a learned framework.) 

(1) No words! … unless I include them in the shot’s composition. I find satisfaction in telling a story, evoking an emotion, etc., without fretting over the proper application of AP style or sentence structure. I can poetically find my own voice without using it.

(2) My vision. For me, photography is seldom about documenting what I see and simply sharing it. Rather, I seek a scene and impose my perspective of it by painting with and manipulating light. Hand three photographers (but not “influencers,” mind you) the same camera and the same scene, and you’ll receive three different visions. I love this freedom of discovery provided by art.

(3) Releasing the agenda. A long time ago I gave up trying to defend every last word I wrote, and I think of my photography in the same way. Each image is the best I could achieve in that moment and within the constraints of the development cycle. I am constantly amazed by how people react to art, and I never know what will resonate or flop. When I share an image, I release my agenda and open my perspective to interpretation. That’s when the real conversation starts, and when an image goes from photograph to art. 

For the last few months, I’ve been shooting with a large format film camera, and I’ll review the mediums I’ve been using during this time. First up is Rollei RPX 25 in 4×5 sheet film. And let’s be frank, I hate it.

This film is thin. Like, 1-ply toilet-paper thin. It’s also flimsy. On location, I literally had this film fall out of the cartridge because it popped out of the groove. On the flip side, I’ve also had it get completely stuck in the cartridge because it’s so thin it slid into a small gap in the plastic. I’m loading it in a dark bag, and I can say with certainty that this film is so finicky to load that my hands get sweaty. I don’t have the same issue with Ilford’s film. When it comes time to load it into the development reel, I have the same issues. The film is quick to buckle and pop out of the grooves, making a three-minute task take 5 times as long. The emulsion layer, therefore, is very easy to damage or leave fingerprints on. I now use gloves when loading this film, something I don’t have to do with other film stocks. I have had some minor damage on this layer from bungled attempts at loading it.

I’ve shot it with both a homemade pinhole camera and at normal speeds. The reciprocity failure rate can be quite high, causing pinhole shots to take even longer. Normal exposures at normal apertures have good contrast and minimal grain. Photos you see here are “scanned” with my Canon 6D with a 40mm pancake semi-macro 1:2 ratio. At 10x magnification in live-view mode, I cannot see the grain to set the manual focus, it’s that tight. When shooting this last batch of photos, I used a handheld light meter and my times were long on the first couple of exposures. I pulled the processing by 2 stops, and it still looks good (image links to the full version): 

There’s snow texture even in some of the blown-out areas, although it doesn’t show up on this quick conversion. I’ve pulled the contrast a bit on the JPG.

The low 25 ISO rating of this film; no one is shooting to freeze-the-action at f22 on large format film. I like the developed negatives. The emulsion layer doesn’t look lifeless or thin, like some of the cheaper stocks out there. Nor does it have the quality feeling of Ilford or Kodak. It’s somewhere in between. 

Here’s another capture that was pulled 2 stops and given a contrast boost in Photoshop from the JPG. I touched up some pinpricks in the emulsion that were most obvious against the grey sky. After standing in the calm snow to set up the shot, a huge gust of wind blew through right as I was about to hit the shutter. Once the gusts waned, I snapped it. 

Final verdict: B-? 3*s? 6 of 10? Something like that. The UX, if you will, of the medium is a fail for me and why I wouldn’t buy it again.