Mechano-Optical

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About Mechano-Optical

The keyword is optical - something hands-on done to those photons before the image is exposed on film, chip, or paper!

Anything applied on the camera, on the subject matter, or between the two, to optically alter the image. Digital photography is thus very welcome, the tweak though must be analog and not the result of digital postwork.

. Inventive use of light-bending surfaces, found in situ or constructed by the photographer
. Deliberate and decisive defocus, in the lens or added with other medium
. Lens manipulation (boiling, disassembly, homemades, etc.)
. Fat, glue, plastic - whatever - put on the lens
. Use of slide projectors to project images on the subject
. And , I'm sure, a host of other techniques you may invent

What about standard filters? The quick answer is NO. Exceptions will be made for inventive use, but using a polarizer to deepen skies does not fall inside the definiton of this group.

What about darkroom experiments? YES. Effects applied at the enlarger are indeed mechanical and optical in nature, but again: some unorthodox optical tweak must be applied in the process.

What about scanner photography? YES - but no plain scans. The same rules apply to scanners as to cameras: Some sort of tweak must be present between scanner and subject.

Though no rule, it would be nice if you furnish some information about your technique in the image's description and/or tags.

The group icon features a vintage lanterna magica toy called DUX Episcope.

Welcome!

Hansi Linderoth