"And Don't Call Me Freddy"

Post-Script: This whole project began as an inspiration, late at night, sitting at my office desk with Underwood Portable at my side. These machines indeed are tools for writing inspiration, especially this kind of writing that's imaginative and, being fiction, doesn't have to conform to reality.

Since I needed a photo to adorn the beginning of this article, I figured a pinhole image would be needed, in order to get sufficiently close to these garden ornament ants. I used a little cardboard pinhole camera I'd built some years ago, with a 4" square format and wide angle of view (about 1.5" focal length). I attached a rectangular wooden base to my tripod, already fitted with 1/4-20 tripod bushing, and clamped to that a larger sheet of old plywood. This served as a mobile foreground stage, which I could move around my yard and adjust its framing with the tripod's head. A 25 second exposure in bright sun was made onto pre-flashed grade 2 RC paper. Inversion of the tones was done in the Preview app on my Mac. I really need to get some more full-featured photo editing software, but that'll involve spending some money and doing a bit of research.

Here's the video of this project: