VCU Phto 307 : January 2013

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Pinhole Cameras.

Pinhole Cameras can be made in a variety of sizes. Doing some research, I found a few that I thought were really creative. Here are a few..

This last one actually has 6 lenses! I thought that was really interesting. It demonstrates a level of skill and creativity that I think most people don't think about when they're considering making a pinhole camera, given that they're usually so simple. It has a variable focal length and produces four 2 1/4 x 7 inch pictures.

Here are some interesting cameras made by Wayne Martin Bleger for more his work check out his site.

...A Big Ole Camera

The world's largest pinhole camera happens to be an entire building measuring 40x160x80 feet.

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/05/20/worlds-largest-camera-big-enough-to-hold-an-airplane/

"24,000 square feet of plastic, 1,300 gallons of foam filler, 1.52 miles of tape, and 40 cans of spray paint went into darkening the hangar. The “film” used was a 31 ft 7 in x 111 ft canvas (three stories high and eleven stories wide) that weighed 1,200 pounds along with the rigging. 80 liters of emulsion was used to make the canvas light sensitive. The aperture was a 6mm hole in the side of the hangar that projected the image onto the canvas. The photograph was exposed for 35 minutes. 600 gallons of traditional B&W developer was used to develop the canvas, and 1,200 gallons of fixer was applied afterward. It was then washed using fire hoses spraying at 750 gallons per minute. This is the massive photograph that resulted, which is the largest photo ever made (though not the largest print)."

The Great Picture, 2006, by The Legacy Project

Pinhole

These are just some cool photos I found while poking around on websites like

Pinhole.org

MAXIME BUSCH

40+ Classic Pinhole Photos

http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/round-ups/40-classic-pinhole-photos/

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Caitlin Soldan

I found her through a website that features a new pin hole artist every month. One reason I picked her was because she was featured in August (my birthday month) and also because her aesthetic is truly unique. She uses a pin hole camera and then also uses the process of Mordancage to truly give her pictures a degraded look.

link to the site she was featured on
Her own website

Here are some examples:

Also while researching I found this website:

http://www.mrpinhole.com/index.php

It essentially gives you a calculator and a guide on pin hole exposures. I thought might be helpful.

Pringles Pinhole !

How to make a Pringles can pinhole camera -

http://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/pringles_pinhole.html

Example image from a pringles can I found on flickr here.

Pinhole Idea

I think I have an idea that may be useful to anyone constructing a box pinhole camera. Some of you may remember the 16"x20" pinhole camera I made last year. The biggest problem I had with it (besides crazy-long exposure times) was securing such a large piece of paper inside the camera so it didn't slip, bend, or flutter during exposure. My makeshift solution was simply to tape the paper, but that was a pain and left residue on the print. I kept this issue in mind as I started making a 5"x7" pinhole camera this afternoon and I think may have found a better keeping-the-photo-paper-in-place solution; put the paper in a 5"x7" photo frame and insert that into the camera! It's not a tested solution but it seems better than gaff tape.

Pinhole Cameras

Noriko Ohba, a photographer from Japan, and generally uses pinhole cameras for her work. Her site is tea-room.net

Here is an example of one of her images, which I still find hard to have come from a pinhole camera:

Pinhole Day

The next Pinhole day is April 28th, 2013. Everyone is encouraged to submit a pinhole photograph to the website that they take on that day. There are online galleries on the website of photos taken each year going back to April 28th 2001.
http://www.pinholeday.org/

Francesco Capponi

An Italian photographer has made several pinhole cameras out of the coolest things or in creative ways - a top hat, a tree he even tweaked a miniature (it's really mini) fisheye Lomo keychain camera!

Images from the Mini Lomo:

His site can be found here.

Here's a video on how to make a pin hole camera out of a matchbox and a photo of the results!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=espROi9g2pg

MATCH BOX PINHOLE CAMERA BY EDUARD PIEL VIDEO

Homemade Pinhole Cameras

I thought the idea of incorporating food and photography was an interesting idea. Not sure who exactly made these but through my research I found a bunch of food pinhole cameras. One of the articles said that with the pumpkin it may not be a smart idea to push a role of film through it because it may decay over time. I think these were pretty innovative ways to portray and old idea.

On an added note, the solargraphs are also an awesome idea that comes from the pinhole technology. It monitors the sun in a long exposure shot using the pinhole camera.

Pinhole Camera Photos by Nicholas Walker

Homemade pinhole camera photo by Nicholas Walker. Model: Emily Lackner

Monday, January 14, 2013

Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton - Pinhole photos

Ann Hamilton's pinhole camera portraits, taken using a tiny camera in her mouth.

"So I devised, over a number of years (it was sort of something that was in the background for a long time) a way of making pinhole cameras, which is very simple, but to make my mouth the aperture. I don't go into the darkroom and load the film in my mouth and then come out and do it, so it is actually still an object that's inserted into my mouth - but to have the orifice of the place where speech exits the body actually become the eye, and to just play with that. Then it was in the process of actually taking those pictures, seeing what they looked like, seeing in fact how the shape of the mouth is very much the same shape as the eye, and seeing myself become almost like the pupil within. The image of my head becomes almost like the pupil in the middle of the mouth, which is eye-shaped." Ann Hamilton