Photo1Q2.14: Pinhole Practice

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When I learned that we were doing pinhole photography, I was pretty intrigued, but also somewhat "distant" at the fact that we were "going backwards" in terms of photography, using older technology to learn the importance of exposure and composition. The introductory videos made me concerned that I wouldn't be able to grasp the concept, but when I truly understood how it worked, it made the whole process easier. The aperture is basically permanent, and I'm not sure what our paper ISO was, so I knew that our main focus was on composition and "shutter speed". I chose to use a camera that was prebuilt because it made life easier.

For every photograph, it's simply a self portrait of myself.

Paper on round wall / 20 seconds

This first attempt was definitely something that I learned off of. I didn't realize just how long you need to keep your shutter open, and the fact that the main light source is from the "window" in the back just complicates things even further. Definitely should've decreased shutter speed here. Darkroom processing was difficult at first, but I got the hang of it in the next photos.

Paper on round wall / 12 seconds

I was very happy with this photo other than the fact that it's orientation doesn't match the photo. The lighting was partially underexposed with some clouds, so I imagined that I should've exposed it for a longer duration, but then the sun leaked through the clouds and I was forced to use a much shorter shutter time.

Paper on flat wall / 22 seconds

This is probably the best photo out of this group despite it being slightly off in rotation. It's exposed properly, orientation matches the composition, etc. The lighting was slightly cloudy on this day, so I exposed it for a little bit longer than the previous photos.

Paper on flat wall / 27 seconds

On this day, lighting was very poor. Thus, I exposed it much longer than usual, and the results came as expected. There's this dark shadow over the top of the photo, so I believe that I either A) did not use the correct times for darkroom/took it out of certain trays too early, or B) the tape was coming off. I'm not sure what was the source of the problem here, but it's something to learn on.

Overall, this shoot was met with success with a slight bit of learning. Obviously, orientation is something I need to change (and thus, actually have a pose in mind beforehand instead of winging the pose). Choosing the exposure time was definitely a struggle as I still was unsure of how great the light would impact the photo, but I made good estimations.

Being more patient with the darkroom and the overall process may have improved the quality of some of these photos. I also believe that composition is something I would like to change, knowing the "frame size" of the pinhole photograph. I'd definitely like to do much harder lighting and challenge myself with the exposure timing (perhaps a redo of the first one with the backlighting and all).