The last Sunday in April is a special day for anyone interested in pinhole photography, for that is the day designated ‘Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day’, when folk from around the world go out with their various containers and capture images onto film, paper or even digital, but without using a lens.
On Sunday 26th April, 6 participants joined Jooj on the 3rd floor of the Société building, ready to create firstly, their pinhole cameras, and then the pinhole images. Jooj brought a large amount of Illy Coffee tins (other brands are available) each with a 1cm diameter circular drilled out half way up the tin. The inside of the tins and their lids had been sprayed with Matt black paint. Now you might be pondering that a 1cm diameter hole does not constitute a pinhole, and you would indeed be correct. The creation of the pinhole was the participants job!
A circle, larger than the one cut in the coffee tin, was cut out of an aluminium foil tin dish. (Tin foil on a roll is too thin and flimsy). The circle is then placed on a cutting mat and a dressmakers pin placed through the centre of it. The foil dish is then ‘twirled’ so as to create a small circular hole. The backside of the hole is then rubbed gently with emery paper to remove any burrs that might protrude and could cause shadows on the final picture. This foil circle is then placed over the larger hole in the tin and secured by the use of black insulating tape. Another piece of black tape is placed over the pinhole, this is the shutter. The pinhole camera is now complete.
The next part of this workshop involved a Dark room, or, as you probably know it, the kitchen on the third floor. Dark room in Latin is camera obscura, and indeed the first thing we did was turn the room into a camera obscura, unfortunately the view from those kitchen windows is not very exciting, but we did get parts of the buildings and the bins projected onto the ceiling of the kitchen! Then to work! We covered up the Camera obscure hole, switched on the red lights, prepared the chemicals, developer, stop and fix, and were were ready to load up the pinhole cameras with some 5“x7“ photographic matt paper.
No white light was allowed in the darkroom as this would have fogged the photographic paper. You might be aware that the kitchen has got automatic white lights, so, with the marvels of modern engineering, these were switched off by….. taping over the movement sensors!
With the white lights off and the red lights on, the participants could now place the photographic paper into their cans with the emulsion side of the paper facing the tiny pinhole. Once the lid was secured, the pinhole camera was ready for use. Given a suggested exposure time of 30 seconds in sunlight, our intrepid participants ventured into The Yard. With Long exposures these cameras can not be handheld. Indeed, some exposures in dark areas needed two minutes or more. Once the subject had been chosen, the black tape carefully removed from the pinhole, the seconds counted, and the black tape reapplied over the pinhole. It was time to develop the paper and see what the negative image look like. Back up the numerous flights of stairs (this turned out to be an exercise class too) and into the darkroom, the paper was first placed in the developing solution, where the white paper gradually revealed the tones of its negative image. Once the minute development time was up the paper was placed into the stop bath (which neutralises the development process), then into the fix, which chemically converts any light sensitive “silver halides” on the paper into a non light sensitive ones. The paper is then washed. Now, this is a very experimental process, everybody’s pinholes are slightly different, therefore one person‘s 30 second exposure might be another persons 50 second exposure. But once the paper had been washed the photographer could view it on the white light and assess their results. If the image was far too dark, it had been over exposed i.e. too long an exposure. If it was too light, the exposure needed to be lengthened. Apart from the pinhole size, various other factors affected the outcome, whether the subject was in sunlight or in shade and how bright the actual subject was. These were all elements that the participants experimented with.
The participants produced about five pinhole pictures each during the day. These were all mirror image paper negatives. To create positives the negatives could either be contact printed with another sheet of Photographic paper and developed etc or photographed/scanned and changed into a positive image in Photoshop or similar photo manipulation program.
One image from each participant will be scanned and uploaded to the Worldwide Photography Day website, sometime over the next month, and saved for prosperity, along with numerous other images taken on that day, by various people, using various containers, from all around the world. We will also add some to the photo archives.
A good time was had by all!
Co/Chair AFP Section – Jooj Duquemin
- The camera Obscura Kitchen
- Loading the pinhole camera
3. Timing the exposure
4.Gaining stability from a fence
5. Self portrait
6.The development Process
7. Assessing the images
8. The final spread
9.The negative
10.The positive
Anyone wishing to find out more about our Art, Film & Photography Section, please get in touch by contacting hello@societe.je
