Eye of a Needle-- Pinhole Camera and Photography

June 21, 2023

Eye of a Needle-- Pinhole Camera and Photography

Final Images "eye of a needle"

Mattie Caldwell

Pinhole Photography

Self Portrait

"Where My Eyes Cannot Go"

The concept of 'where my eyes cannot go' is within the pages of books. While my eyes can read the words on the pages, I will never be able to see the worlds of fantasy described on their pages.

Duration

The concept of my 'Duration' is images of the sun streaming through a window onto the wall. The change in the sun on the wall indicates the passage of time, in essence- duration. They are not particularly good images, but I am committed to the concept of the passage of time as duration.

Process:

We had the pleasure and opportunity to make our own pinhole cameras! After learning about the science/art of light in the camera obscura room, we applied our knowledge to very simple homemade cameras.

We spent a few weeks learning to process our images and photo paper and experimenting with our pin-hole cameras. Very fun few weeks, documented here. (original images, observations, and notes are documented in a notebook).

We were asked to build two cameras, one simple/traditional pinhole, and one experimental pinhole. My traditional camera is built from a tin container, and my experimental camera is built from a teapot!

Traditional Camera

Experimental Camera

My traditional pin-hole camera brought me some great success. I very much enjoyed the process of developing the images. Not all of the attempts were 'good images' but I learned a lot about working with my camera and the light.

The sequence of timing, selfies with the pin-hole camera.

Taking my first pin-hole camera image!!

My best image for the day! Relatively clear selfie!

As the day became darker, I could experiment with longer exposures and achieve better landscape images.

An image of an image?!

I also found some success with my 'experimental camera' in a teapot!

Another couple of selfies!

I got more serious about taking images related to assignments on my second day of work. I found that I had the most success working inside, Because of the nature of outdoor photography, from one moment to the next the light would change and my timing would need to change. It snowed the morning of this day so it was very very bright outside, I couldn't move my finger fast enough!

Not long enough!!

A little over exposed, so bright out with the snow.

I tried a few more images with my experimental camera, again, it's so so bright outside.

I spent quite a bit of time working toward a self-portrait, and I experimented with timing and posing. A few of the images turned out pretty well. I had a few images come out with weird markings, perhaps a problem with the paper. (On another day I scanned and inverted the images, included here).

Self-portrait work.

Experiment with duration, walking in circles in front of the camera. The bright blur in the centre is my movement. I hoped it would show up more clearly.

Day 3 I wanted to try my hand at the self-portrait again, with more light and some more interesting movement in my hair, and with my hands away from my face. As well as focus on the other aspects of the project.

I wonder if the pinhole camera would ever produce especially clear images? Even the best of the images are a bit blurry. However, I prefer the dynamic look of the hair from this day, I also have a different outfit on that has less bulk.

I also had some inspiration regarding the other two portions of the assignment that I worked on (day 3) and also scanned and inverted (day 4).