10/10/11 - Pinhole Exhibition

Today we made a gallery with our images that were made with a ‘beer can camera’. I was really excited to get my work up on the wall and be able to stand back and analyse it properly. I had 3 portraits and 1 landscape image that I wanted to use, but as a set they didn’t work together, so I kept it as just the 3 portraits, which looked good once pinned up.

Negatives

Positives

Positive/negative versions of the images.

• -       Need to change composition, right hand image looks disconnected.
• -       Need to change pins to plain white, too distracting.

The Gallery

Here you can see others ways of hanging, all fairly different and personal to their images. My set are at eye level, which I think makes sense being portraits, as if you’re face to face with the figure.

I’d like to practice more with the pinhole cameras, as I think the images were interesting but mine need to be sharper and more conceptual – I was focusing too much on getting it to work well and the correct exposure. “What then is the best size of aperture? That is the important question in pin-hole photography” (Lord Rayleigh, 1891) and it’s certainly something I need to work on! I need to think about each detail as “the gadget is nothing but a tool or an instrument like the brush, and everything depends on the vision on the photographer” (MARG 2009) so I need to be sure to direct and control each element, particularly with something as basic as a pinhole camera. I suppose with this kind of thing, it's all practice and thinking about every detail like the weather that day, your position regarding the sun and if you're in shade, etc!

Sources:

Renner, Eric. Pinhole Photography: rediscovering a historic technique. 2000, 2nd edition. Oxford, Focal Press.


MARG Magazine. 2009. Photography as an Art Form. 61 no1 XLVI, Inside Back Cover.