On Friday 13th, I attended my very first lesson of Pinhole Photography alongside my peers. We began the lesson with a short yet crucial demonstration.
Not only did we learn the mechanics behind pinhole photography, but we also learned that this techniques had many origins ranging from the Chinese and their optical principles that they knew of during the 5th century to Aristotle and his mentioning of pinhole image formation in his work "Problems".
The camera itself is actually just a tin container with a lid that does not allow light to pass through it and a pin hole in the side of the tin that will act as the lens. Whilst in the dark room, we pulled out some light photosensitive photographic paper because if it were exposed to light, the paper will become negative and will be completely black due to being exposed to too much light.
Here is the setup for taking a picture with this method:
The tin on the right is a camera that was lent to me by a veteran in this field.
The tape is what covers the pinhole until you're ready to peel it off and leave it for about 1 minute which is the pinhole version of "taking a photo".
After leaving it for 1 minute, the tape is put back on and the tin is brought to the dark room. Once the lights are off, the lid is taken off and the light photosensitive paper is removed from the container and place in the developer, then the stop , fix and then it's rinsed.
Here is the product of this process:
I placed a filter on this picture to make the body of the picture more visible but if I were to leave the camera for maybe an extra minute, it would be even clearer.
This first lesson has already allowed me to develop new skills and I also worked collaboratively with the other members of the group by helping them with the placement of their cameras, inserting the light photosensitive paper and even being helped with the process of developing the photos.
