I decided recently that almost everything I shoot going forward will be with a pinhole camera on film. In a world where the average photographer will take several hundred images of an event like the recent Climate Strike March in Seattle, it was not really an easy decision. I thought a lot about how I take so many photographs generally and never use them; instead storing them away in the depths of my external hard drive and never looking at them again. So I went to the Climate Strike March in Seattle with my pinhole camera and one roll of 120 color negative film and of course my iphone camera. I took 15 shots with my pinhole camera. I took about ten images with my iphone, just because I could not resist and I had to have something to post to Instagram where all my images are from the iphone. Below are the photographs made in my 120 Zero 2000 pinhole camera. The images are lined up on the film with no line between them, no separation between the negatives at all. I fell into this modus operandi quite by happy accident of course and it turns out that it works well for me. Of the 15 exposures I got something I can use on almost every negative. I am pretty happy with that and it shows me the validity in slowing down and really looking. When I got the negatives back from the lab, I realized I could have exposed about half of the time I did and the negatives would have been less dense and less blurred. I’m not sure if that would have been better or not. These exposures were about 10 minutes. I learned a lot at this march. I learned that being present while making photographs is important. Taking so few images helped that and then standing quietly while the images exposed was good too. I also answered a lot of questions about pinhole photography. It does not seem to be a common thing. I feel like this is a new beginning for me. I have some other images I have made in the same manner. I will post those soon.
Leaving Cal Anderson Park (Two negatives)
Toward Downtown with Smith Tower (Three negatives)
Crossing I-5 (four negatives)
At City Hall (two negatives)
Featured image is at Cal Anderson Park: The Beginning (one negative)
