Some Weddings Shot with the Pinhole Camera:  Thoughts and Images

Some Weddings Shot with the Pinhole Camera: Thoughts and Images

I shoot weddings with my pinhole camera.  Recently I shot three wonderful weddings of people I know well.  These are not typical wedding photographs.  I generally shoot four images on 4 x 5 color negative film;  the exposures vary with the available light but can be as long as 30 minutes. I do not use a flash. For most weddings I shoot the cocktail/greeting time before the wedding (or the party the night before), the ceremony itself, the celebration afterwards and then set a camera up during the meal. I feel the images  turn out to be very personal.  About a year or more ago, I shot John and Meghan’s wedding in Seattle.  It was a very dark venue and a dark evening and I honestly thought none of the images would be okay.  But they were and I was happy and so were Meghan and John.   Last summer I shot a beautiful outdoor wedding for Autumn and Matt.  They were married at Autumn’s parent’s home, and it was absolutely the most wonderful time:  great people, great food and love everywhere.

Recently this past October I shot Isaac and Annie’s wedding in New York City. I have known Isaac his whole life and I was so happy that he and Annie got together.  It was the first time I used my 120mm camera at a wedding and I knew it was right because the camera is so versatile.  I could take more images  and the exposures were shorter. Early in the morning we met in Brooklyn Heights and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge where we did a family photograph with the 4 x 5 pinhole camera.  We continued  to City Hall in Manhattan where the vows were made.  After,  we had a celebratory luncheon in NYC’s Chinatown;  I recorded the luncheon on 120mm color negative film-about an hour and a half exposure.  Annie wore a yellow dress; she was beautiful and the day flowed along. The party that night at a bar in Brooklyn was dark, very dark and very fun.

I have done several weddings now beginning with an old friend, Lucas,  who married Angie in upstate NY several years ago.  It was a great experience and I loved it so much more than I did taking “real” wedding photographs as I had done in the past.  Not to say that real wedding photography is bad. It is just not me these days. I have two more weddings scheduled for this summer.  It is  great way to attend a wedding and be myself. I tell the bride and groom:  if the images turn out, great, if not, I am sorry but I tried.  But so far (fingers crossed), the images have all worked.  Below are photographs from those three most recent weddings.  If you know anyone who might be interested in this manner of wedding photography send them to me.  I reserve the rights to the images but give the bride and groom fine art prints.  I hope you feel the joy that I felt as I made these images. All people that I photograph with the pinhole understand that these will not be “normal”  photographs.  And most hire a “real” wedding photographer to grab the normal shots.  And I am happy there is a real photographer present.

The featured image is from Isaac and Annies Wedding in NYC in October of 2019

Here is a  blog post about Lucas and Angie’s wedding, my first pinhole wedding:  www.janetneuhauser.com/in-honor-of-g-lucas-crane-on-his-wedding-day/

 

First wedding  is Meghan and John’s over a year ago now.  In Seattle.

 

The photographs below are from Autumn and Matt’s wedding last summer in the Pacific NW.

 

These photographs are from Isaac and Annie’s wedding in October in New York City.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed these photographs! Celebrate love! I am grateful to all the brides and grooms who are open to this manner of wedding photography.

Red Hook Revisited

Red Hook Revisited

Last summer I spent two weeks in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, Red Hook and shot steadily every day.  My first thought was that I would rephotograph my favorite images from the 1980’s.  The problem was that the neighborhood had changed so much that I could not find the exact location of many of the images.  I was disappointed and have not edited the images too much since then.  But lately I have started to  edit and realized that though I did not rephotograph the old images, I was working in a similar vein, on the edges, on  the dead ends and in overgrown lots and streets.  I loved the wild edges of the harbor then and was happy to see that still they  exist.

The changes in the neighborhood have been significant, as most people know, the area has been  “gentrified.”  Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, but for me  the  big change is one called air conditioning.  The eleven years I lived in the Hook, I did not have air conditioning nor did most anyone else.  At night, everyone was out enjoying the cool breeze off the harbor and everyone knew everyone else.  Now, the streets at night are empty.  People aren’t sitting outside, talking to their neighbors.  I missed the connections, the way everyone knew my name back then  and the way my neighbors looked after each other.  The streets were never empty in the old days.  Still last summer,   I walked the streets and   ran into a few old timers who remembered me and they laughed when I showed them the old photographs and said, oh, you will never find that again.  But I did find the edges and realized that was what I was looking for all along.

Here are a few examples of the new work from the Hook.  I hope to have a portfolio up on the website soon.

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