Feb 7, 2014 | Blog
The Pinhole Project will reach five hundred images in the next few weeks and at an average exposure of three weeks each, that is a lot of light and time captured in these little metal cans on pieces of black and white enlarging paper over the last year and a half. Many people have done more than one image and more than half the images in the project are by the digital photography students at the high school where I teach. April Surgent, a Seattle based glass artist, took several pinhole cameras to Antarctica this past fall. She experimented with four hole cameras, multiple pinholes and two day exposures in the brilliant windy landscape full of ice. Her ruminations and images are here. http://www.aprilsurgent.com/2/post/2013/11/slowed-down-to-see-more.html
The Project continues to capture me, I rarely see a long exposure pinhole image that does not amaze me with its wondrous ability to both record reality and transform it. Many people do not recognize the place where they “took” or as I say, placed, the camera at first. These long exposures create a landscapes where the sun continues to rise and set, making a trail of light arched across the sky. The tidal waters become a flat plane, as if the tide creates no movement as it goes in and out. The streets are empty, even the lights of the cars at night are not recorded. People, because they move so quickly, are not recorded at all. And the colors! Though we have been using the same Black and White enlarging paper (which is almost gone), the colors vary wildly from oranges and yellows to cyans, browns and greens. People often ask how much each image is enhanced after scanning and the answer is almost no enhancement takes place. The image is scanned, inverted in Photoshop, sometimes brightened and then saved. For some reason, dust is a problem and often a dust and scratches filter is applied. I am beginning to believe that the length of exposure coupled with the climate during the exposure accounts for some of the color that is recorded.
I will feature a few of the best ones here, and if you have the time, take a look at the entire Archive. Right now we are working on a way to be able to search the Archive for a particular person; please bear with us until this minor technological glitch is solved. The Archive continues to evolve and as it grows, the hope is that it will become more and more manageable instead of less so.
The Pinhole Project is a non-profit community based program open to anyone regardless of age, income and photography experience. It is financed solely by donations. We need tape (especially electrical and two sided scotch tape), Altoids tins, BW enlarging paper, black mat spray paint. We are happy to take donations of money via the Pay Pal site. If you have any of the above items to spare, contact me via this website about donating.
The featured image is by Eric Reidel, a Seattle based pinhole photographer who has made several images.
The images below are by Brenda Aguilar, Ana Bucy and Hana Heminway
Brenda duct taped her camera under a bench in downtown Seattle where it remained undetected for two weeks. Ana made her image in a round Tabasco sauce can and Hana made hers in a very leaky tea tin. The damage from the water looked so good on Hana’s that we decided to keep it that way and not try to repair it.
Jan 27, 2014 | Blog
On the trip to the Lost Coast last August I made some exposures with my 4 x 5 pinhole camera on color negative film. I started the exposure as soon as it was mostly dark and ended it (except for a few late wakeups) as the sun rose, about seven hours. Because I had to leave the camera out all night, mostly unattended, choosing spots was difficult. The best of the batch is one from the deck of a hotel in downtown Tomales, a quiet little town. I love the softness of the pinhole night image. I love the softness of night photography in general, everything is muted and slow. I am not interested in the the hyper-realistic world, as seen in many apps and programs and a lot of work done at night now. I am interested in capturing just what is out there before the camera and I relish the chance to take my time and set up the shot. The fact that in one night, I make one image only intrigues me. In Seattle, in the city, it is difficult to leave a camera out all night unattended. I am trying to let go of my fear of this and just do it. This long exposure night work on film is for me a way to combine much of what I love about photography: the unexpected, the use of film, pinhole photography, color, long exposures.
This image made in Tomales, is one of the seven photographs that are in the exhibition at the Bainbridge Island Art Museum, http://www.biartmuseum.org/exhibitions/twelve-years-in-the-woods-arts-studio-gallery The show will be up until March 5th. Two other images in the show were also made on the Lost Coast on film with the pinhole camera but the exposures were much shorter and made just as it was getting dark. They all have the same thing in common: a feeling that is dreamlike and unreal but very real at the same time.
Jan 26, 2014 | Blog
About four months ago, I posted an anonymous pinhole both on this website and on Facebook. I had received the camera in the mail, with no note, no return address, no postmark. Just a brilliant orange and cyan landscape, foreign to me, mysterious. The stamps had a black marker running across them, as if the package had been hand canceled. On Facebook, no one claimed the image as their own. This beautiful, impressionistic landscape, orange and green and brown languished in my inbox. I felt uneasy. I did not recognize the place with its wide open space, no trees, beautiful light.
Quite unconnected about a month ago, my daughter decided to retrieve a pinhole camera left out near Tomales, California, en route to the Lost Coast of Northern California during last summer’s road trip. The camera had been placed on the Dillon Beach road, tucked into some rocks, that were surrounded by poison oak. We tiptoed around in the heat placing the camera up high in a cleft. I took a photograph of the view with my DSLR and we got out of there. In search of the camera, my daughter found an AA meeting in among the rocks and no camera in the rock cleft. She took an iPhone photo of the view and we both realized the anonymous image that had come in through the mail was almost certainly the one from the rocks. Maybe one of the AA members sent it back but whoever you are, dear good Samaritan we thank you. Below are the three images: the iPhone image by Jess Tampa, my cursory shot of the view and the pinhole image from the camera placed there last summer . How long did it expose? Did it fall and was picked up by a person who read the plea I had left: this is a camera, if found please send back to the Pinhole Project. Please examine the images below and see if you think it is the image from that place, way out among the rocks near the small town of Tomales. There is another camera still waiting to be retrieved, under a bridge, close to the same place. Anyone going to the Lost Coast anytime soon?
The first image is the iPhone image made early in the morning by my daughter. The second image was shot with my DSLR last August and the third is the pinhole image exposed for several weeks (exact time unknown).
Oct 5, 2013 | Blog
Last night we went to the South Park neighborhood of Seattle, wandering through the boatyards and down to the river. We shot the bridge under construction, talked with the locals, gaped at the huge boats out of water. It was a beautiful warm night, even a few stars visible beyond the glaring lights set up for the workers rebuilding the bridge. For the grand finale, we went to a little park along the Duwamish River. The low tide left a muddy beach that was sticky in the dark. As we exposed our images, the rocks in the shallow water started to move and we realized the rocks were racoons. There is so much color and life at night! Staying with a four minute exposure and then a four minute noise reduction process, forces one to just stand and look and listen. Such a gift to do this in the dark, in the city. The featured image for this post is my four minute exposure, looking north up the Duwamish toward downtown Seattle.
In the boatyard, the boats were giant shapes lurking in the dark. The photograph reveals the remarkable colors and personalities of these vessels. Is there anything I love more than a boat out of water? Here are two images:
To see the work of the students and more work of mine, go to our flickr.com group, http://www.flickr.com/groups/2288163@N25/
Oct 2, 2013 | Blog
I am teaching a night class that started last Friday. It was a wonderful night free of the threatened downpour. We meandered from South Sodo to Georgetown, shooting along the way, actually only covering a small area. We are posting images to a flickr. group and you can go there over the course of the next four weeks to see the work the group and I make. The image posted here, Lucille Crossing, to the North is my ode to the Lucille Street train as it crosses Lucille at the Argo Bridge and Airport, where trains are close enough to touch. The featured image is Lucille Crossing, To the South. Here’s the link, to our group http://www.flickr.com/groups/2288163@N25/
