World Pinhole Photography Day!
Yesterday was World Pinhole Photography Day and to celebrate The Center for Fine Art Photography held a free workshop yesterday afternoon. The workshop was being run by Valerie Burke, Micheal Butts, and Mark James with help from several others whose names I did not catch.
Pinhole photography has been something that I’ve always wanted to try, but never have taken the time to do. A workshop seemed like a great chance to get my feet wet. Both DH & I attended and got to build our first pinhole cameras, take a few shots to photosensitized paper, and develop them to produce paper negatives.
My first shot really didn’t work. I wasn’t thinking black and white when I set it up. I had no reference for the field of view (hence catching a car bumper and a bike in my frame) and I had a pretty severe light leak. It did turn out well enough that I learned from the shot and the following shots each improved.
It was tricky to set up shots because there is obviously no view finder. It was also a challenge to figure out the right exposure. My first shot was under exposed by a lot. Each shot I took I dialed in a bit better - at least close enough that I could adjust a bit while developing the photo in the darkroom. It was just lucky that overall the lighting yesterday was semi-steady due to some pretty serious cloud cover. It did mean exposure times were nearing 30 seconds.
My favorite shot is the final one, taken of the view of the building where the workshop was held as seen from the N College Ave sidewalk. Both DH and I were bit pretty good by the bug and now talking about what would be required to be able to develop pinhole images at home!
