Photo workshop #6 - Pinhole technique

Our last workshop, we knew it had to be special. And it was! 

Because, what could be better for a photography club than to make our very own handmade cameras out of shoe or cereal boxes and to learn one of the simplest but trickiest ways of taking a picture? The Pinhole technique.

We met up and started making the boxes suitable for a good pinhole photo taking. We had to make sure that no light would come in unless we opened the hole because, otherwise, the photosensitive paper would be ruined instantly by light.

 

When the boxes where prepared, we went into the "darkroom" (also known as Elio's bathroom) and set everything up.With the lights turned off and just the help of the dim red light, we had to stick the photosensitive paper inside the box and close it very well with black tape. It was tricky!

 Here's Max looking into the box to see if it's perfectly shut.

And Elio and Cristina checking her "cereal photo box".

When everything was ready, we run to the street to take our very first pinhole photo! We chose what to photograph and then open the shutter (the hole covered with black tape) for 30 seconds or 1 minute, depending on the light and what we thought would be OK.

 
 

We were very excited to see the pictures showing up on the paper when we put them into the chemicals, back into the darkroom.

We did the same process several times and we got very interesting result and had a lot of fun.

In Elise's words: "We discovered a new and fantastic technique that is pinehole: we took pictures with black boxes!! And used Elio's restroom as a darkroom…  Probably the funniest workshop!"

 

 

 

Margarita Ruiz - Photos and text