Friday, November 7, 2008

Pinhole Photos




Pinhole Write Up


For our cyberarts trip we went to gallery 44 to make, use and learn about pinhole photography. We learned how to make our own pinhole cameras with some simple items, such as a tin or coffee can, a piece of tin foil and some electrical tape.


Pinhole photography is a when you take a photograph of a scene/image in the negative by using photographic paper which is sensitive to sunlight and a pinhole camera. In the pinhole camera we used the hole in our tin can which was the aperture, the electrical tape was the shutter and the photographic paper was the film.


To make a pinhole camera you must first spray the inside of a tin can of some sort completely black so that it is not reflective and it is light tight. When that is done you must drill a hole into a side of the can, then cut out a circle of tin foil and carefully create a tiny hole using a pin or a tack and tape it with electrical tape in front of the hole you drilled. when this is done put a piece of electrical tape over the tiny hole you just made, making your tin light tight. The last step is to cut a piece of photographic paper that fits inside your tin can but does not block the hole, then but the lid on and you have your own pinhole camera.
We learned how to do this on our trip but when we put the piece of photographic paper in our pinhole camera we did it in a dark room so that the paper wasn't exposed to light. To take the actual photo we went outside and set up the camera to face the image we wanted to take. Then we took the electrical tape off of the small hole on the tin foil on the can (aperture) to expose the photographic paper to light, by doing this photographic paper takes a negative picture of the image you placed it to take because the photographic paper picks up the sunlight and takes the image. This process toke about one minute and thirty seconds or less depending on the size of your hole in the tin foil.
To develop the photos we went back into the dark room and placed the photos in a series of three chemicals. Then put them to dry and when they were done drying you had you own pinhole negative picture.

I really liked going on this trip because I learned something new and it was a fun experience. I thought that the most exciting part of this trip was the process of taking the pictures because it was fun to learn how the photographic picture took a negative image of the surrounding area. I really liked this trip and I would want to go on another trip like this again.