Pinhole Photography Festival.

Back in early March my dad kindly sent me an email containing a link for the Pinhole Photography Festival in Edinburgh.

His timing was perfect as I was free to pop along on the following Sunday afternoon to have a look at the gallery and perhaps attend the workshop if there was space. As fortune would have it, I was able to join in the fun and games.

The workshop was held by photographer Kenny Bean who talked us through the art of making a pinhole photograph. He showed us images taken from a tiny camera, where a cartridge was held inside the photographer's mouth, to larger scale photographs taken from Kenny's outstanding Wheelie Bin collection.

The staff were really friendly, the workshop was definitely worthwhile (they even provided free use of the cameras, photographic paper and developing chemicals, which was very kind) and the gallery was very impressive.

I did have a go myself but my prints turned out to be very disappointing (what's new?) as I didn't really have a full grasp of just how 'wide' the pinhole range was going to be. Even when I was standing 10ft away from my subject of a tree it appeared as a tiny twig within my frame. Timing for exposure and developing is also something I need to experiment with but now that I've tried it I need to get making my own little cameras.

All I need now is to find the time.....

I've cropped out the subject so you can get a hint of what I was trying to photograph!!!

My pinhole camera arrived

I still plan to try to make one but I thought buying one (from Flights of Fancy ) would be quicker.
I was only half right as they didn't provide me with a screw to attach the shutter!

I'll need to have a look for a small screw. Once I know I can attach the shutter ok I'll glue everything together (although it's not necessary) and I may even decorate it.

I have 14 little pieces of paper and I plan to use them all in the camera/box. As they will develop as negative prints I can scan them and convert to positive on the computer. I will create proper prints using the negative papers at a later date.

Below is the pinhole camera in progress (bear in mind it is not yet complete).

World Pinhole Camera Day

I don't think I've posted about this before but I always meant to take part - http://www.pinholeday.org/participate/

The only problem is that I don't have a pinhole camera.
My SLRs won't take a photo if no lens is attached and I don't have a spare body cap to destroy so I better get my finger out and try to make some kind of pinhole camera with something around the house.

Here is the camera I might attempt to make (it's been in my bookmarks for a few years now) - http://www.matchboxpinhole.com/index.html. It looks a little footery, though. I think I might just see if I can find a box and use some photographic paper.

The downside to that is not having the darkroom chemicals for processing but one step at at a time!!!

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A small update on my Scottish Wildlife project - I almost got a photograph of Porpoises at the weekend but they were too fast and the waves were too wild for me to steady myself on the boat. (Ok...perhaps 'wild' is a little exaggeration but the wind was making the yacht bounce around a lot)