Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

April 27th was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. I have been participating for the last few years with a pinhole camera of some sort. I enjoy making photographs with pinhole cameras because they are so simple and create these incredibly dreamy and unpredictable photographs.

This year I procrastinated, although I knew what camera I was going to use. It is a Whitman's chocolate box sampler that I knew would make a perfect pinhole camera.

I didn't do much to modify the camera, just a bit of red paint inside to insure the light wouldn't bounce around and expose the paper negative. I should have used black paint, but alas it was a last minute build the day before I was going to shoot with it, so I used what I had in the house.

 The pinhole was made with a push pin and a Coke can, affixed to the camera with some electrical tape.

I decided that building a camera at the last minute wasn't enough of the challenge, I was going to try a developer I had never used before in pinhole photographs. I mixed up some Caffenol CM developer that would normally be used for developing film. I love this developer because it is so environmentally friendly. The ingredients are water, washing soda, vitamin C and instant coffee.

After setting up the temporary darkroom in my downstairs bathroom, I mixed up the ingredients for the developer and started loading the camera. I brought in my small paper trimmer because I thought I would have to cut down the photo paper I was using as a negative. Alas a 5x7 sheet of photographic paper fits perfectly in the back of the camera! Again a lucky discovery. Four pieces of tape in small loops held the paper firmly in place during the exposure.

Outside I went, and I had no idea what the exposure would be, or how the paper negatives would react to the Caffenol CM developer. I guessed my exposure at one minute fifteen seconds under mostly sunny almost midday skies and returned to the darkroom to take a look a the first image. It is a little strange developing paper in a developer that looks like Guinness, but after about 70 seconds of agitation my first negative came out, and it was perfect! I really was doing well with this camera build.

Caffenol CM developer (top), water for a stop bath and regular Hypo for fix. Two negatives sit in fix after being developed. They are 5x7 sheets of Arista.EDU ultra RC pearl finish printing paper.

I was able to fit in five exposures before having to call it quits. Of the five negatives, only one was blurry due to the winds picking up at the tail end of my shoot and blowing the camera around. So how did they turn out? Very well indeed! This to date has been the easiest pinhole camera I have built. The negatives came out sharp and contrasty, the camera had no light leaks, and I was very impressed with the results.

Four good negatives air dry in the bathroom.

I scanned all the negatives and flipped them to positives in Photoshop. The negs only needed slight tweaking, and just a bit of sharpening. Overall the images were very sharp. I loved the blurry trees and moving limbs, since it was windy that day and anything moving during the minute and fifteen second exposure would be blurry.

First exposure is off the deck looking into my back yard. The round spot is where the pool will go up again later this year.

Second exposure is of a happy dandelion growing in my vegetable garden framed by trees and sky. 

Third image is of the Salt Fork River behind my house looking west.

Fourth image is of the Salt Fork River looking east. This is the photo I selected for my Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day submission.

Just to try out another new technique, I decided to try and make a cyanotype of my paper pinhole negatives. This was the biggest struggle of them all. The paper of the negative blocks a lot of the light from going through which made the exposures very long. I have a small indoor UV lightbox I built to make cyanotypes and even at four hours of exposure I still only had a faint image.

I took matters into nature's hands, and made the cyanotype outdoors using regularly available sunshine. Even with direct UV light from the sun, it still took 2 hours of contact printing to get decent results.

Hand painted cyanotype emulsion with paper pinhole negative.

 Overall this was a fun project, and I have yet another fun pinhole camera to use again.

Here is a link to the website, and a link to my submission this year.  It is submission #1862, which is a perfect number for me!

Urbana Arts Grants Winner!

 I am proud to announce that my proposal "Urbana Pinhole Portrait Project" is one of 23 awards in this year's Urbana Arts Grants Program! I will be making pinhole photographs this spring and summer, with an exhibit in the fall.



The "Urbana Pinhole Portrait Project" will be a series of pinhole portraits made of Urbana residents. I am sure there are many reasons that people choose to live in Urbana. I would like to hear why they decided to live in Urbana in 2013 so a short essay will accompany each image. There will be an exhibit this fall at the Urbana Museum of Photography to showcase the photographs and essays.

Some of my homemade pinhole cameras. From left, a potato chip camera, baby formula camera, wooden 4x5 camera and bulk film canister camera. The last one makes cool round pinhole photos!

 In between taking portraits this year, I will be attending the Urbana's Market at the Square to set up appointments and let people in the area know about the project. I will also be holding pinhole camera workshops where everyone can build their very own pinhole camera!

A photograph of my daughter Kalli taken with a potato chip pinhole camera.

Pinhole portraits are unique because these lens-less images are made with simple light tight containers. In place of a lens, a small pinhole is placed the side of the container to allow light to enter and create the photograph. Due to the simplicity of the process, any light tight object can become a pinhole camera. I like to use everyday objects for my pinhole cameras. There is nothing more magical than taking a photo with a pinhole camera like a potato chip can!

I plan on kicking off the project with a pinhole portrait workshop at the Urbana Museum of Photography during Worldwide Pinhole Day on April 28th. We will be making cameras and taking pictures with pinhole cameras, and all the images can be uploaded to the Worldwide Pinhole Day gallery to be shared with everyone else's images from around the world!

If you would like more information about the workshop, please contact me through email, or stay tuned for more updates on my Facebook Fan page and web page.

If you are an Urbana resident and you would like to be part of this project, please send me an email and I will schedule an appointment to photograph you for the project.

You can reach me at singram@steveingramphoto.com

Stay tuned for more information!

Funding for this project is being provided by the Urbana Public Arts Program.