Pinhole Coke Cans

So.. last post I wrote.. never published. So either I was silly and forgot to add more to it or the internet failed me again and stopped it working.

Anyway, so far I have collected 20 useable coke/lemonade cans to create some pinhole cameras. Don't worry, I didn't drink any of them.. I collected the empty cans from my work over the weekend shifts I do. However, after overcoming the issue of where to get the cans from and cleaning them I then had to make the lids. I had thought to use black paper that I've been using for my paper-cutting work. This paper I thought was too thin and would let light in, so I used black car spray paint and spray two pieces of A3 paper I had stashed away at home. Unfortunately I don't think I have enough spray paint to do more paper as the A3 sheets only did enough to make 10lids... But.. if I can find some more sheets of blank paper, that might be a good place to start.

Reason for 20cans is that unless I go up to the main college campus and use the darkroom and do pinhole images at college, I have no way of developing them on location. So my way around this is to do the same thing several times with different exposure times. For example, I would spin around again looking at the pinhole camera and I would spin for 15seconds, 25 seconds and 35seconds. Depends on the light though and the location, but as I've no idea really with how long to expose the photographic paper for, it's all going to be a bit of trial and error. (Mainly error most likely)

I put the photographic paper in the first 10cans at home. Hoping that the paper hasn't fogged... Only time will tell though!

Darkroom

Finally put my pin hole camera up outside, I did that in the last weekend of October. If I can get a picture when it's light and not raining il post a copy here. It looks so random outside. I placed it facing south, in the hope il get the sun in the shot. It's been lousy weather though so no idea how this will work. Tied it up to the gutter but didn't have any gaffa tape so I'm greatfull the ties have stayed strong, although I did have to double them up as even the long ties I had weren't long enough.

Didn't do much over half term unfortunately, was trying to catch up on other work I had too. Also didn't update the blog either as the Internet has been dodgy these past few weeks. (Plus I didn't have much to say either)

Couple weeks ago, before the pinhole workshop, the class and I tried out a wide format camera. This week we finally got to develop it. Out of the images I took the first one was the clearest so I decided to create a print. I did this as I was waiting to use the negative scanner, but by the time I'd finished in the darkroom all the scanner equipment had been put away.

edit:

after developing the negatives Adrian said he would scan them for me so I could get digital copies of them. Above are the two photographs which I took using the wide format camera. The images aren't as sharp as they were originally because I had placed these onto a Photoshop file along with other work ready to be printed. When I came back to update this blog page I must have left them on a different computer or deleted them so I had to crop the Photoshop file so you could only see the photographs above.

The photograph on the right was the first shot I took, I was pleased with the results as everything that should be in focus, was in focus. The photograph on the left was the second shot I took, unfortunately I didn't manage to get it focused properly.

Pin hole photography

Despite going into the workshop with a dislike to pinhole photography, I now quite enjoy it and want to do some more. Plan of action is to create a small room, like a dollhouse room, and then use a manual flash gun and either use a beer an pinhole camera or a digital camera with a hole drilled through a lense cap to create the pinhole effect. 

Above is my pinhole photo,I was stood and spun in a circle looking at the can.

Still have to put up my pinhole camera beer can outside. We were given a project to put it outside to capture the sun rising and setting from now to December.. However it's been fairly gusty outside whenever I've gotten home and light enough to see what's happening so I've not managed to put it up yet.. Hoping I can at the weekend latest.

Experiments

So last week I tried out wide format film, not yet developed but I think that will get done next week. Tomorrow it's pin hole photography I think... Not entirely sure il like it, but il give it ago.

Ideas

Current idea is to base something on shoes. I was trying to see if someone was still in the market hall but I couldn't see anything other than people's shoes and ankles. This led me onto thinking about how some people wear shoes that you associate with them and sometimes people wear shoes that contrast with the type of person they are.

What will I do

Started off trying to get ideas to do with the Market Hall. Unfortunately it does not really inspire me so I started to struggle pretty quickly. Need to start getting research on the mind map we were given and think of all the different ways I could experiment with.