Pinholes

Alright... I've been really hesitant to post these and I'm still thinking its not a great idea. But I guess I'm being brave right now so I'll just go ahead and do it any maybe delete this post later, haha. Anyways, this was the main body of work for my studio lighting class this past semester. My idea was kind of to do some Bill Brandt style portraiture (I guess you could call it) minus the nudity. For anyone who may not be very familiar with photography in an art sense, these may seem kind of lame, but trust me, IT WAS NOT EASY!
I really love pinhole images because of their uniqueness and also because of the process. For anyone who is unfamiliar with what a pinhole is, I'll explain... The whole process starts with making your own camera. All a pinhole camera is, is a light-tight box with a pinhole (hence the name) that acts as the lens. All you need to make a photograph is light and a light sensitive surface for it to fall on. So what I did was went out and bought a camera called a Holga, which is just a very cheap plastic camera (my ULTIMATE favorite tool to shoot with). What I did next was just remove the lens part of the camera, covered the opening tinfoil on a solid backing, and mounted it to the body of the Holga. Before you put the tinfoil on you poke a VERY tiny hole in it for the light to travel through. It's pretty hard to get a hole small enough (The smaller the hole, the sharper the images will be, but you also have to expose them to the light for a longer amount of time). The reason for using a Holga body instead of just a regular box is that you can put a whole roll of film in it, whereas if it were just a box, you'd have no way to wind film. Anyways, I used Ilford Delta 100 120 film. It's a different kind of film that gives you square images. I'm a big fan of the square. I actually shot a big project with this pinhole spring semester of last year, but the prints are 9 feet long and I wouldn't be able to put them on here because you wouldn't be able to tell what they were of! I made a new one that is wide angle, so now I have two, which is great.
The shooting part was the part that was definitely the most challenging. I used a 4800 Speedo pack with two lights, one at 4800 watt seconds for the subject lighting and the other at 2400 for the background lighting. The pack is just like a power pack that you plug the lights (speed lights, or strobes) into and when its connected to the camera, the lights will pop (flash) every time you push the button to shoot a frame. The only problem is, you can't hook a pinhole camera up to the pack because there is no lens! So I had to fire the strobes manually by pushing a button on the pack. To get good enough exposures I had to fire the pack between 10 and 20 times per image. It took about 15 seconds for the pack to recycle between each pop, so on average, including actually pushing the button, it took me around 5 minutes to shoot one frame. And that doesn't include set up, which could take anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes for every 2 frames I would say. Then take that and times it by 12 frames on each roll of film, and times that by 9 or 10 rolls (I can't remember, it sucked so bad), and that's a lot of time spent! Not to mention the pack was almost too heavy for me to carry, and I was shooting myself, which made it really hard! I had to position myself in such a way that I got the composition I wanted (or at least that I thought I was getting - you never really know with pinhole, which is part of what I love about it) and didn't get the power pack in it, but I also had to be able to reach the pack, so you can see how this would present some difficulties. It was incredibly challenging and I'm not sure that I'll every do it again! But nevertheless, my teacher really liked them and encouraged me to try and get them in a show in front of the whole class (which he doesn't tell specific people to do very often). I know I sound like a 6th grader when I say that, but it's a really great compliment especially for someone like me who has some serious confidence issues. Because of those issues (and some complications transferring them to the blog), I've just posted them small so that they look better, haha. These are the ten that I chose to turn in. And I've been writing way too much as usual, so here they are:

Hope you liked them! I have to say if you don't understand them, that's ok! And I don't want to say "its an art thing" because that sounds stupid, but it kind of is an art thing! Anyways, the art part of photography is what I really enjoy doing. I sometimes get frustrated when people hear what I'm doing in school and ask me if I'm going to be a wedding photographer when I get done. It's a good way to make money and I'll probably do it for family and friends, but you don't need a degree for that, and I don't want to waste mine! And I hope I'm not offending anyone by saying that. Just trying to express my feelings... It's way too late! Goodnight!