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What is, and why do I shoot a Pinhole photography.

May 1st, 2022

What is, and why do I shoot a Pinhole photography.

What is pinhole photography?
A pinhole camera is a camera without a lens but with a tiny aperture/pinhole, a very basic and simple lightproof box with a pinhole size hole in one side and a light sensitive surface on the other side, mostly film but digital sensors can also be used.
Light from a scene passes through the pinhole and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box and onto the photographic film or digital sensor to produce an image.
If shooting photographic film you then need to develop to be able to see the moment in time which you have captured.

And why do I shoot it?
I spent many years shooting digital, until on day my computer failed on me, and I had problems with it for months. After all my memory card filled up I decided to resort to a Pinhole camera kit I was brought a few years previous, I headed out one morning took my first pinhole exposure, went home and developed it, it was one of the worst photos I had taken, but I loved every minute of the process.

This led me on to film photography where I ended up purchasing a few extra cameras, but after a while I kept coming back to pinhole photography, this was something I struggled with as it went against everything most photographers were striving for.

•Most photographers loves lenses - A pinhole camera has no lens
•Most photographers love wide aperture lenses - A pinhole camera has the smallest possible aperture
•Most photographers love lots of Frames Per Second - A pinhole camera, most single exposures will be longer than a second
•Most photographers love the latest photographic technology - A pinhole camera is about as old as they get.

So you can see my challenges?
What I discovered about me in this process, was the more I was being limited to stuff, i.e getting into film photography meant fewer shots, which meant the more I ended up working for fewer better shots, the more creative I had to be.

Having a digital camera, with Memory Card space for 1000s of photos
lenses to cover every possible focal length and adjustable apertures from f/2.8-f22
ISO range from 100-6400 is nice, but I never really felt I had to work to hard for a shot.
Having a camera with a single focal length, I normally limit myself to 6 shots
(as thats all I can develop in one go)
an aperture fixed to around f/180, one set ISO depending on the film.

Pinhole has a unique look, and being limited I feel I have to be more creative and work harder to make a shot work.
The constraints of pinhole photography enhance my creativity, the creative challenges of making a pinhole photo work, is what I love about the process.