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ARTISTS HAVE BIG PLANS FOR TINY PINHOLES
By Tristan Baker
Mark your calendars; World Pinhole Day is a scant month away.
This year’s worldwide celebration of pinhole photography will be held on April 27 in exotic locales such as the United Kingdom and Sydney, Australia.
Pinhole photography is one of the earliest forms of photography. Normal cameras use lenses to reflect and focus light onto a piece of photosensitive paper, while Pinhole cameras eschew the lens and instead use a small pinhole on the front of the camera to focus light onto the photo paper.
Because they don’t have lenses, pinhole cameras are very simple, and can be made with common household products.
Dan McCormack, professor of art and photography at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, uses a pinhole camera fashioned out of a round oatmeal canister, a soda can, and electrical tape.
Though pinhole cameras are simple, they are capable of producing pictures of astonishing complexity. The cylindrical shape of McCormack’s oatmeal canister bends and distorts the images he takes, creating a unique effect. Because McCormack uses black and white film in his camera, he scans the pictures onto his computer and adds color to them with Adobe Photoshop.
“It’s a blend of 17th century and 21st century technology,” said McCormack. “It’s like having one foot forward and one foot back.”
The simplicity of pinhole cameras also allows for a great deal of flexibility in their design. This gives pinhole photographers a great deal of artistic license before they ever take a picture. Half the challenge is devising a clever or unique way to build their cameras. In addition to oatmeal cans, artists have built cameras out of toilet paper tubes, vegetables and even entire rooms. One especially innovative photographer, Justin Quinnell, constructed a pinhole camera that fit into his mouth.
There is, however, one downside to pinhole cameras; they require long exposure times. Depending on the lighting and size of the pinhole, these cameras can spend upwards of 40 minutes taking a picture. McCormack showed a picture of his photography class that had required an exposure time of 40 minutes. McCormack was in the picture himself, and was clearly visible in the center. The other members of the class looked like ghosts.
“As you can see,” said McCormack, “I was the only one who sat still the whole 40 minutes.”