Pin Hole Camera:

I used a shoe box, tape and tin foil to make a working pinhole camera, I then went out onto the street and exposed the photographic paper in the box to light for 30 seconds and developed the photo. The photograph that I developed resulted in a slightly blurry image, I believe that this is because I placed it on an uneven surface and the box was slightly rocking from side to side. When looking at the final product I can see that although slightly blurry there is a lot of detail that can be seen, the shapes of the leaves from the tree in front of where I positioned my pin hole camera are scattered across the top and bottom of the image and there is a clear image of a car. To me this image feels old like a black and white still from an old Hollywood movie, I believe that the blurriness adds s sense of spontaneity and movement to the image, as if someone has taken the picture in a rush.

My second image was more successful in terms of making sure my pinhole camera stayed still, I made sure to place it on a flat surface and hold it steady which resulted in quite a crisp image. I took my second image of the same street as my first but from further away from the street and I expose the photographic paper to the light for a shorter amount of time which meant that there was a good contrast between the lighter areas and the darker areas, due to the outcome being a negative image there was something eerie about the picture, the buildings are white while the windows looking in are dark, it felt otherworldly, like peering into another dimension. I believe that this was the most successful attempt and I really enjoyed this process and will consider taking it forward with my future work.

When looking at my third image I can see that I did not expose the photographic paper to the light for long enough as the majority of my image is white, however, I can see that there is some detail that has been picked up, the excess of white in this image seems ghostly and haunting and when paired with the location of a church yard the image felt very eerie, during this experiment I found out that the size of the paper that I use affects the image as I used a very large piece of paper and when looking at the result it was clear that the light was not able to project an image across the entirety of the paper and only in the top left corner, I can see the beginnings of shapes and forms within this image.