Last week I visited Cambridge, armed with just my pinhole camera for a day of slow photography. I didn’t have a specific agenda in mind, more a case of following my nose and seeing what I found.
The River Cam runs right through the centre of the city so naturally I found plenty of life and movement there. The slow moving punts begin to look like rockets when you’re using a shutter speed of a second or more.
Click on any of the images to enlarge them
When I stopped for lunch in a café I decided to try a technique I’d seen used on Instagram by pinhole photographer Danny Kalkhoven. I carefully places my camera on the table and left the shutter open for a few minutes as I ate. The fixed elements in the frame remain sharp (as sharp as pinhole photos ever are!) while my plate and cup show signs of movement as I inevitably didn’t put them back in exactly the same spot.
Another experiment I tried after lunch was to take some more ghostly self portraits, buoyed by the success of the one I took in Littlebury Church recently. I create these by using an exposure time of a couple of minutes and I place myself within the frame for part of that time. In one photo I have vanished entirely, while in the second I’m very faint – I could have done with sitting there for a little longer. In my final image I hit more of a sweet spot, although I’m a much smaller part of the finished photo. I can see more practice is needed with these!
To finish off the day I visited the market and received a few odd looks as I set up my tripod and wooden camera near the fruit and veg stall to capture some ghostly shoppers.
10 September 2021