Pinhole pottering

When I get an occasional day off from work there’s nothing I like better than pottering around with my pinhole camera. The act of foraging for photos and then figuring out how they’ll work with the simplest of cameras is so satisfying and just what I need to switch off from work.

At the end of October I had to go to Thaxted for my flu vaccination so I took the opportunity to go for a wander around the church with my pinhole camera and a roll of film. One of the things I love about medium format film is the limited number of frames on each roll. With just 12 photos to find it’s much easier to shoot a roll in one day, whereas the 36 exposures on a 35mm film can take me weeks to use up!

On this occasion I took some wide shots of the church, as well as looking for smaller details.

With small subjects you have to get in really close with a wide angle pinhole camera, although without a viewfinder you have to accept that sometimes you’ll misjudge just how close!

Photos taken 26 October 2022

All the fun of the pier

During our holiday in Norfolk last month we stopped in Cromer for a wander and a cuppa on the pier. While Kevin went off in search of the local model shop I spent a little time exploring the pier and its surroundings with my pinhole camera.

Down by the pier’s foundations. I could have got closer but didn’t fancy getting soggy feet as my wellies were in the car!

A beachside curiosity

The long climb back up to the steps to the car…

Photos taken October 2022

Rainy day pinholing

After our pinhole expeditions earlier in the year, my friend Peter and I spent a rainy day in Cambridge at the beginning of May, exploring the city’s possiblities.

If you look closely you can just see a ghostly self portrait of me in front of the gate!

During a previous walk around Cambridge I took a photo of Peter on these steps, but he didn’t stay still for long enough and vanished from the final picture. This time he stood really still!

Bicycles everywhere….

A lunchtime self portrait of the two of us - so slow that we’ve become a blur!

Photos taken 11 May 2022

Colourful Coggeshall

I don’t often choose colour film for my pinhole photography but for my visit to the church in Coggeshall in April it seemed a good fit. On a previous visit I discovered some lovely carving on the choir stalls which I knew would work well in colour and I had some Lomography 400 colour film I was keen to try out too.

I was en-route to an event in Ipswich so this was a good point to stop off and I had a most enjoyable hour exploring the church, looking for compositions which would suit the pinhole approach.

Photos taken 22 April 2022

London in slow motion

Back in April I spent a day in London with two of my pinhole cameras, foraging for interesting imagery which would work in this slow genre of photography.

Click on any of the photos to seem them enlarged.

One of my early stops was St Mary at Hill Church, in the City, whose dramatic lines suited the wide angle view of my 6x6 camera.

From there I strolled down to the River to capture some of the movement in the water with both my 6x6 and large format pinhole cameras.

One of the joys of pinhole photography is the way it captures periods of time, rather than just fractions of a second. This shows best in photos which have some movement, especially water. This was the only excuse I needed to hop on one of the clipper boats on the River and take a ride down to Greenwich.

I got off the clipper at Greenwich and took a stroll around the Old Royal Naval College. The architecture has so many possibilities, and I only just scratched the surface - I’ll definitely need to come back another day.

Another large format image - the wide angle field of view makes the building seem to stretch for miles!

On the boat back to central London I had another try at some action pinhole photography with my large format camera, as we passed Canary Wharf. I’d like to claim I timed this perfectly to catch the buildings beneath the canopy of the boat, but it was complete luck!

Exploring Tower Bridge

Further along the south bank of the River Thames, the area around City Hall offered all sorts of interesting lines which suit the wide view of a pinhole camera.

Eventually my feet began to ache so I took the bus back to Liverpool Street - taking a photo en-route, naturally!

Finally, a selection of images from around the area behind Liverpool Street Station.

Photos taken 28 April 2022

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Every April one Sunday is adopted by the pinhole photography community as their day - an opportunity to slow down and see the world in a different way. This year the day coincided with the Society of Recorder Players’ National Festival, so naturally I decided to combine the two!

During our final massed playing session (some 150 musicians) I explained that I’d be going around taking photos with what looked like a wooden box and gave an idea of what the photos might look like, although I’m sure many of the players still thought I was crackers!

My friend Moira has turned into a whirl of energy as she conducts the orchestra!

Some closer shots of the players below, including a self portrait in the second one! Click on any of the images to see them larger.

John kindly allowed me to get very close as he played his contrabass. Because the instrument roots him to the same spot more than the smaller recorders he’s still recognisable in the resulting photo!

After the festival had finished I still had some film left over so I took a detour to Flatford on my way home - home of John Constable and a familiar sight through his painting ‘The Haywain’.

And finally, a quick stop at East Bergholt Church to complete the roll of film before I headed home to develop it!

Photos taken 24 April 2022

Where boats go to die....

Pin Mill is a popular location for East Anglian photographers. It’s home to a boat graveyard - a spot along the edge of the River Orwell where lots of wooden vessels have been left to quietly rot away. Decay is almost always photogenic and this spot had long been on my must visit list.

Through the wonders of social media I’ve got to know lots of other pinhole photographers so on this occasion I met up with Andrew Keedle, who lives not far from Pin Mill in Suffolk. We spent a most enjoyable morning exploring the wrecks together, figuring out what would suit this slow medium best.

With an ultra wide focal length, it pays to get really close to your subject with pinhole cameras and I played with just how close I could get to some of the boats without sinking into the mud!

After a spot of lunch Andrew took me to one of his favourite locations, the Orwell Country Park which runs alongside the river. Here I crept beneath the canopy to capture a vertiginous view of the trees above, as well as photographing an amazing ancient oak tree.

Photos taken on 24 March 2022.

A different view

In my last post I shared some digital images from my birthday wander along the beach at West Wittering. While I was there I also spent some time taking pinhole photos to bring out some of the movement in the waves. Pinhole photography is so good at this - you can capture whole chunks of time in a longer exposure.

The following morning I drove down to Aldwick, arriving just in time for low tide. I wanted to photography the chunk of the D-Day Mulberry Harbour which lies on the beach but the only time you can get close is when the sea is out. This enormous chunk of concrete escaped en-route to Normandy back in 1944 and has sat here ever since.

On this particular occasion the tide wasn’t especially low and the blustery wind was whipping up the waves. Sometimes you can walk right around it, but this time I had to keep a sensible distance so as not to get swamped!

With a couple of frames left on my film I used them to catch a couple of other watery scenes before retreating to my car to avoid getting soaked by the incoming rainstorm!

Photos taken 9 & 10 March 2022

Going solo

After my darkroom workshop with Andrew Bartram back in April I was keen to put my new founding film developing skills into practice. About ten days later I took myself off to Audley with my pinhole camera to take some photos, with the intention of developing them when I got home.

I found plenty of photographic inspiration and had no difficulty in completing the 12 shots on my roll of film. Once I was home I light proofed our our downstairs toilet with the blackout cloth I’d bought for the job. As a room with no windows it’s only a case of sealing the tiny slivers if light which sneak in around the door - the perfect darkroom! Loading the film took a couple of attempts but once it was done I spent half hour at the kitchen sink developing, fixing and rinsing my negatives.

When the film emerged from my developing tank I was very relieved to find I had photos, but disappointed to discover I’d made a bit of a horlicks of loading the film on the spiral. It had stuck together in a couple of places, so a handful of the shots were lost. Just as well I’d gone somewhere I can easily return to in order to recreate the same photos another time!

Overall I’m pleased with the results though and since then I’ve been careful to make sure I don’t make the same mistake. Even better, each roll of film costs me about a fifth of what I was paying to have them developed commercially so that leaves me more cash to buy film!

Photos taken on 14 April 2022

Developing my skill set

One of my resolutions for 2022 was to spend money on education rather than more camera gear - a plan I’ve more or less adhered to! One of my educational outings was a two day workshop with Andrew Bartram, doing some pinhole photography and learning to develop my own film. I’ve written about the workshop and what I learnt over on my Inspiration and Education page but I thought I’d share the resulting images from the day in a post here.

Alongside my pinhole camera I took a Holga 120N, which I’d recently bought for the princely sum of £21 on eBay. This simple plastic camera has just two apertures and one shutter speed (1/100 of a second) and a basic zone focusing system but it’s capable of surprisingly sharp and characterful images. Even better, it weighs almost nothing which is a joy compared to some of my digital gear!

I had some fun with my little Ondu 6x6 too, especially at the decaying house Andrew took me to. I’ll definitely be coming back to spend some more time here when I get a chance as I think this old structure has lots more to offer.

Many years ago I heard Charlie Waite say during a talk that every landscape photographer goes through a ‘shed’ period, photographing barns and sheds in the countryside. The Cambridgeshire Fens offered plenty of opportunities for me to follow his example!

Photos taken on 4th April 2022