Pinhole Room in Holiday Inn

To continue my experimentation of pinhole rooms I decided to turn a room at The Holiday Inn hotel, Manchester, into one when I was staying there.  I was staying on the 5th floor, but unfortunately I was given a room on a side of the hotel which didn't have the best view and much was blocked by a tall building by the window.  Light conditions were also very poor the day I was staying there due to dull weather and this did not create good conditions for a successful pinhole room.  Little could be seen by the naked human eye inside the pinhole room, but a some information was picked up by a long exposure using my digital camera, but results were still rather poor unfortunately.

This is the first time I have experimented with using people inside my pinhole rooms when I take a photograph. In some ways I think I prefer the images where there is no one present as the focus is taken away from the disorientation of the outside world being projected upside down in the room in this photograph. The viewers eye is drawn to the person rather than the detail of the projection. The person also gives a third perspective to the photograph, where as without anyone in the photograph it can sometimes be confusing as to which way the photograph should actually be viewed.

I want to continue with my experimentation of pinhole rooms and photographing inside them, however I think I need to improve my technique to overcome the low light levels.

Paper cameras

Here I have done a design which will make a rectangular shaped box and should function as a camera, when made form photographic paper.  The design has been formed so that it can be constructed in a darkroom under only red light.  Therefore, the deign has to be as simple as possible and involve as few steps as possible. Now that I have the design for the shape of the paper camera, I now need to experiment with ways in which I can keep the camera light tight during exposure and how long I should expose it for. 

What can a camera be?

For a while now I have been looking at the idea of what a camera can actually be and taking the camera  to its bare minimum.  Making a camera out of photographic paper itself is a way in which you can reduce the camera to its bare minimum.  The photo paper forms the camera structure and produces the photograph and eventually becomes the photograph itself.  I have made a few small versions where I have created a box like shape and created a hole in the photographic paper with a pin.  However, non of these versions were very successful.  I think that the pinhole will have to made from aluminium tin and then removed once the photograph is developed.  This would focus light more precisely into the camera and would hopefully form on image.  Another, problem is stopping light from getting into the camera from other places, like the joins.  To stop this it is essential to keep the paper camera in a black dark until exposure and then still have the main body covered.  This is an issue I am going to have to experiment with during the process of making my photo paper cameras. 

The images above show experiments for making the structure of a camera out of photographic paper. 

http://www.slowlight.net/blog/?p=87

Space_Surrogate ii (GSG 9)

During my visit to Berlin I saw this piece of work at Hamburger Bahnhof.  At first I thought that it was just a projection of a photograph into a darkened space, however after a while I noticed that the photograph was actually a moving frame.  It was only really noticeable when you focused your attention on one aspect, for example a moving foot.  This slow movement adds a new dimension of seeing to the film footage, for me it was interesting to see the mens exact movements, which we would never really notice in a normal speed piece of footage.  During the time I spent viewing the slowed film it was obvious that many did not realise that it was actually a film and most thought it was a photograph, like my first reaction.  I enjoy the fact that some could jut pass this by without realising its true meaning while others find the wonder it created for me.  The piece has a lot of political connotations which I know from the write up, however this is of little interest to me as I purely enjoyed the aesthetics of the slow moving footage.  The piece of film was initially a five second sequence and it was digitally reworked to become an eight minute long piece slowly altering still or a freeze frame.

Photogram Experiment

After seeing the work of Floris Neususs and his life size photograms I decided to experiment with photograms myself. I have used various materials of differing densities to create this photogram, including film strips, leaves, a tea bag, tape, a drawn image and a measuring cylinder.  Doing this has given me a good idea of how photograms work and how light travels through different objects.  I enjoy how simple it is to actually create a photogram and the possibilities that it gives. I think it would be interesting to involve movement of objects and maybe to include photographs projected onto the surface, mixing two techniques together.