Page 23 - the NOISE August 2012

Artistic MisAdventures
of Miss Rose:
Make Your Own Pinhole Camera
I have a tendency to get one-mindedly obsessed about things until I get them right. Sometimes. I had to have an iPad. I had to. Be- cause someone I knew had
one when they were still new and cool back in 2010. I thought about it for weeks. I weighed the pros and cons. I tried to tell myself all the wonderful things I could do with my iPad that I couldn’t do without it. So I finally got one months later. It was big, slippery and I was sure I was going to drop it, and as it turned out I could do everything without it. So I took it back the same day.
That’s how I got to feeling about making my own pinhole camera. For the last two summers I have been teaching fun and creative camps for kids age 6-13, and this year I get to teach photography for the first time. One of the proj- ects I’m supposed to teach is how to make a pinhole camera out of a matchbox.
I was so driven by desire to figure out how the heck I could take pictures inside a matchbox and get pictures from film. That in mind, I completely abandoned all other things I was supposed to be doing and went straight home and watched video after video on youtube on constructing my own pinhole camera.
I then took myself shopping, and I was quite surprised that most places don’t actually sell film anymore. I did find film at Walgreens, and — black & white film, which has always been so much more exciting and mysterious. I bought three rolls. I was going to take lots of pictures with my new pinhole camera.
At home I sat down at the kitchen table. I spread out in front of me black electric tape, empty rolls of film, new rolls of film, a mini match box, an Xacto knife, and some other supplies the directions said I needed, but I decided not to use because it seemed so tedious. (his is why I usually don’t succeed at recipes, because I always decide to leave out things that I don’t think are necessary (like onions) and replace them with things I like instead (like pepper) in much bigger quantities than suggested.
I meticulously followed the directions (unless I couldn’t figure out why I should do something the way they suggested, like a tin foil pinhole instead of a cardboard one or Why can’t I push the needle through the cardboard all the way to the eye? Bigger is better, right?
I colored the inside of the match box black. I taped all the parts together. I thoroughly impressed myself with my ability to tape together an old piece of film sticking out of an old canister to a new one. I covered the entire outside of my camera with black tape. It even looked like a camera.
I decided to go outside to take pictures with my new masterpiece of a pin- hole camera. I took a picture of prayer flags faded by seasons hanging in the Chinese elms and waving in the wind, a black cat frolicking in the garden, a big dog looking at me with his endearing dopey expression. I took a photograph of my harmonium. I tried to do something artistic: Taking a photo of myself, in different places throughout the exposure.
When the roll of film was used up, I then had to set about the task of getting it developed. Things have changed since the last time I developed a roll of film, some 8 years ago. Now everyone sends their film away. Except for Walgreens, where it costs over ten dollars to develop my film and get it on a disk (it’s more if you want prints.)
I was determined, however. I’m so used to camera instant-gratification that I wanted to see my pictures now! Not wait a whole week. Still, even one-hour photo seemed like forever.
I handed over my ten dollars and excitedly went home to put the disk in my computer and see what sort of ethereal masterpieces I had created. Maybe I would even enter the portfolio review.
Or... Maybe not.
For some reason most of the pictures looked like I tried to take a photograph of the sun. Some had slightly identifying shapes in them. One vaguely looked like a dog. I spent a lot of time trying to differentiate between the various white blobs until I convinced myself that I could see things.
So, after this trial and error pinhole camera experiment, and after hours of puttering around, I have developed an even simpler method of making your own pinhole camera for my most dedicated artistic mis-adventurers:
Remove the lens from your camera.
Tape a piece of tin foil over your camera where the lens goes.
Poke a teeny, tiny hole in the tin foil.
Take a bunch of digital pictures with your homemade pinhole adaptor. You’re welcome.