I attended a pinhole camera workshop at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery a couple of weekends ago with Heidi Kenyon who has used the technique within her installation art.

Building a pinhole camera and taking pictures is photography in its simplest form, the art of capturing light.

We started our two day workshop building a camera out of a tin can, taking infinite care that the size of the hole was the tip of a needle and the only moving part was the sticky tape ‘shutter’.

To take a photograph we taped a piece of photographic paper to the inside of the can opposite the pinhole then exposed the paper using varying lengths of time. For every exposure we had to dash back to the darkroom and develop our shot to see the result. My camera worked well with an exposure of around two minutes and I was surprised at the amount of detail and sharpness of the images.

We then experimented including ourselves within our images and my favourite is the one of me standing beside myself.

I scanned my negative prints into my computer and produced a positive image in Photoshop by going to Image-Adjustments-Invert.

The workshop  was an interesting and creative experience thanks to Heidi’s knowledgeable presentation and I would recommend it for any photographer to explore the possibilities of capturing light with a pinhole tin can camera.

Building my pinhole camera

Finished camera with a tape ‘shutter’

Can painted matt black inside

The size of the hole was the tip of a needle

One of my first exposures at 1 min 15 sec negative

1 min 15 sec positive

2 min exposure negative

2 min exposure positive

Standing for 30 sec in a 2 min 15 sec exposure negative

2 min 15 sec positive

A 2 min exposure with me standing next to myself

This is a booklet I produced about the workshop containing my photographs