This is a selection of personal pinhole photographs created on film and paper.
For me, pinhole photography is a way to capture the magic I am always searching for in life. A digital camera may duplicate the beautiful landscape I experienced on a vacation to Morocco, but a pinhole camera will create an image that shows you the magic of how that landscape felt in my soul during the experience. I am ever drawn to the magical experience of using a pinhole camera and what it is able to create.
A pinhole camera is the earliest form of a camera, and therefore the absolute simplest. It’s literally just a dark box with a tiny pin sized hole poked in it. No lenses, no viewfinder, no buttons, no light meter. No nonsense at all. You can use one as mathematically or as intuitively as you want with varied results. Their simple build forces you to use long exposures of full seconds up to multiple minutes. You can capture a lot of movement, an almost infinite depth of field, and depending on a few factors there might even be distortion and light leaks. These characteristics sometimes make pinhole photography appear magical and otherworldly.
Their simplicity makes them the most inconvenient camera there is and for that I love them. What I like the most is the long exposures that allow you as a photographer to really slow down and experience what’s happening in front of you instead of experiencing it through the lens of the camera. For that reason it’s my day-to day camera, my vacation camera, my make-life-more-magical camera.
To see how I use these cameras in conceptual series, check out:
