A few years ago I found out about the concept of pinhole cameras. For those of you who haven't heard of them it's basically like a super old school camera, essentially just a box, with a small pinhole lense, hence the name. Instead of using film you use photo paper, which takes a much longer exposure time. Depending on the light it can be from 30 seconds to a few hours.
I rigged up a small darkroom in my bathroom. It takes a bit of work but overall it's not too hard. Keeping out all the extraneous light is the hardest part.
Below is a collection of photos I've taken with the two cameras I made. I unfortunately can't post photos of the actual cameras because they are lost in storage but they aren't that pretty anyways!
This first image is a self-portrait. The furthest left is the negative, then I made contact prints with some glass and a lightbulb. The middle print turned out too light so I made a second one which was a bit better. It was a cloudy day, exposure time was about one minute.
This was taken at an art gallery during a show. I put the camera up on a mezzanine and left it there for a few hours while people milled around. The black cloud you can see on the left side is the people, pretty cool!
This was a picture of some buildings. I used to live in a pretty industrial area so this is what I looked at everyday. There's not a lot of detail, I think they look cool though.
Here are some tractors that belonged to my landlord. I took these with the coffee can. You can tell because there's a fish eye effect happening. I gave the positive print (for the one on the right) to him though so I don't have it anymore.
I think this was the very first photo I took. I was totally winging it at that point and didn't expose the image for long enough and it's pretty blah. Looks like it's from an old ghost story or something.
I was pleased with this one, it's slightly overexposed but looks pretty neat. The results always look kind of creepy.
I took this one with the coffee can, it's an abandoned building. I think I gave the print to someone because I could only find the negative :/
This is one of my favorites! It was really windy and I put a rock on the camera to keep it still but it shook like crazy during the exposure time. It looks very abstract, I may incorporate this into another art piece!
I jumped in front of the camera for this one thinking I'd look kind of ghostly but I guess I didn't stand there long enough because I'm almost totally invisible. Oops, lesson learned.
This is a car, I made a darker print but I gave it away so this is all I've got.
This is a negative of a landscape taken on the side of a canal. I can't find the print but I like the negative, it has a very peaceful and minimalist quality to it.
I'm kind of kicking myself for not properly trying any double exposures. Looking at these again is giving me a hankering to pull them from storage and give it another go. The experience was really special, there's something fun about not having a viewfinder and only seeing what you captured after you stick them in the developing fluid. It's kind of like taking photos with a blindfold on.
I can take much clearer and better phots with my digital camera but I never would have taken these. The abstract and ghostly quality makes this feel like a completely different art form. I highly recommend giving it a go, and if you do please tag me, I want to see :)