VCU Phto 307 noon: January 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Cyanotypes so blue

These are some pretty beautiful Cyanotypes I found by an artist Natalie Cheung from her time in grad school at Tyler University. She is exploring fractal geometry and they are photograms of the actual cyanotypes.. I'm really interested in pattern-making and form in alternative processing, so hopefully I will try to explore that. The cyanotypes really open up the world of what the image can be printed on...

Thursday, January 17, 2013

6-month long pinhole exposures

CHECK THIS OUT!

http://www.lomography.com/magazine/tipster/2010/06/18/six-month-long-pinhole-exposures

Caitlyn Soldan

Caitlyn Soldan, photographer from Chicago, has been able to achieve really beautiful textures with these pinhole images..

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Christian Harkness

Christian Harkness is an artist who often uses pinholes, cyanotypes, and film in her work. This photo is an 11′x17′ Cyanotype print from a 35mm Neopan 1600 pinhole negative.
A link to her blog is- http://chrislh.wordpress.com/

The Magic of Pinhole Cameras

In my research, it was quite astounding to find how sharp pinhole images can be when the camera construction is mastered. I'm interested in attempting to create images of this caliber that appear as if they were taken on 35mm or medium format. Likewise, there were also other equally as interesting images that were blurry and reminded me of Dianas and Holgas. I found out that the Rayko Photo Center in my hometown of San Francisco hosts an entire show of just pinhole photos. Perhaps that could be a ptotential show to submit to after this class.....I also found out that National Pinhole Photography Day is April 25th. I've linked a flickr of pictures of the gallery setting that Rayko displayed their show in, and you can sneak peak some of the work that was displayed:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dronepop/2457971376/in/photostream/

Jay Bender has a few examples of color pinhole photography. I'd like to experiment with this, but it would cost a lot.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Hetty Rose x Stephen Jones "Pinhole Shoes"

Interesting article + gallery from Dazed and Confused regarding the use of a pinhole camera in fashion/advertising photography, something I was curious to see whether or not had been done before. I think the colors here are really great - also note the "photographer's presence" in the first photo

Full article

Documentary Pinhole Photography

http://www.aeternus.com/foyer/urban/flash/index.html

I found the mission statement along with the execution of their project pretty impressive. I’m curious to know how the human subjects reacted to the use of such a rudimentary photographic medium in the street/documentary fashion.

Chris Keeney

Chris Keeney seems to do pinhole for fun on the side of more commercial work like weddings and portraiture. One thing that I haven't seen much of before is color pinhole which he plays with some. I want to try out shooting straight onto film.

Nancy Breslin

I know very little about pinhole photography, and while I have created images from a pinhole they were not very successful. I really like the feeling of control Nancy Breslin has in her images. They're all in normal day to day scenes but seem very intentional. The backgrounds are fairly crisp and the people in each shot seem like ghosts because of their motion blur.

Self Portrait - Nancy Breslin, January 2012

Sarah Moon

Sarah Moon is a French photographer born in 1941. She is well known for her very personalized commercial work; she captures a certain mood and drama by pushing the simplicity of her mediums to their extremes, allowing her images to decay, using day light or tungsten to heighten the graininess of her photographs and favoring black and white film unless she gets to choose the colors of her final images. It's only the age of 29 that Moon finally faced her fear of failure, and began to structure and investigate, research and repeat her photographic process. Ever since, she's maintain a great tenacity and determination through her artistic practice, always looking for the new or forgotten and welcoming the unexpected. Moon also shot numerous campaigns for Chanel, Rykiel, Miyake, Thierry Mugler, Lacrois, Dior, and various fashion magazines. For those interested for more in various photographic effects and Sarah Moon's personal thinking process, you get a bonus.

Francesco Capponi

Francesco Capponi makes one shot pinhole cameras out of eggs! I love how a new one has to be made everytime you want to make a photograph. It makes me wonder what other types of organic objects can be used in a similar way.

Balazs Sprenc

He does some really cool stuff with his clam shell pinhole. Here's a link to his flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lostinpixels/

Vladimir Zivkovic

Vladimir Zivkovic built his own pinhole camera, and uses it to make 6x6 photos. I've been following him since I was about 15, online. I don't think he's famous, but I think his work is beautiful.

Scott Speck

"Pinhole photography has been my primary art medium since 2006. A pinhole camera has no lens, and pinhole photography is therefore a type of lensless photography. Instead of the light entering the camera through a series of refractive glass elements, it enters more simply -- through a small circular hole (a fraction of a millimeter in diameter) to thereby strike the film and create the exposure. My pinhole photography has thus far been film-based, on either medium format film or large format (4x5) film. The cameras that I use include Zero Image cameras, Abelson Scope Works cameras, and a couple of other handmade cameras. In general, all of my cameras have very wide fields of view, ranging from 120 degrees to 160 degrees.

The unique characteristic of a pinhole camera is its ability to image with an effectively infinite depth of field. Everything from a fraction of an inch from the camera, all the way to infinity, appears at the same level of focus in the image. This means that one can record intimate textural detail across all distance scales, enabling one to explore near to far perspectives, in which nearby objects appear much larger (but in focus) relative to more distant objects (also in focus).
Infinite depth of field comes with two tradeoffs, however. First, the photographer loses the ability to purposely limit depth of field, and second, exposure times are comparatively very long with a pinhole camera. When shooting outdoors in bright sunshine, exposure times are roughly one second, and, for dimly lit interiors like churches, exposure times typically range from thirty to sixty minutes! These longer exposure times necessitate the use of a tripod, typically with a cable shutter release to open and close the camera's wood shutter, situated in front of the pinhole.
My main subjects of interest are architectures, landscapes, and portraits. I enjoy giving visual presentations on pinhole photography, and I also do pinhole photography by commission.
My work has been published in print-based books, electronic books, magazines, and blogs, and I have been interviewed about my photography. I show my work in exhibitions, and my art has been purchased by enthusiasts and photography art collectors. Prints of my art photography are available for purchase here. "

So, I happened upon this guy's work, and I thought he had some really cool pinhole images. If you guys wanna check him out (he has posted a LOT of pinhole), here's his flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41427422@N00

Monday, January 14, 2013

Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton - Pinhole photos

Ann Hamilton's pinhole camera portraits, taken using a tiny camera in her mouth.

"So I devised, over a number of years (it was sort of something that was in the background for a long time) a way of making pinhole cameras, which is very simple, but to make my mouth the aperture. I don't go into the darkroom and load the film in my mouth and then come out and do it, so it is actually still an object that's inserted into my mouth - but to have the orifice of the place where speech exits the body actually become the eye, and to just play with that. Then it was in the process of actually taking those pictures, seeing what they looked like, seeing in fact how the shape of the mouth is very much the same shape as the eye, and seeing myself become almost like the pupil within. The image of my head becomes almost like the pupil in the middle of the mouth, which is eye-shaped." Ann Hamilton