2017: 42 Pinhole Cameras! 2018: 50 MORE !!

In November of 2017, the artist live work space where my studio is located had an Open Studio.  Many many people came through our studios that day.  I had made 50 pinhole cameras, thinking that I would have enough to last for a few months Forty-two (yes that is 42) walked out the door and have hopefully been put up and are exposing.  I am very excited to get these cameras back.  (Note: many have come back!) It seems they were going to many points far and wide:  people were getting them for themselves and also as holiday presents for family members and friends across the country.  One person said she was sending the camera to New Zealand.    Special thanks to all those who got a camera that day.  May the pinhole gods look down upon you and may the pinhole bandit never find your camera.

This year (2018) on November 10th, we will have another Open Studio at my building. Again, I have about 50 cameras made and ready to walk out the door. I have rectangular tins as well as many circular ones. I am hoping to get some of the cameras back from last year at this time. I will also have 10 large prints of my pinhole landscapes called Innards. These images are printed just for the Open Studio and will be offered at a special price: one day only sale!

Please drop by and see the great art that is made in this building and see all the Pinhole Images that have been made recently by myself and others here. Pick up a pinhole camera and be a part of the Project. The image below was made on color negative film in a four inch by five inch Leonardo pinhole camera. I have also posted the card for the Open Studios below too. Hope to see you there.

White Water Creek, Oregon

Catching Up

As many of you know I have been a photography teacher in two different public high schools for the last 24 years. This past year was my last teaching high school. I could say I retired but I prefer to say that I have become a full time pinhole photographer. I get to stay at home and work in my studio all day long. That is about as good as it gets in my book. So now I need to catch up on this website and put up about 1000 images that have yet to be posted. I thank you for your patience with this. I simply have not had enough hours in the day. I have spent the last few months getting my own work organized and printed. I went to the Grand Tetons on a wonderful road trip and spoke at the SPENW conference held at the University of Wyoming Research Station in the Grand Teton National Park. It was a great trip and a fantastic conference. I shot 18 4 x 5 inch color negatives in a pinhole camera, then came back and shot a most wonderful wedding with the same camera (more on that later). So dear readers, I give you the pinhole image made from the front window of the car during the Teton trip and will begin today to post the images that have not yet made it to publication.

Thanks for visiting this site, reading the posts and looking at the images. As always if there are any questions about your images, please let me know. And if you would like a camera, please email me with your land address and I will send you one.

A digital image of the pinhole camera inside the car being exposed.

Two week exposure from front window of car while driving to the Grand Tetons and back.

Happy World Wide Pinhole Day

Sunday was  World Wide Pinhole Day:  around the world, pinhole photographers made images and are now posting them at the WWPD website.  I was set to teach a workshop at  Photographic Center NW on pinhole photography with John Blalock, one of the greats.  But as luck and finances would have it, the workshop was canceled due to lack of signups.  I think people have  these ideas about Pinhole Photography:  that it should be mostly free, that it is easy and fun and largely done with recycled materials and alternative papers and films.  All of the above are true, exept that it is not easy-it is always challenging and the unexpected creeps in and in the final reckoning, I never capture what I thought I was seeing.  I make mainly long exposure pinhole on film and maybe it is the time I have to contemplate the image in my head that makes it so different from the reality that I have seen.  I am not complaining. It is good to be surprised and to lose some of the "control" we think we have over art and life.  In fact, there is no real control and those who think they have it make images  that are devoid whimsy and chance, the two most exciting elements in photography for me.

So many great things have been happening with the Pinhole Project, and I am really really behind in posting images!  I will give you some hints:  several students at Bainbridge High School made multiple hole cameras, exposing the holes in different places for different amounts of time.  The cameras were old colored pencil tins, very wide angle. Four students went together and made a panoramic pinhole that exposed in the four cardinal directions in four separate containers.  They then took those images and working together with Photoshop made an amazing panorama.  I post some here along with my World Wide Pinhole Day images.

Multi hole pinhole camera by Tia Preston

Multi hole pinhole camera by Bryna Ross

Multiple hole pinhole camera by Theo Hytopoulos

Panoramic Pinhole by Sean Lindsey, Theo Hytopoulos, Akio Hansen and Jarrah TomasovichSturgeon

90 Day pinhole exposure by Janet Neuhauser  (between the curtains and the vellum covered windows)  Taken down on World Wide Pinhole Day.

Taken on World Wide Pinhole Day by Janet Neuhauser:  holga pinhole cap on a Nikon DSLR.

It's Been Busy Around Here: MOHAI and WWPD

The Pinhole Project continues and continues.  On March 31st, the Pinhole Project went to the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle where we did a workshop for three hours, for their Maker Day. (https://mohai.org/event/maker-day-pinhole-cameras/) It was a beautiful Seattle day and there was an early baseball game at 1:00;  Needless to say museum attendance was down but in three hours we stayed busy and help visitors make about 60 cameras.  I made a 3 hours exposure with my 4 x 5 pinhole camera on film but it is still at the lab being developed.  I will post that when it comes back.  The MOHAI workshop was an exercise in organization.  I had a great team with three volunteers from Bainbridge High School to help everyone make their cameras.  I will start to receive these cameras back in the mail around mid May.  Look for the latest news post about this at that time.

On April 29th (in three weeks!), the Pinhole Project is involved in an event at the Photographic Center NW (pcnw.org).  John Blalock, an accomplished Seattle pinhole photographer and I will teach attendees  how to do all kinds of pinhole exposures on film and paper in homemade cameras, in Holgas, commercially made  cameras and crazy inventions that work  and also with DSLR's with pinhole body caps.  We are making the daylight studio at PCNW into a giant camera obscura.  And we have a link where participants can upload their work directly to the World Wide Pinhole Day website;  (here is a link for the website generally;  our link is not active yet).  http://pinholeday.org/    It will be a really fun and exciting day.  Go to pcnw.org to register.  We will have darkrooms and digital labs available for post processing.

So get on-line and register for the World Wide Pinhole Day workshop.  See you there.  Below is a poster we made for the day and the link to register.

https://shop.pcnw.org/products/world-wide-pinhole-day-workshop

Participants far and wide in the pinhole project

Many people over the last three years have made pinhole images and they do indeed come from far and wide.  In this age of lighting speed communcation, the Pinhole Project uses the USPS to send out cameras. and most people send them back that way as well.  Cameras come and go, are used and reused and at any given moment, there are probably  75 cameras out.  An alternate way to record reality.  Below are some images that were exposed for a few days to several months. You can find these  photographs n the folder Images from Everywhere,  Represented here are Colorado, Pennsylvania, Canada, New York City (Brooklyn and Manhattan), Eastern Washington, Calgary, Spokane, Oakland, Nebraska, Antarctica.  Thanks for looking.

Tiffany Clendenin

Mitch and Lucy Kern/Father and Daughter.  

Cameron Handy

Judy Haselton

Maureen McNeil

Stacy Greene

Sylvia da Swaan

Melissa Rackham

Katie Miller

Jess Tampa

April Surgent

The Happy Accident.......

I have longed viewed pinhole photography as the happy accident.  One never knows what will happen.  These long exposures are not immediate like digital photography.  Though one can get a digital pinhole cap to replace the lens on a DSLR, the image can still not be seen before it is made.  What I love about Pinhole Photography is  the unpredictability and innate creativity. The pinhole, like the lens,  focuses light rays on to a light senstive emulsion or sensor.  Unlike the lens, it does not always see exactly the same way one thinks it is seeing.   For me as a public school teacher, pinhole photography has been a way to get teenagers to think outside the box (no pun intended), slow down and hold an image over time in their minds instead of on their screens.  It harkens back to another time, when the world was slower and people were eager to be amazed.  

So here's to the happy accident.  I have always said there are no bad pinhole  images.  Each one teaches something about what is seen and the person who made it.  During the long exposure process, cameras often fall down, get put back up the "wrong" way, get rained or snowed on, get taken by the pinhole bandit.  But all the while, they do what photography does best:  focus and gather the light and make an image.  The image is not perfect, just like the people who make it.  And that makes it all the more valuable.

Below are nine images that all illustrate the Happy Accident in some way. Some of  my  personal favorites done in conjunction with the  Pinhole Project.

Janet Neuhauser

Janet Neuhauser

Janet Neuhauser

Janet Neuhauser

Jesse Tampa

Eric Riedel

Gaelen Lee

Ray Deardorf

Tara Champion

Bainbridge High School Images from Fall 2016 Uploaded

I have spent the last few days uploading approximately 180 images made by the students in Bainbridge High School's photography program this last fall.  They made a wonderful variety of images, most in regular small metal cans but some did round tins and two hole tins.  I love the variety and color that they managed to get.  My goal now is to collect a few months worth of images at a time and get them uploaded.  Check out this gallery on the Gallery Page.  It is a good one!  Here are a few of my favorites.

Image by Isabel Thompson

Two hole camera image by Mara Grace Smith

Image by Mikka Krause

Image by Dustin Grogger:  he got some awesome orange squigglies!

The Pinhole Project Website Moves Forward Slowly

The Pinhole project has been live for about a month now and the website is far from being done.  There are so many images to be uploaded.  If anyone in the Seattle area would like to volunteer in the studio on Saturdays, tagging, organizing and uploading images, times are available beginning in January.  There are at least 2500 images still to be done.  To be done means to be looked at and appreciated.  Handled with care .  The entire archive is getting a once or twice over. The images are stunning.  And so we move forward slowly, looking at what's been made and thinking about time and light and the best way  to present them.

Today  I would like to comment on the inherent beauty of this archive andthese long exposure images. Organizing and editing them is a pleasure.  The cameras gather light over time,  perhaps my favorite part of all photography.  The paper responds slowly to the dim pinhole image. The golden rule is long exposures , for the most part, make better images  with finer detail. (the longest surviving placement and exposure so far has been two years;  that exposure is muddied, no sun trail present).   The cameras record everything and capture nothing actually happening in reality but the light; while all the while, something private and personal comes through.   Everyone who has made a long exposure  knows the image of the place the camera recorded.  Exposures are  sometimes for months. The act of tending, deciding when to take it down, the anticipation are all a part of the image.  

 I am dedicated to publishing many images  here.  Below are three from the archive.  Take a look.

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This one by Bainbridge High School graduate Troy Armstrong in a round camera he made.  Not such what the big shapes are on the left and right.

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This image was made by Victoria Bredy in 2015.  Search her name on the Home page  to see more of her work as a student at Bainbridge High School.

From the early days of the project, this one by Jess Tampa made on the edge o the airspace in her San Francisco apartment.  The lines at the top are the sun trails  recorded on the wall of the airspace during the three month exposure.  Viewers have asked if it was made in a subway station.

The Sunny Arms Artists Pinhole Project: Out There

Over two years ago, the artists at the Sunny Arms, the building where I live and work, agreed to expose pinhole cameras out their windows for 90 days, from the Summer Solstice to the Fall Equinox.  The results were so spectacular that everyone agreed to expose cameras until we had covered each season.  The project came  to be called, Out There:  Pinhole Images from the Sunny Arms Artists.  Over the course of the next two years (the time it took us to expose all four seasons), over 100 images were made from our windows.  The residents changed, but the pinhole cameras continued to be exposed.  You can see an update on this project in this blog,  http://www.janetneuhauser.com/out-there-an-update/ that was published in 2015.

When I heard about the public art project called City Panorama, I was inspired to submit the first season of Out There to it.  Sponsored by Photographic Center Northwest, King County Metro and 4Culture, the project has placed hundreds of murals in the last six years on bus shelters throughout King County.  I am pleased to announce that the Sunny Arms first season of Out There has been placed on a bus shelter on Beacon Avenue South and South Holly Street, just up Beacon Hill from our building.  A great big thanks to all three organizations who have sponsored this wonderful project.  A great way to make our bus shelters more inviting and show off the photography of so many people throughout King County.

On the Photographic Center NW website (pcnw.org) a description of the project is as follows:

The City Panorama Project began in 2010 when King County Metro, WA partnered with PCNW to expand the public art scene in Seattle and other cities in King County. As a way to incorporate art into everyday life, to beautify Seattle and other cities served by Metro, and to make new perspectives and ideas available to all, the City Panorama Project seeks photographic artwork that will accomplish these objectives while increasing the visibility of the photographic arts. Over 450 photo murals have been installed since the launch of this public art project in 2010. This annual project is funded through a 4Culture grant and now enters its sixth year.

So special thanks to the Sunny Arms artists who collaborated to make this project happen and to all the Seattle and King County organizations who also collaborated to beautify our county.  I am honored to be a part of this.  If you are in the neighborhood be sure to stop by "our" bus shelter and oh, don't forget to take the bus much more often!

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Live at Last

When I wrote the Biggest News Around Here blog post is was August 4th.  Now it is November 12th and this website is still not done but hopefully we are going live today.  There is so much more involved in designing and creating a website that I ever imagined.  This is a beginning that I am hoping you will return to as it evolves and changes.  Thanks for being a part of the Pinhole Project.  Wish us luck!  Oh and the image with this is by Jess Tampa, a six month exposure  of her kitchen.