Pinhole pottering

When I get an occasional day off from work there’s nothing I like better than pottering around with my pinhole camera. The act of foraging for photos and then figuring out how they’ll work with the simplest of cameras is so satisfying and just what I need to switch off from work.

At the end of October I had to go to Thaxted for my flu vaccination so I took the opportunity to go for a wander around the church with my pinhole camera and a roll of film. One of the things I love about medium format film is the limited number of frames on each roll. With just 12 photos to find it’s much easier to shoot a roll in one day, whereas the 36 exposures on a 35mm film can take me weeks to use up!

On this occasion I took some wide shots of the church, as well as looking for smaller details.

With small subjects you have to get in really close with a wide angle pinhole camera, although without a viewfinder you have to accept that sometimes you’ll misjudge just how close!

Photos taken 26 October 2022

Brass noir

I was back in Thaxted Church last weekend, but this time music was in my viewfinder rather than the architecture. Haverhill Silver Band give a concert in this beautiful building each year and I was asked to take some photos of them in action.

While Thaxted Parish Church can be a light and airy building on a sunny day, at night it’s a different story. The band had brought some extra lighting with them but the gloom brought some photographic challenges. Fortunately I’d packed my fast prime lenses and these helped me use what light there was as efficiently as possible.

Two of the evening’s soloists - click on any of the images to see them enlarged.

The photos I provided for the band were in colour, but the drama of the lighting gave things a film noir feel, with deep contrasts of light and shadow, so I couldn’t resist trying my favourites in black and white too.

Photos taken 12 November 2022