London in slow motion

Back in April I spent a day in London with two of my pinhole cameras, foraging for interesting imagery which would work in this slow genre of photography.

Click on any of the photos to seem them enlarged.

One of my early stops was St Mary at Hill Church, in the City, whose dramatic lines suited the wide angle view of my 6x6 camera.

From there I strolled down to the River to capture some of the movement in the water with both my 6x6 and large format pinhole cameras.

One of the joys of pinhole photography is the way it captures periods of time, rather than just fractions of a second. This shows best in photos which have some movement, especially water. This was the only excuse I needed to hop on one of the clipper boats on the River and take a ride down to Greenwich.

I got off the clipper at Greenwich and took a stroll around the Old Royal Naval College. The architecture has so many possibilities, and I only just scratched the surface - I’ll definitely need to come back another day.

Another large format image - the wide angle field of view makes the building seem to stretch for miles!

On the boat back to central London I had another try at some action pinhole photography with my large format camera, as we passed Canary Wharf. I’d like to claim I timed this perfectly to catch the buildings beneath the canopy of the boat, but it was complete luck!

Exploring Tower Bridge

Further along the south bank of the River Thames, the area around City Hall offered all sorts of interesting lines which suit the wide view of a pinhole camera.

Eventually my feet began to ache so I took the bus back to Liverpool Street - taking a photo en-route, naturally!

Finally, a selection of images from around the area behind Liverpool Street Station.

Photos taken 28 April 2022

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Every April one Sunday is adopted by the pinhole photography community as their day - an opportunity to slow down and see the world in a different way. This year the day coincided with the Society of Recorder Players’ National Festival, so naturally I decided to combine the two!

During our final massed playing session (some 150 musicians) I explained that I’d be going around taking photos with what looked like a wooden box and gave an idea of what the photos might look like, although I’m sure many of the players still thought I was crackers!

My friend Moira has turned into a whirl of energy as she conducts the orchestra!

Some closer shots of the players below, including a self portrait in the second one! Click on any of the images to see them larger.

John kindly allowed me to get very close as he played his contrabass. Because the instrument roots him to the same spot more than the smaller recorders he’s still recognisable in the resulting photo!

After the festival had finished I still had some film left over so I took a detour to Flatford on my way home - home of John Constable and a familiar sight through his painting ‘The Haywain’.

And finally, a quick stop at East Bergholt Church to complete the roll of film before I headed home to develop it!

Photos taken 24 April 2022

Where boats go to die....

Pin Mill is a popular location for East Anglian photographers. It’s home to a boat graveyard - a spot along the edge of the River Orwell where lots of wooden vessels have been left to quietly rot away. Decay is almost always photogenic and this spot had long been on my must visit list.

Through the wonders of social media I’ve got to know lots of other pinhole photographers so on this occasion I met up with Andrew Keedle, who lives not far from Pin Mill in Suffolk. We spent a most enjoyable morning exploring the wrecks together, figuring out what would suit this slow medium best.

With an ultra wide focal length, it pays to get really close to your subject with pinhole cameras and I played with just how close I could get to some of the boats without sinking into the mud!

After a spot of lunch Andrew took me to one of his favourite locations, the Orwell Country Park which runs alongside the river. Here I crept beneath the canopy to capture a vertiginous view of the trees above, as well as photographing an amazing ancient oak tree.

Photos taken on 24 March 2022.

A different view

In my last post I shared some digital images from my birthday wander along the beach at West Wittering. While I was there I also spent some time taking pinhole photos to bring out some of the movement in the waves. Pinhole photography is so good at this - you can capture whole chunks of time in a longer exposure.

The following morning I drove down to Aldwick, arriving just in time for low tide. I wanted to photography the chunk of the D-Day Mulberry Harbour which lies on the beach but the only time you can get close is when the sea is out. This enormous chunk of concrete escaped en-route to Normandy back in 1944 and has sat here ever since.

On this particular occasion the tide wasn’t especially low and the blustery wind was whipping up the waves. Sometimes you can walk right around it, but this time I had to keep a sensible distance so as not to get swamped!

With a couple of frames left on my film I used them to catch a couple of other watery scenes before retreating to my car to avoid getting soaked by the incoming rainstorm!

Photos taken 9 & 10 March 2022

Going solo

After my darkroom workshop with Andrew Bartram back in April I was keen to put my new founding film developing skills into practice. About ten days later I took myself off to Audley with my pinhole camera to take some photos, with the intention of developing them when I got home.

I found plenty of photographic inspiration and had no difficulty in completing the 12 shots on my roll of film. Once I was home I light proofed our our downstairs toilet with the blackout cloth I’d bought for the job. As a room with no windows it’s only a case of sealing the tiny slivers if light which sneak in around the door - the perfect darkroom! Loading the film took a couple of attempts but once it was done I spent half hour at the kitchen sink developing, fixing and rinsing my negatives.

When the film emerged from my developing tank I was very relieved to find I had photos, but disappointed to discover I’d made a bit of a horlicks of loading the film on the spiral. It had stuck together in a couple of places, so a handful of the shots were lost. Just as well I’d gone somewhere I can easily return to in order to recreate the same photos another time!

Overall I’m pleased with the results though and since then I’ve been careful to make sure I don’t make the same mistake. Even better, each roll of film costs me about a fifth of what I was paying to have them developed commercially so that leaves me more cash to buy film!

Photos taken on 14 April 2022

Developing my skill set

One of my resolutions for 2022 was to spend money on education rather than more camera gear - a plan I’ve more or less adhered to! One of my educational outings was a two day workshop with Andrew Bartram, doing some pinhole photography and learning to develop my own film. I’ve written about the workshop and what I learnt over on my Inspiration and Education page but I thought I’d share the resulting images from the day in a post here.

Alongside my pinhole camera I took a Holga 120N, which I’d recently bought for the princely sum of £21 on eBay. This simple plastic camera has just two apertures and one shutter speed (1/100 of a second) and a basic zone focusing system but it’s capable of surprisingly sharp and characterful images. Even better, it weighs almost nothing which is a joy compared to some of my digital gear!

I had some fun with my little Ondu 6x6 too, especially at the decaying house Andrew took me to. I’ll definitely be coming back to spend some more time here when I get a chance as I think this old structure has lots more to offer.

Many years ago I heard Charlie Waite say during a talk that every landscape photographer goes through a ‘shed’ period, photographing barns and sheds in the countryside. The Cambridgeshire Fens offered plenty of opportunities for me to follow his example!

Photos taken on 4th April 2022

Northern Ireland in slow motion

Back in June we flew over to Northern Ireland for a holiday and for the first time in nearly three decades I took a film camera with me. I chose to take my little wooden 6x6 pinhole camera - about as simple a machine as you can use for image making. Getting the film to our destination was a tad stressful, not knowing whether the scanning machines at security would be old fashioned X-rays (which are ok with slower film) or the newer CT scanners, which will wipe your film before it’s even been developed! Fortunately all was well and the fact that you’re seeing my photos means they made it through unscathed.

The beautiful sand dunes at Portstewart Strand

Our destination was a cottage on the north coast, at Castlerock, which gave us endless places to visit along the coastline. One of our early ports of call was Portstewart Strand, a beautiful sandy beach, with dunes stretching as far as the eye can see.

Just a couple of miles from our cottage was the charming Mussenden Temple, a Georgian gem. Once upon a time it stood far enough inland that it was possible to drive a horse and carriage right around its circumference. With coastal erosion this is now far from possible and one wonders whether it will ultimately fall into the sea, or perhaps steps will be taken to dismantle the Temple and move it away from the precipice.

On the same site, but further inland stands Downhill House, another Georgian building which hasn’t survived as well as the Temple. During World War II it was used to house RAF servicemen and women, but all that remains today is a shell - it’s amazing how quickly a building can be reclaimed by nature if it’s left untouched.

Kevin kindly loitered in the doorway to create a human silhouette for me here

One of the places at the top of our ‘must visit’ list was, of course, the Giant’s Causeway. I’ve seen countless images of these amazing basalt columns but it was even better to see them firsthand. I took a leap of faith and used only my pinhole camera to photograph the causeway, trusting that the slowish exposure times would blur or remove many of the tourists. I’m so pleased I did as the resulting photos are more atmospheric and characterful than anything I could have made with a digital camera. Naturally, I received some curious looks from the other tourists as I climbed around the rocks with a wooden box atop my tripod, but I’m used to that now!

Do click on the thumbnails to see these larger - it’s worth it!

A Giant’s Causeway selfie with a difference - we had to remain as still as possible for ten seconds!

Views of the Causeway from our walk back to the visitor centre…

My final pinhole location of the holiday was the magical Dunluce Castle, just a few miles west of the Causeway. Standing on a rocky outcrop and reached by a bridge, it’s astonishing that building such an impressive structure here was possible in the early 16th century. It must have been an imposing sight in its heyday but today it remains as a decaying shell.

Photos taken in June 2022