Pinhole Fun.

A while back, maybe a year or so ago, I picked up an inexpensive gadget for my Nikon: a pinhole lens. I had intended to use this for a wedding that I was shooting, but the couple decided they didn’t have time to pose in a local park. A great shame. I had pretty much forgotten about this lens, until an acquaintance of mine, English photographer Alfie Goodrich, announced a workshop based around pinhole photography.

What makes a pinhole lens special? Let’s see – it’s taking a trip back in time to the tenth century, recreating those early imaging techniques but with the added value of being able to see the recorded image right away. Stripping cameras back to their bare essentials – and dealing with the problems early photographers faced – long exposure times and images that suffered from poor quality lenses. Wearing the hair shirt, if you like. A little bit of adversity goes a long way.

So I’ve been shooting with my Kenko Pinhole Lens (details in Japanese here)http://www.2dachsies.com/2dachsies.com/Pinhole.html#9

You don’t need to be able to read Japanese to see that this little beauty has an aperture of F250!! – and a field of view approximately equivalent to a 50mm Lens.  Here in the first shot I’m on a 2 second exposure, so holding the camera on the ground kind of makes sense:

Today I took a bike ride to Nakano-ku, and cruising along route 318, got the shot below. Exposure 1/6 second, handheld and riding at about 10km/hour. I’m having a lot of fun with pinhole!

Why don’t you teach?

My friends sometimes ask me ‘why don’t you teach photography?’ And this is something I can ask myself as well. I have done it, on an ad-hoc basis, many years ago. And it was very enjoyable.

Teaching, for me, comes with a huge duty of care. It’s not just about handing down judgements or showing off to adoring students. It’s a lifetime, condensed into the few weeks or months that your student wants to commit. And trying to condense a lifetime is, well, a pale imitation. Ever had powdered mashed potatoes? Just not the same, is it? No matter how much milk or butter you add, something is missing.  So I guess we just have to set our sights a little lower.

I think that is my biggest barrier to teaching: I seek perfection – whereas teaching can only set the ball in motion, tease out a creative interest, or fuel an active imagination. Perfection is the horizon. An unattainable goal, set at infinity, beyond the reach of we mere mortals.

So perhaps I should challenge myself, outside of my comfort zone.  To teach in the pursuit of perfection, but without the overriding, crushing self-criticism, that has crippled my artistic life up until now.