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Description
I took this as part of my high school photography class way, way back when. I used a Quaker Oats container, painted all black inside. A tiny pin hole was poked in one side of the container. A 5x7 sheet of print paper was put in opposite the pin hole (in the dark room, of course). They we took our camera outside and I took this picture of the school and parking lot. I don't honestly remember the exposure time, but it was probably on the order of 15 - 30 seconds.

I really love the look of the resulting print. Don't forget I only had one chance to get it right when I was developing the print, and there was no Photoshop back then. It was just as the camera captured it.

This is a great project for any young person interested in photography because it gives them the basic concept of how a simple lens works. The hole is the lens. By playing with the size of the pinhole and/or container you can learn a lot about how aperture and focal length affects the photo. Of course with film, and thus, print paper becoming a rarity, these experiments will probably become a thing of the past, if they haven't already.

I'm all for progress and I love the flexibility that my Canon Rebel gives me. I save literally hundreds of hours by not having the develop the film and then print the prints. There was something that could always go wrong. Mix the developing solutions at the wrong concentrations, use them at the wrong temperature, or get the timing of how long the film should be in the solutions wrong and your whole roll of film was ruined.

Once you got past that and had some good negatives to work with then, assuming you had enough print paper to work with, you could then take the time to get the prints just right. There were many tricks and creative ways to create great works of photographic art in the darkroom. And each print was a unique work of are because, unless you kept meticulous notes, the chances of accurately reproducing your print was very remote.

All this gave you a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction as an artist that is hard to reproduce now with things being all digital. But where there is a creative mind, there will be unique and beautiful art. It is the mind, not the medium, that creates the art. The medium is just a means to an end. The important thing is to master that medium.

I once masted the medium of film and print photography. Now I am learning to master the medium of digital photography. My artistic vision and devotion hasn't changed, just the knowledge to bring it to fruition.

Description
I took this as part of my high school photography class way, way back when. I used a Quaker Oats container, painted all black inside. A tiny pin hole was poked in one side of the container. A 5x7 sheet of print paper was put in opposite the pin hole (in the dark room, of course). They we took our camera outside and I took this picture of the school and parking lot. I don't honestly remember the exposure time, but it was probably on the order of 15 - 30 seconds.

I really love the look of the resulting print. Don't forget I only had one chance to get it right when I was developing the print, and there was no Photoshop back then. It was just as the camera captured it.

This is a great project for any young person interested in photography because it gives them the basic concept of how a simple lens works. The hole is the lens. By playing with the size of the pinhole and/or container you can learn a lot about how aperture and focal length affects the photo. Of course with film, and thus, print paper becoming a rarity, these experiments will probably become a thing of the past, if they haven't already.

I'm all for progress and I love the flexibility that my Canon Rebel gives me. I save literally hundreds of hours by not having the develop the film and then print the prints. There was something that could always go wrong. Mix the developing solutions at the wrong concentrations, use them at the wrong temperature, or get the timing of how long the film should be in the solutions wrong and your whole roll of film was ruined.

Once you got past that and had some good negatives to work with then, assuming you had enough print paper to work with, you could then take the time to get the prints just right. There were many tricks and creative ways to create great works of photographic art in the darkroom. And each print was a unique work of are because, unless you kept meticulous notes, the chances of accurately reproducing your print was very remote.

All this gave you a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction as an artist that is hard to reproduce now with things being all digital. But where there is a creative mind, there will be unique and beautiful art. It is the mind, not the medium, that creates the art. The medium is just a means to an end. The important thing is to master that medium.

I once masted the medium of film and print photography. Now I am learning to master the medium of digital photography. My artistic vision and devotion hasn't changed, just the knowledge to bring it to fruition.