Week 2 - Pinhole Photography (Cream Cracker Pinhole Camera)

This is another lesson I was unfortunate to miss, due to being enrolled on Fashion with Photography at the time. Although I missed this lesson in particular I did mange to make it to the next session where Justin Quinnell was teaching us the fundamentals of  Pinhole Photography, this time using a Cream cracker as the hole.

                                                                     (Cream Cracker Pinhole camera results)

To make a cream cracker pinhole, you will need a cereal box, photographic paper, gaffer tape, flash guns and of course a cream cracker!

Once assembled we headed to the darkroom to take advantage of the darkness for this particular shot, we held the camera in front of a student's face and asked two other students to hold a flash gun each at the side of the students face, after a count of three we exposed the image for a second or two. We when back out into the light, removed the photographic paper. We could see the negative image and with our mobile phone cameras we captured the negative with a negative filter, the results was amazing!

                                  (This this the negative of the image above that we photographed and inverted using our mobile phones)

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Week 2 - Deadpan Photography

Charlotte Cotton's book "The photograph as Contemporary Art"  helped me understand the meaning of 'deadpan photography' She describes "the deadpan aesthetic" as "a cool, detached and keenly sharp type of photography, what can be seen in a glance,  is the seeming emotional detachment and command on the part of the photographer"

Photographers like Rineke Dijkstra's use deadpan in portraiture her subjects are usually posed with them conveying little emotion and the photographer works documenting reality rather than manipulating the subject, lighting or background.

The deadpan aesthetic is not limited to portraits however, Photographers like Andreas Gursky, whom Cotton identifies as the "figurehead of contemporary deadpan photography. Gursky makes wall size photos of interiors, landscapes and cityscapes.

Two of the most influential photographers in deadpan photography were a couple by the name of Bernd and Hilla Becher they helped shape deadpan photography into what it is today.

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Week 1 - Wet Collodion process

Unfortunately I was not on this course when the Wet Collodion workshops took place, I was enrolled on to another course at the time. I am very interested in the process so I did my own research on it, although not having the specialist equipment available to carry out any practical work on this unit, I have included a brief history of Wet Collodion Process and some photographs I found whilst researching this practice.

The Process was invented by Frederick Scott Archer and introduced in the 1850's and by the end of the decade it had almost entirely replaced the Daguerreotype invented by Louis Daguerre, mostly due to the speed which Wet Plate could be exposed, seconds rather than minutes.

Wet plate is still used to this day with Photographers like Sally Mann choosing to use this format regularly.


                                          Sally Mann (Self Portraits 2006)

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