Week twenty-one

Not that I've ever caught anyone in the act, but if I ever see a strange looking person standing in the open with a black shoebox, sitting terribly still I'll never again think to myself "what on earth is that weird loser doing with a box?" I'll want to go over and congratulate them on their interest in pinhole photography - something that before this weekend I knew nothing about.

Clothing brand Diesel's latest experiential campaign, the "School of Island Life" has been a month-long programme of free and unique events, lectures and workshops from some very cool creative types all over the UK that has been open to the public, but the one I was most interested in was all about the unusual art form of pinhole photography led by photographer Sarah Roesink.

To be honest, I had absolutely no expectations, which as many of my friends know, is a little out of the ordinary for me but, I was not disappointed.  In fact, I can say unequivocally that I was blown away.
I'm sorry but did everyone else know that you can take a picture without a "camera" and just a black shoebox?!  I had no idea.  And, not only did I learn a lot from the day but I actually wasn't too bad at it either.

My friend Raymund and I joined another 6 for the class, at the Britannia pub in Victoria Park.  Sarah began with a little introduction on how pinhole cameras work.  Its all about the light, obviously....and a blacked out shoebox with a very small hole.  Essentially light from a scene passes through the single pin hole and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box.  Simple.

We all had to make our own pinhole cameras and Sarah gave us all a shoebox and all the materials.
We began by spraying the inside of our boxes black in order to block out any light and also tried not to get too high in the process.

Clearly Raymund and I did get a little high

Once back inside there was a lot of tearing up and binding with masking tape, cutting of cardboard, applying of aluminium strips and making pin-sized holes.   I felt like I was at school again and loved it.  I'm exactly the same now as I was back then - I wanted to do everything myself, do it first and not wait for anyone else.  Thankfully, Raymund was just as impatient as me.

After our cameras were ready (Raymund and I finished first ha) we had to go and get our "film" from the dark room.  Up until this point I still hadn't quite realised what we were doing and that this was the proper old school process and I was going to get to develop my own photos.  Having always wanted to do this and never having had the opportunity before, I was practically wetting myself in the darkroom (not because Raymund kept trying to scare me with constant poking).

With a sheet of photo paper in each of our cameras we were ready to rock.  Since pinhole cameras require such a lengthy exposure you just operate it manually with a small flap that covers the hole and you just hold it open when capturing your picture. Sarah advised an exposure time of two and a half minutes to begin with and to keep the subject and camera very still.  Everyone else played it safe and tried taking pictures of flowers and trees and the like on the first go but we insisted on testing our static skills from the word go.

After our brief moments of artistic silence we went up to the makeshift darkroom, where 3 trays of liquid sat in a bath.  The first is to develop the image, the second stops it and the third is a fixer. Its very exciting to see the image start to come through once the paper is immersed in the bath and it just makes you realise how utterly mad science is - just how and why things work.  It baffles me......

So very little appeared on our first photos but that just meant that we had to have a longer exposure so we spent the next couple of hours sitting still for up to ten minutes for each of our shots. I've never not spoken for so long.  However, it seemed worth it in the end as both Raymund and I produced pretty cool images (and obviously the best in the class)

The day was a real triumph for me and another activity that just reaffirms why it was such a great reason to start my blog.

Diesel have done something very clever and cool with this campaign, giving people access to fairly unusual and specialist areas to learn about.  My one criticism of the day, however, is that there were only eight people in the class and six of them had a link to someone who either worked at Diesel or at their PR company.  As it was such a sought-after workshop there could have perhaps been a few more places available.  Saying that, everything was paid for, there were refreshments, food and each one of us had the time to take at least four photos and to develop them all.  Sarah was a wonderful choice of teacher and was patient and warm throughout.

There are still a couple of events left so check out all the details here.

This week I'm off to Friday Nights at Goodwood - a day at the races followed by a night of music and dancing.  Fun fun fun darling!