This was my first time building a pin-hole camera from scratch. It was a little tricky putting it together, I tried to

be as precise and accurate as I could with my measurements to prevent any errors and possible light leaks.

 

Okay. Time for a confession. Before this project, I always thought that film strips were perfectly pre-framed like this. So for the longest time, I tried to figure how I was gonna load up my camera properly so that my pictures would be captured within such 'frames' but of course I found nothing. I ended up simply aligning the film within the camera and crossed my fingers.

 

 

 

scissors, x-acto knife, pencil, ruler, 
pin, paint brush, printer, scanner
 

 

 

 

 

I figured that paper maché wasn't reliable enough, so I taped all over it with

electrical tape after I let it sit for a few hours. There's no room for failure ;)

 

Another obstacle I ran into was figuring out a way to wind slash finding something to recieve the exposed film strip. Many resources suggested finding an empty metal canister but since I couldn't find one, I took apart an old toy camera for its rewind lever and take-up spool. When I got to the photo lab, I figured that my unprotected film strip might get ruined if I took my camera apart to retrieve the film. Luckily, they provided a film changing darkroom bag for me to blindly take the camera apart, wind the film back into its canister, and return it into the plastic film container.

 

 

 

 

The final camera ...

 

 

 

Passage. noun.

the act or process of moving forward, moving through, under,

over, or past something on the way from one place to another.

 

En route from Richmond to Vancouver, I studied the positive and negative

spaces conducted by the foreground elements, background, and light.

 

This is my interpretation of passage, and here's what I got from my first attempt.

 

 

 

 

We are all familiar with light leaks, but most of the time it's through post-processing. 

That's why I was delighted to capture natural light leaks through my own film photographs.

 

Experimenting with film was definitely something I wasn't used to. There were so many moments when I had to look up online resources for support. I never doubted the design of my camera but after showing my camera to one of my photographer friends, he told me to be aware of my DIY lens hood (or consider taking it apart) because it may effect the efficiency of capturing light. Because of his tip, I decided to shoot most of my images outdoors and most of these images were exposed for 25-40 seconds.

 

I'm pretty happy with how my pictures turned out and I'm looking forward to giving it another go with my exisiting pin-hole camera or making a completely new one to improve the quality of my images. I would definitely do it again to get a better idea of how the exposure effects the images, and I'd like to try taking shots with double exposure.