San Diego Through the Lens (Pinhole Camera)
In this portion of our San Diego Through the Lens project, we had to build pinhole cameras. We started off by studying light and how it works. Then we took Pringles™ cans and made them into pinhole cameras. About 99% of them did not work. So we had to identify, what was wrong with it, and how we could improve upon it? After we revised them, we took some more pictures, and yet most of them still didn't work. So we then started to build and design our own cameras. Once we did that, we had to use them to take pictures of our neighborhoods. We had to use 35 mm color or black and white film. This means we would have develop them constantly. But we learned that most people's cameras were not working too well, so we decided to all build the same kind of camera, out of a matchbox. We then took these matchbox cameras to take pictures of our neighborhoods, and they worked much better. We then created calendars out of the pictures we took.
The next part of this was to take a self portrait. Instead of rolls of film, we would use paper film, and load and develop them in our 'dark room'. With our self portrait we had to write up an artist statement, which explained why we took our picture the way we did, and how we knew how far to stand from our pinhole camera, and how high up it had to be. |
For me this project was very fun and frustrating at the same time. I had fun building my camera, coming up with designs, and seeing my film after development. But the frustrating part was trying to figure out why my camera wasn't working or getting exposed images constantly. I learned a lot about the way light travels, and about similar triangles and identifying them. If I could do one thing differently, it would be to make a matchbox camera from the start.
My Self Portrait
Artist Statement |
My 2 cameras that I used.
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