It came as a surprise: I’m suddenly in art school for realz. I was doing the preparatory year, to make my mind up about which course I wanted to take (Fashion&Textile, Fine Arts & Sculpture, Photography, or all of the above) and make a better chance of getting accepted next year. But then some cards were shuffled, and I had a talk with the coordinator of the part time Fine Arts course, and now I’m in!
Two weeks ago I felt like a grandma, being the oldest (by a couple of years) of all the students in the prep year, and last week I felt like a total fish because I was suddenly the youngest of the group. It’s hard to get bored like this, let me tell you.
Just before I switched I made a lot of pinhole photographs, and they’re worth putting up here. These were made with two different ‘cameras’: a cigar box and a tin can that used to contain cheese snacks.
The trick is to mount a tin strip with a TINY hole in it in front of a larger hole, put some paper negative (light sensitive paper that you can develop like film) in the back, seal the whole thing light-tight and leave it somewhere for a certain time. That time is the ’shutter speed’. After that time you cover the tiny hole, get to a dark room and develop the paper that was in the box. And now you’re in for a surprise, because it’s pretty hard to figure out exactly what exposure works. Even when conditions remain unchanged sometimes 3 minutes is too long, sometimes 6 minutes is too short, there’s no telling.
That’s annoying and neat at the same time. Because when you drop your paper in the developer and you start seeing these really crisp silhouettes, and gradually a fantastic image appears, that’s when you feel so good.
I made some good ones and some of bad ones. You can check out all the ones that had a distinguishable image on them here.
