Here are a couple of images made with the recently finished 10×8 pinhole camera:

Bridge over the Wye at Tintern

The camera had no tripod bush and for this shot was placed on the ground.  The length of exposure has resulted in “movement” in the clouds which together with the obvious light fall-off and the grain of the planks has given a kind of dynamism to the photograph that I’m pleased with.

Water cascade at Tintern

For this shot the camera was rested rather precariously on a stone wall. 

Both images were shot on Fomapan 100 and processed in Rodinal in a secondhand Paterson orbital processor.  The Fomapan sheets work out at just over £1 each; chemicals are cheap, especially Rodinal which has an exceptional shelf-life.  I picked up my processor from Secondhand Darkroom Supplies for just under £50.  It processes one sheet of 10×8 at a time, or 4 sheets of 5×4.

Recently received my order from Steve Gosling of his book of pinhole photographs.  Some 48 monochrome images, excellently reproduced at 17cm square. 

In his introduction Steve writes, ” I’ve never been overly concerned with technical perfection or producing an accurate pictorial record of a location. For me the heart of landscape photography is to capture and communicate what I’m feeling……”

I would like to add to that “and to evoke in the viewer an emotional/intellectual response.”  The majority of the images in the book are seascapes, an environment that awakens a range of responses in almost all of us.   For me the photographs convey a great sense of emptiness and of loss; the images are unpopulated, the locations deserted and yet the hand of man is everywhere – whether it is the rusting hulks of the once proud fishing fleets of the north-west or the storm-clad skies over the deserted symmetry of Victorian and Edwardian architecture.  Pinhole photography with its inherent softness complements perfectly the atmosphere created by these images – never more so than in Two Seats and Heavenly Light.

There are other images, a dozen or so, which do not feature man-made structures at all.  In most of them one element – a tree or a rock – is isolated within a sweeping and often threatening landscape.  These are not friendly environments but disturbing and unwelcoming and where light struggles with the dark. 

I must also own up to knowing many of the locations and so for me there is the emotional tie of memory associated with the Lake District, Fleetwood and Scarborough.  Nevertheless the images have a timeless quality and it does not require personal knowledge of the places to appreciate their quality and power to evoke “the eternal note of sadness”.  

This is a fine collection of photographs where technique supports content admirably and while there is always an element of chance in pinhole photography, the composition of these photographs is evidence enough of Steve’s mastery of technique and coherence of vision.  

At £30 it is not a cheap book but in my opinion a valuable addition to any photographic library, and especially as the images originate in a pinhole camera.

Thought I’d start with the image I submitted to this year’s  World Pinhole Day.  It was shot just outside Monmouth, on the banks of the river Wye.  I used a homemade 6×7 camera and Fuji Velvia.