NEW JERSEY PINHOLE CLUB EXHIBITION, Unique Photo, Philadelphia, PA, April 1-30, 2023 - one of my color stereo pinhole photographs was selected to be included in a slideshow of contributing pinhole photographers worldwide.

Photo: Cal Goodin

The making of the Prospect Park lake pinhole image….

In late February I learned the New Jersey Pinhole Club, a quite active group of @10 photographers fascinated by the pinhole muse who all happen to weirdly live in close proximity to each other straddling the NJ/PA borders from what I understand, announced an exhibition in Philadelphia of their members’ work to be presented as a month long launch to World Pinhole Photography day on April 30th. They put out an invitation to the world inviting those who wanted to contribute to be included in a continuous slideshow during the month long display to submit one pinhole photograph and so I did.

During December I became somewhat obsessed with the making of stereo Instax Mini films in one of my homemade pinhole cameras I made last year to explore the instant film in pinhole technique. The idea was initially to create a series of holiday cards for family and friends and I found myself continuing on the theme into the new year.

Though I had several current images to choose to submit to the show, I was after something new specifically for this event. I was wandering around the Crowne Heights side of the park lake and caught the late afternoon light in this. The films were taped side-by-side getting the same exposure and angle of view except what I have found working on this project approach and the magic of the ‘pinhole’, is sometimes the result is a continuation of the image across and sometimes it goes to different places. This was handheld or placed on the ground I recall as I don’t always use a tripod with the smaller pinhole cameras so there was some movement which added to the distortion yet there was a strange balance with this one which I chose to submit to the show when I saw the result.

To process my exposures I unload the box camera in a changing bag and manually put both films back in an Instax cartridge as they are sold new. I load that cartridge into an Instax point/shoot camera, tape over the lens and flash to avoid further exposure and then trigger the shutter which sends the films through the camera rollers that break the chemistry pods and distribute across the films and process the image. When I started working with Instax in the pinhole cameras I didn’t have a camera to run them through so I attempted as some do, to manually break the pods which are part of each film, by rolling over them on a hard surface in the changing bag with various objects. The most successful from those attempts was a Brayer paint roller which returns anywhere from 70-90 percent and occasionally all of an image. I finally gave in and purchased two of the Instax point and shoot cameras second hand, one for mini and the other for the larger wide format which of course gave the most success in processing.

This image had artifacts as per generally normal with pinhole technique some more than others and with most of us doing this technique, the artifacts are part of the magic!