Is it a self-portrait

Is it a self-portrait if you set the aperture and exposure and hand the camera over to the talented guy sitting opposite you at the dinner table, so that he can take the shot for you?

I hesitated about posting this – for the reasons raised by Paul in his reply to my comment on his blog a photogenic world. You should check out his blog – he’s a great photographer who is taking a portraits of complete strangers as part of the WordPress Post a Day 2012 challenge.

I think most women suffer from a bit of this – and many men too, I suspect. Does my nose look too big? Are there bags under my eyes? And has he got my best side?

So yes, I thought about all those things and more and decided not to post. Then I looked again. Yes, my eyes look tired and my hair’s a mess, but it is what it is. It’s me. And it’s pretty much what I’d wanted to capture, without the baggy eyes, of course. I could have cloned them out in Photoshop, but post-processing is not really my style.

But is it s self-portrait

When I look at this shot and remember what was happening at the time I can forgive myself the wrinkles and the tired eyes. And I’m proud of the smile which was aimed at a camera called Percy, the man who owned it before me, and that talented guy who sat opposite and patiently waited while I fiddled with the camera to set up the shot.

The early bird

For landscape photography, the light at either end of the day is best. By March, sunrises are already getting a bit early, but the bonus is that you’ll have more evening light to enjoy after you get home from work.

This day, I rushed to the reservoir in the hope of catching the sun rise, or catch a layer of mist hanging on the water.

I was a little late, there were people scurrying by as I set up my tripod and hurried to catch the last of the little sunrise there was. One or two cast a sideways glance at me, but mostly people just went on their way.

I was on my own, aside from the quacking of a few ducks.

A shed by the water came into view as the trees seemed to shake off the mist as they stretched and waked.

And there was that bright, quiet moment that only lasts a little while before daytime starts in earnest.

Thursday walk

The Edale lambs are so unfazed by humans that on a good day you can get close enough to touch them. The good day was Tuesday and the film is still in my camera, but today they just glanced up and carried on grazing as I took a few shots.

Honesty

Self-portraits aren’t always about honesty. Self-portraits, like all photography, have the capacity to lie.

But this self-portrait is not an act, it’s me, how I felt on the day.

Even though I can’t recall the exact date, I do know the era. I know the endings and the beginnings.

And I wonder what you can see?

How to make a pinhole camera

And then how to use it.

For Worldwide Pinhole Day I constructed a pinhole camera from a shoebox, took some shots on photographic paper, then developed and scanned the resulting paper negatives. Here’s how I got on.

First, I used the Pinhole Camera Design Wizard from Mr Pinhole. Taking into account the paper size – 13 x 18 cm and the available shoe boxes I worked out that I could use a focal length (that’s the distance from the back of the box to the front)  of 21 cm and a pinhole of 0.61mm or f/344.

If you have some sewing needles of known sizes you work out which one to use from the handy chart at the Pinhole Gallery. It also has an exposure guide that will be useful later.

My needles weren’t labelled but luckily I live with someone who owns a micrometer.

Micrometer and correctly sized needle

So (or sew if you prefer) on to the construction. My box had a folding lid that I thought would work well as it was, so all I did was cut a square out of the side of the box where the pinhole will go -hint, that’s the hinged side, not the side where the flap will close to!

Cutting the hole for the pinhole plate.

Then I made sure it was light-tight by taping up all the seams. I used a sheet of black paper to line the inside – but it’s not strictly necessary.

Next I cut a rough square from a soft drinks can. I made it a fair bit bigger than the hole I’d made in the box – it will be taped to the inside of the box to make the “lens”.

Cutting out the pinhole plate

I used a ball-point pen to mark the centre of the plate, and used the needle, pressing it gently and pushing through on both sides to make the hole.

The finished pinhole plate

A quick test by holding it up to the light and voilà – it works. So I taped it to the inside of the box and cut a lens cap from a square of card, which I fixed to the outside of the box.

The view through the pinhole

Then I put 4 blobs of blu tak on the opposite side of the box, lining them up so they will hold the sheet of paper in place.

Now, into the darkroom with the box and some gaffa tape. Using only the safelight, I got out a sheet of photographic paper and pressed it onto the blu tak. I closed the lid and sealed the box down all the way around to prevent any light leaks.

The only thing left to do was to set the camera up and make some exposures.

Pinhole camera in use

This is where the exposure chart comes in. Photographic paper has an ISO of around 6 which is pretty slow so you’ll be exposing for minutes at a time rather than fractions of a second. To start the exposure, simply remove the lens cap and start timing. Don’t forget to stick it back over the pinhole when you’re done.

You’ll need to take the camera back into the darkroom to unload the paper and develop it.

When it’s dry you’ll end up with a paper negative like this:

Paper negative

If you’re a purist (and you have an enlarger) you can put it under the enlarger to make a positive print. I skipped that step and scanned and inverted the negative  to get this:

The finished article

In fact it was such good fun that I did it all over again and got this.

Rain streaked windows by pinhole

Clouds, anyone?

My commute is always eventful. There is weather, every day. Sometimes it’s thick cloud descending in a swirl of fog that leaves as fast as it arrives. There are rain storms that turn the roads into rivers. There’s snow. There’s blinding low light at a certain time of year when you have no option but to drive into the sunset.

And then there are days like this, when the sun bursts through the cloud layer and turns the sky steely silver and the land a watery gold.

Which is why I love clouds, and why I don’t mind a bit of rain. And why I’m not a big fans of blue skies – not when I have a camera in my hand at least. And it’s why, when I read this post by Karen over at Modern Memory Keeping, I thought about my commute.

The trouble with film

…is that by the time you get around to developing, and printing and scanning, you’ve often forgotten when and where the photo was shot.

I can tell you where – the village of Edale in the Peak District National Park. Edale lies in the shadow of Kinder Scout which was this week the scene of celebrations for the 80th Anniversary of the Kinder Trespass.

I can also tell you that I also took this shot that day – this is looking up towards The Nab and Ringing Roger that lie on the edge of Kinder Scout.