Pinhole Interrupted

July 2018: Shooting in Downtown Parking Lot, Toronto, CA

Working from memory of my high school lesson on building a pinhole camera, I decided to reconstruct the camera - I'm not entirely sure what happened to my original pinhole, probably got dumped in the garbage.

Anyway, it wasn't difficult to do, except the part where I accidently sprayed myself in the face with black paint - luckily I had on my glasses.  I did make it bigger than the original shoebox size because I wanted to print larger photographs, not realizing until later that carrying around this big box might be difficult or draw unwanted attention.

Travelling with a large pinhole camera on the bus and train was easier than I thought, but I felt bad for talking up an extra seat.  After arrival at the destination where the picture-taking would take place, I loaded the box with paper and headed outside to the parking lot for some test shots.

It turned out there was a guard in the security guard booth of the parking lot, who was curious (or more likely, suspicious) as to why I placed a huge black box on the concrete and then took a couple steps back from it.  The security guard walked out of his booth and stood right in front of the pinhole opening, not slightly off to the side or beside me, but directly blocking my shot.

He was really pleasant when asking about the box.  I took a deep breath and put myself in his place.  I could appreciate this may seem normal for me but may look totally weird for someone else and did my best to explain to him that it's a type of camera.

With the first shot being unusable, I ran down into the darkroom, reloaded the pinhole and took to the parking lot again, and was once again blocked by the pacing security guard.  Obviously, I was not successful in explaining how a pinhole functions; I should have provided a detailed explanation, but I was more focused on my exposure in progress….

breathe,

♥️ Christina