Friday Bench: Self portrait

I had a brilliant day at Lacock Abbey last Sunday with Justin 'Pinhole' Quinnell playing around with various traditional photography techniques including Camera Obscura, turmeric printing and pinhole photography. The latter was most apt as it was World Pinhole photography day - the website is well worth a look with participants and a wide variety of viewpoints from around the world. Justin loves making unusual pictures using this technique and delighted in taking pictures up our noses and of our ears as well as more conventional views. Many of his techniques use recycled or very cheap materials and he has full instructions for various projects you might like to try on his website.

We all got to have a go with pinhole cameras made using old beer cans and traditional wet chemical developing techniques. I was pleased when it came to my turn to pose on the bench in the botanical garden and the results are shown above.

True to my Veg Plotting roots I was also pleased to take a photo looking up at the decaying daffodils in the botanic garden. I feel the atmosphere and texture of the photograph gives a nod to Fox Talbot and the photographic experiments he made in that very garden.

I also came home with a beer can pinhole camera loaded with photographic paper ready to try some solargraphy in the garden - a print showing how the sun tracks across the sky over a long period of time. You can also try this at home - Justin's instructions and video are here. Mine's going up in the garden later today - May Day seems an apt time to start this experiment. 

Must have another bash with my cyanotype kit as well - it's been great fun playing around with photography again 😊