Pinholes

Every camera has a lens, a camera body, and either film or a digital sensor. Right? Not necessarily. 

The earliest "cameras" were cameras obscuras (from the Latin, dark chambers).  These were darkened rooms where one wall facing the sunlit exterior was pierced by a pinhole.  The tiny orifice permitted light to enter the chamber and project an inverted image of the outside on the opposite, inside wall.  Light travels in straight lines.  So, outside light reflected from high objects could enter the chamber through the pinhole and only project near the bottom of the opposite wall.  Reflected light from low objects could enter the pinhole and only project near the top of the opposite wall; and so forth. 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera.

Here, are nine pinhole "watercolors" of flowers and other cuttings from the garden.  The images are different from those that might be taken with a conventional camera in two respects.  First, pinhole images have infinite "depth-of-field." Thus, everything in each image is in focus.  And second, each image is in "soft" focus unlike the crisp, sharp images that are possible with modern lenses.  The illusion is that of watercolor paintings rather than photographs.  To heighten the illusion, the originals are printed 4" by 4" on watercolor paper (Epson Velvet Fine Art Paper).

Pinholes were originally installed at the Madison Gallery as a 3x3 matrix of framed, color photographs.  

Technical Notes -- Pinhole:  0.5mm orifice at about 1 foot from the subject; from P&L Solutions, Birmingham, UK. Camera Body: Hasselblad H1 film camera body.  Sensor: Hasselblad H4D-60 digital back at ISO 800, powered separately from the camera body.  Illumination -- Images were taken in a darkroom (camera obscura!) with two strobe light sources:  i) about 5 feet behind the subject, a 2,400-Ws strobe in a white soft-box; and ii) behind and above the camera, and about 4-1/2 feet from the subject, a 2,400-Ws strobe reflected from a silver umbrella.