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35mm Matchbox Pinhole Camera Photographs

Taylor H
May 2, 2018
4 min read

This experiment didn't exactly turn out how I planned it to, I took 23 photographs, ended up with 8 clear ones, and 24 scans. The ones that didn't come out properly look nice still, they have quite a painterly quality to them.

The idea of this shoot was to document my living space (aka my room), since I think that someone's domicile can tell a lot about that person. This fits the brief quite well, since I'm being introspective and looking at my own personality and how my mind works. Looking at my belongings and their surfaces and textures can give an insight into that.

Below I will be talking about the photographs that came out nicely, and below that is a gallery of photographs that didn't,

In this photograph, we can see many things, but the focus is the violin bass guitar, almost obscured by the clear tube crossing the image from top to bottom. This photograph (like all others) was fairly experimental. I wanted to shoot an image of my bass guitar, because it reflects the musical, more creative side of me. I didn't just want to shoot it on it's own though, so I put a clear cologne bottle in front of the pinhole, creating an extra layer for the light to get through. I also wasn't expecting the shot to be so wide, I was expecting a narrower image, perhaps just showing the bass guitar. Instead, we get the fabric of the stand I put the camera on taking up the bottom half of the image, the pattern of the curtains, and some of my bed. Going outside of the image now, we can see light leaks on the left and right of the photograph's frame, with a bigger leak on the left. This persists throughout most of the images, which means next time I need to be a little more careful in my construction of the next camera, unless I like the light leaks, which I kind of do. There's also the border of the square I cut out of the matchbox in there, and you can see the fibers of the cardboard, which I like a lot. Alongside the light leaks, and the dust on the photograph, it gives it an extreme DIY feel, which it was.

This photograph is an overview of my room, facing my window, with the light being blocked by my curtains. There is a sort of double exposure in the top right of the image, where I didn't wind the film far enough, which shows the draws on my desk, and a desktop speaker. This image wouldn't be as interesting if it didn't have the floating desk in it, I don't think. Although, the whole aesthetics of the light leaks and the pinhole aspect make it interesting in itself.

This one didn't come out as expected at all. Since the matchbox camera didn't have a view finder, it was difficult to predict how the images would look. I wanted to create a mountainous landscape out of t-shirts in my clothes drawer, but the perspective is a little off, and the light leak blocks most of the shirts. Because of that, your eyes are drawn towards the lines created by the closed drawer, which then directs your eyes to the electric fan on the right.

This photo turned out nicely. The light leaks on this one are more colourful than the rest, which I could only put it down to a shorter exposure. The view is of my bed from my desk, which are across from each other. Again, the light leaks cover most everything, leaving only remnants of objects to make out. Also, where some light crept in through the cardboard border, it made an effect which is most lovely.

This is perhaps one of the clearer photographs. Again, I wanted to create a mountainous landscape this time with my bedsheets, but the view was a lot wider than I anticipated. It instead shows my wall, which has a painting of an abstract photograph I took of myself a while ago. It also shows a guitar, which is facing the wall rather than outwards.

This is definitely up there with my favourites from this shoot. It is also the only portrait oriented photograph I took, so next time I should take some more to make this photograph fit in more. To get this image, I taped the pinhole camera to the ceiling above my bed, and did an exposure of my lying down. Of course, I am quite faded, since I couldn't lie completely still for however long I exposed this for. There are also some artefacts on the top and bottom of the photograph, where I didn't wind the film properly. I remember the feedback I got that the photographs with me in are less interesting because they are literal self portraits rather than metaphorical ones, but I feel that this image would be missing something without me in it.

This was another example of me not anticipating the wideness of the image. I thought it would be a lot closer, but instead I am left with a few shapes and colours on the top right of the image. This is a great opportunity for me to get an idea of how far or close to something I must place the camera if I want to achieve the image that I want.

This was a little experiment I wanted to try to show the instrument I was using to photograph. I put the front facing camera on my phone, and put it next to the pinhole camera. I like this image not for what's in the image (although it is quite nice), but the context of it. Not only is it a sort of camera cameo, but it also shows the juxtaposition and evolution between a camera of today and a camera whose concept was conceived in Ancient Greek times.

Here, have some light leak filled photographs. I am fairly disappointed that not everything came out like I wanted, but that's the nature of the beast when it comes to experimental photography.