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| Camera Obscura |
Hello everyone!
It is a little hard to believe that I have been in London and in class for a week now! I have experienced a lot and visited many different places, but this post is to discuss the progress of my photography class!
On Monday, we started off by reviewing some history of photography and created a Camera Obscura!! The camera obscura that I made used a magnifying glass, cardboard, plexiglass, and a small mirror to view the world, that we were then able to use to draw pictures. Light enters through the magnifying glass and is then reflected by the mirror onto the plexiglass for us to see the correct way. The mirror is important to have, unless you wanted to look at the world upside down. Unfortunately, I only have a picture of my camera obscura, Laura is currently holding my good drawings as hostages. We also started to create pinhole cameras.
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| Original Stereoscopes |
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| Modern Stereoscope |
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| Painted Stereoscopic image |
On Tuesday, along with Carol's class, we went to a stereo photography class hosted by the London Stereoscopic Company. Stereo photography is the process of creating 3D pictures by taking two, slightly offset, pictures and looking at them through a stereoscope. Denis talked about the history of stereoscopy and allowed us to look through some antique (i.e. ancient and original) stereoscopes. We also looked through the modern versions to view original stereo graphs of fairy tales, plays, and other images. Original stereoscopic images were only in black and white, until someone had the bright idea to paint the
back of the image card. Once you hold it up to the light, you can see all of the pictures. Sadly, as I am also taking Carol's class, I did not stay with the workshop, but moved along to a street art tour.
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| Pinhole Camera Exposure Test |
Wednesday was another class/lab day. We completed our pinhole cameras after creating shutters for them and practiced taking pictures with them. We experimented with exposure, meaning how long the film paper inside needs to be exposed to light for the picture to form after development, and discovered that less than 2 seconds is optimal. Pinhole cameras have to be completely secured while taking pictures, or there is an increased possibility of shakiness in the photo. We ended up using a lot of tape to secure our pinholes and pictures came out fairly well! Sadly, Laura also has these photos. I am starting to learn that I need to take photos while I still have them in my possession. We also prepared cyanotype paper. Cyanotypes are a type of photographic printing process that uses sunlight and a few chemicals to create images against a "cyan"-blue background. These papers were to be used on our field trip day.
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| It's time for the circus! |
Thursday was our designated class field trip day!! We went out to Kew Gardens, lovely place by the way, and then finished our day by going to the Circus. We created cyanotypes using fallen feathers, leaves, and flowers from the gardens. The cyanotype papers were covered with film negatives or other objects pressed against glass and left exposed to the sunlight. Once the chemical left on the papers darkened and then lightened, they were taken from the light and 'washed' in water. Again, I was so distracted by making prints and gathering materials that I did not take pictures of the cyanotypes before Laura packed them up for safekeeping, I mean, holding them hostage. We also attempted to use our pinhole cameras in the Garden and we will be developing the images sometime next week. In the evening, we traveled to Chiswick Gardens for a viewing of Gifford's Circus, which is a mostly acrobatic, hippy-themed performance. Surprisingly, they had a live band. The performance was a nice way to end the day.
I am looking forward to my next adventures in photography class and will post pictures of the finished products (if I like them). All of the pictures above were taken by me and my trusty phone camera.
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