Photos by Judge Rivera
Two years ago, we attended an exhibit by Sam David Felix called “Miru”, a gallery of photographs using pinhole cameras as well as handmade cameras themselves. Miru also happens to be the brand name he goes by for this pinhole photography. Returning from Japan for a short time, David got in touch with the WTB team and The Local Folke to host a workshop on his craft.
It’s amazing to learn that cameras, which are seemingly complicated contraptions, can actually be recreated with just a handful of household materials. But as the name “Practicing Patience” implies, this workshop about the simple, yet careful process that goes into creating a pinhole camera.
At first we though we were going to make something like David’s signature wooden pinhole cameras. But since those actually take days to make, we went with something much simpler… matchboxes!
A matchbox, some duct tape, a used film roll, and a new film roll are the main components for the pinhole camera. The particularities go into the measurements and the bits and pieces that would make the small machine function smoothly like clockwork.
Basically the principle behind the pinhole camera is to create a sealed body to hold the film, a pin tip-sized opening to expose the film to light for a period of time, and a “shutter” to open and close the opening.
We look more serious than we actually were at the time. In reality, we shared many, many laughs as we tried to stay focused on the task at hand.
In about two hours, everyone had their own palm-sized pinhole camera.
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