Pinhole Photography - 8th Grade Design Class

Ms. Jamie Truax shares a project her 8th graders are embarking on in their Design Class.

“The 8th graders began a pinhole photography project this quarter. The class started by studying the science of seeing and understanding how pinhole photography works. Basically, you need a black box with a pinhole and a shutter. When the shutter is open, light enters the pinhole and projects an image upside down and left side right on the opposite side of the box. Using special resin-coated photo paper, the image will "stick" on the paper once developed.

I knew it would be difficult to find a developer/fixer on the island, so we made our own using natural ingredients like mint tea, vitamin C tablets, baking soda, and lemon juice. I created a darkroom by finding a very dark closet on campus and a red lightbulb because the photo paper is insensitive to red light.

The students load their cameras with one piece of photo paper in the darkroom and then go outside to shoot their subject. They only have one shot per film session, so they know they have to keep the camera very still. We played around with different exposure times, concluding that the best photos came out at about a 4-5 minute exposure time.

After that, they come back to the darkroom and put their photos face down in the developer for 2-4 minutes and hopefully begin to see an image. They put it in the fixer for 30 seconds, which seals the image in place. Then we start the whole process all over again!

This is a perfect Design class project because they really get to experiment with different exposure times, lighting, distance, etc., and reflect on what works and what doesn't work for the next photograph.”