by Raul Pires Coelho 

These days photography is the high tech high end way top of the line electronics. You can do everything with it, the easy road ahead, so much indeed that you end up to forget the basics. I prefer low tech photography, or in another way, the high tech of old times. Also I do not have thousands of money to spend on those top of the line sensors. I prefer buying film!

“...lost...” by Raul Pires Coelho

That's why I love the really basic from where it all started... the pin hole. It's just a tiny hole, a dark chamber of sorts, a surface to register your image as it comes inside. Cheap, creative, full of surprises. There is even a Worldwide Pinhole day, the last Sunday of April, as it just happened.

No lens here, any light tight container will do, any sensitized material, film or paper or whatever will do.  Exposures can go from seconds to hours or months, depth of field around infinite and from here up just follow your imagination. No image in the same, just grab your vision and go after your dreams: the perfect imperfection. Make your own chamber, more or less sophisticated, or buy one from some passionate builders. I have a few bought ready-made, but most of the time I just stick a pinhole into my large format cameras and go after many surprises. Still my last favourite one is made by my friend James Guerin called RealitySoSubtle 6x6, insanely wide angle that doesn't end to amaze me.

In a recent review here on the magazine I talked about their 6x17 model. Pinhole territory, for a while forget high tech and go low tech, lots of fun waiting. Leave your pinholes everywhere hunting and go back later to recall. Just did a search on 1x.com around the pinhole tag, and very little came out. I am sure there are many more for what I can see sometimes, but cannot prove it as no technical information is provided. I understand a photographer is not revealing his dark secrets, but for us trying to showcase and idea tag system is important as it's the only way we can get the data we need. Anyway here the few published with the 'pinhole' tag on.

“irradiated bird” by Julie Poncet

“Swan death” by Julie Poncet

“Sténo-Aotearoa #1” by Julie Poncet

“Riders on the Storm” by Susanne Stoop

And some from me made on April the 30th with my RSS 6x6.

This is the book I like the most about today's subject.

And the website made around pinhole day will soon show the results of this year batch all over the world: Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

If you have pinhole photography published on the official 1X gallery just comment on this article about the links to your scanned images or negatives or you can just talk about your passion about Pinhole Photography!