vanessajoy's Space

Day 13

Today i finished taking a few of my more artistic photos for the album. I tried taking a few pictures of people as well as a few in the front of school.  The best shot that i got today was of an old tea can.  You can easily read the words on the front of the can as well as the pictures.  Still getting some fairly posotive results!

Day 14 & 15

These past couple days i have researched the question about my project that i had to have turned into Mr. Falk.  I think im gonna stick with my origional idea of looking at the interaction between chemcals and paper and light and paper. Today was a shortened day so i never got to take any more photos so hopefully i will be able to do some more as we enter the final stretch of the week.

Days 9-12

It seems like forever since ive had the chance to write on here, its been a very busy week! On Tuesday i tried to focus on getting the correct shutter time so as not to uder/over expose my film. I started with 30-45 seconds and got some visable outlines but no real sharp images. So the next day i increased my exposure time, assuming that it was becausee the chemicals were not given enough time to react.  I continued to get the same blurry images with no real defined pictures.  I must admit, by this time i was becming a bit frustrated because it seemed that  everyone else was getting beautiful photos.  So on Thursday i had a chat with Mr. Falk and he suggested trying one very short exposure time and one very long exposure time to sort of get a better idea of which direction i should go.  Unfortunately neither of those images turned out and my frustration began to rise.  But Mr. Falk came to the rescue.  He had the idea of covering the camera in a towel wheile it was out of the dark room and, while we were outside, keeping the camera in our shadow so that a minimal abount of light would get to it.  IT WORKED!! we tried a dfew more this way and got some really great pictures. Finally i was making some progress.  So, today when my grandparents came (it was grandparents day at WMCHS) i had some good pictures to show and we were able to go outside and take some more pictures and i actually felt like i knew what i was doing. :) We were even able to get the grandparents involved in taking and developing the pictures.  Overall the week ended on a good note.

For week two we are also supposed to come up with a question to research or test relating to our projects.  For mine, i think i would like to research the chemicals used for developing the photos.  What are the chemicals on the film and how do they develop? And how do the developer and other chemicals work?  Im planning on turning this in to Mr. Falk on manday for him to approve and then we will do more research from there.

Day 8

Today was a pretty slow day...the weather was not very good for picture taking and it was pretty wet outside so i was worried about water damage to my camera since it is cardboard.  Instead, i decided to do a little work on the computers today.  I looked over the project discription on posterous to think of variables i could add to my project. i also started my photo album and made a snapfish account.  Hopefully the weather will clear up by tomorrow so i can do a little more picture taking outside.

Day 6&7

Pictures of my finished pinhole camera and chemicals:

(download)

Missed the post yesterday but made some great progress!  We had some troubles with timing and chemicals yesterday.  We started with 2 minutes of exposure time which turned out completely black.  So today we started with 15 seconds but that seemed to be too short and the chemicals in the paper didnt have enough time to react resulting in a grey, sort of blurry image.  The last one we tried today we upped the exposure time to 30 seconds and i actually started to see something! The trick is to pull the image out of the developer before you see the complete image.  I think that tomorrow i will try a slightly longer exposure time and try to remover the picture more quickly from the developer.

Day 5

Finished the camera today! drilled, sanded and attached the pinhole. i aalso mixed all of my chemicals for developing the film. the ratios are as follows:

PQ Universal - Developer: 25ml chemical to 225ml water

ILFO Stop - F-Stop: 10ml chemical to 190ml water

Rapid Fixer - Fixer: 50ml chemical to 150ml water

WASHAID - Wash: 50ml chemical to 200ml water

Im very happy with the progress so far and ready to start taking the actual pictures!! (pictures will be uploaded tomorrow of the finished chemicals as well as the mixed chemicals. )

 

Today i finished the second coat of spraypaint and attached the shutter. All thats left now is the pinhole itself...looking to finish everything up tomorrow!!

Here are a few photos of my progress so far:

(download)

Day 3

What a great day!! :) researched a little more on the use of my chemicals; still waiting on the fourth type.  But i did bring in an 18oz oatmeal container, cut the opening, and spraypainted the inside and lid black.  Planning on having to do a second coat tomorrow and hopefully i will have the supplies to get a start on the pinhole itself.

Day 2

My plan for today was to get a start on my oatmeal container.  I was hoping to have the pinhole window cutout and the inside spraypainted.  But it turns out that i brought in the wrong size container...oops!  So, this weekend i will go and buy an 18oz oatmeal container instead of my current 42oz container. :) I did, however, spend some time today researching how to develop the photos and how to set up the dark room.  Aiming for a productive weekend/week ahead of me!!

Day 1

Today i researched what type of camera i will be making and which supplies i will need to gather so that i can hopefully begin the 'construction' tomorrow. I found this site incredibly helpful and will probably follow most of their instructions for the making of my pinhole camera: http://users.rcn.com/stewoody/takecam.htm It looks like several of the materials i will be using are already available to me via Mr. Falk (my physics teacher), but i will need to bring in an oatmeal box and a #16 beading needle. I'm excited to begin this project and hope to develop some great photos.

 

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