I signed up for a Pinhole Camera Workshop to celebrate World Pinhole Photography Day and it was held at Primal Photographic. This is a brand new studio for owners Chad Djubek, who is a Pittsburgh area Daguerreotype artist and his wife Darcy Stoltzfus, who does Art Direction and makes pretty awesome little Dag cases. The studio was very clean and setup so that it was easy to find everything. He had more than enough equipment/supplies for everyone to use, and there was only a little wait time to get in the Darkroom, to be expected when there are 7 people in a class. The Darkroom was clean and laid out in an easy to use fashion. Under Chad's supervision we built our own cameras out of cigar boxes, cans and the like. Then, we broke up and went to take our shots. By the nature of alternative photographic techniques, they don't always work or come out as you want, but Chad worked with everyone to troubleshoot their cameras and make sure they captured a good image before the class was over. At the end he scanned our images and uploaded them to the World Pinhole Day website with other photos from across the world celebrating photography's only holiday. I'll include an url of our images at the end, so you can see what we accomplished.
All in All, I had a great day. I've already made about a dozen pinhole cameras in my life(20 years ago), so I didn't require as much help, but I did make a second camera with 5 holes and Chad helped me figure out exposures and a shutter system that was so easy even a caveman could have done it. He will be scheduling more alternative photographic workshops and I will be signing up for them. Plus, you can rent darkroom time. Did I mention he was primarily a Daguerreotype artist?
I seriously can't think of any reason to take stars away, so 5 it is.
http://www.pinholeday.org/gallery/2013/index.php?formType=list&groupname=PrimalPhotographic:Pittsburgh read more