Justin Quinnell Analysis

This is a pinhole photograph, photographed by Justin Quinnell. Justin Quinnell is a UK pinhole photographer began his career when he picked up a camera at the age of 11 he then went on to completing a degree in fine art, Next he began teaching young people photography but it was soon proven harder than he thought because the kids couldn’t afford regular cameras but he'd seen them come in with coke cans from time to time so he decided to first make a camera out of that which proved successful as the youth were exited it worked and were asking if they could take their cameras home. Justin particularly loves pinhole photography because of the excitement of not knowing how the image is going to turn out he compares it to life and says "if you knew what was going to happen tomorrow you might as well top yourself". Justin has experimented with a range of different objects to make his pinhole cameras from small ones to do the mouthpiece pinholes to large wheelie bin cameras to take pictures of whole scenery.

This Pinhole Photography is called 'Rosa mouthpiece', Rosa is Justin's daughter and judging by recent photographs of her I would say this picture was taking about 4 years ago.

Like I mentioned earlier mouthpiece cameras like this one were taken with a small camera that fits inside the mouth and he placed his daughter in front of him whilst opening his mouth. This made the picture come out on a small piece of film which he later expanded.

 I have chosen to analyse this piece of work because in my opinion its very unusual to contrast a baby with an open mouth almost like he’s eating her which I’m sure is not the case, but this photograph also stands out because its more personal in some respect most of his photographs are of local scenery whilst this one displays his child which makes it more unique to his other pieces.

To understand Justin Quinnell work deeper I watched this video which was posted on his website:

http://www.pinholephotography.org/ and the video which was:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7kuamHV3og&feature=youtu.be%20

I think this piece maybe does have a deeper meaning that is that he is getting to know his daughter and is also introducing her to his career what he does and then he is including her in it so it could be showing us how he is building a relationship with his daughter. The title of the piece doesn’t really inform us of what the piece is about of whose baby it is in the piece but I suppose a simple title intrigues most people to then go and do some independent research on Justin whereby they discover more about the piece.

To make this piece I believe a great amount of skill went into it because he had to leave his mouth open for quite a while without shaking for the image to be captured he also had to hold his daughter and babies are quite fidgety so this also took a great amount of skill.

The artist uses quite dark colours for this image but then contrasts it with putting bright pale colours for his daughter this altogether makes the piece look like a photograph taken from a regular camera. I think tone is the most important formal element in this piece because there are quite a lot of dark areas as a pose to brighter ones.

My first reaction to this piece was how did he do it? Because I didn’t know it was possible to create a pinhole camera small enough to fit inside the mouth, the work has inspire me to try different things with a pinhole camera and not just capture pictures of the outside world.

Edited Pinhole photographs

After the pinhole camera was made we began taking images of outside the college in some of my images i placed my mobile phone in front to see if it could also pick up the light from my phone.

These are my images above as they were when they came out of the dark room procedure, I then manipulated them on Photo shop and added different effects to them.

To begin with i went to change the brightness and contrast as seen above this just made it easier to recognise the darker and lighter areas

Then i Used photo filter to put colour into it as seen below

And then i used Hue/Saturation to do the same and produced the image below

But overal i edited my picture using hue/saturation and came out with the image below, i made it like this because to me this was the most realistic transformation i could have done.

How to make a pinhole camera?

Step by Step guide

• To begin with we were told to come to lesson with tins which could be mash potato tins or hot chocolate any tin the same size as them.
• Secondly we washed out our tins if need being then painted the inside and lid with black acrylic paint.

• Once the tin dried we were told to measure out a dot 5cm from the bottom of the tin and then use a ruler and draw a 1cm square around the dot.
• After the square was cut out using a craft knife we then gathered a piece of foil and began roughing up one side of it with sandpaper.
• After that was done, we placed a small hole inside the foil piece, coloured it in with a black marker pen and stuck it onto our tins with black duct tape ensuring it was firmly stuck down and the pin hole was in the centre.

• We also cut out an addition piece of duct tape to place over the pin hole like a lens cap
• Then we went into the dark room and placed a piece of photography paper inside our tins and put the lens cap on and the tins lid on to ensure the tin was completely light sensitive.

• To make sure our camera was completely light sensitive we took our camera outside with the lid and lens cap on just to see if any light could get through, we then processed the images to check for any light exposures if this test was positive you would have to make adjustments to your camera but if your camera proved negative then you could proceed with the next step.
• Then finally our pin hole camera was complete and we could proceed with taking pictures!

Pinhole Photography Mood board

This is my interpretation of a Pinhole camera mood board although I made it more like a college with just images and no text it includes the work of all three photographers which are:

Steve Irvine

Kate Cooke

&

Justine Quinnell

Links to the Images used:

Tree Trunk

Valley

Road

Chairs

Bedroom

Stone scenery

Building

Trees

Figure sittng on stone

Woman on Chair

Woman in Library

Building

How the pin hole camera works!

My Definition

A pinhole camera works by piercing a small hole into a light proof box this hole creates light inside the box the light is then selected from the scene opposite and inverted producing an inverted scene inside the box which will be captured on a light sensitive piece of paper this operation is called camera obscura. 

Some History 

The camera obscura has been known to scholars for decades a Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohism, Mozi referred to this device as a "collecting plate" or "locked treasure room." Since then many people tried to expand this idea by producing pinhole cameras in a large scale examples are below:

Technical Studies

(The Brief)

This is the photography brief which basically just introduces us into the course and gives us a incite into basic photography such as working with SLR cameras and manipulating the use of light as well as developing films and spending time in the dark room. Also this course involves a good amount of research into other photographers working with similar materials.

AS Photography Lesson 1

First Photography lesson Playing around with celebrity images on Photo booth with different effects using a Mac

Photography Technical studies