Pinhole Portraits

There is something truly unique about portraits made on film with a pinhole camera. There is of course, the infinite depth of field and special distortions associated with pinhole photography. More importantly however, because long exposures are required there is the special confluence of spatial and temporal factors that come together for a single moment in time and pause for the sake of a photograph.

I have wanted to do pinhole portraits for a while. The image above is my first real attempt at it and I am pleased with the results. This was shot with the Holga pinhole camera on Kodak Ektar 100 color film. The exposure was 45 seconds.

For 45 seconds the photographer (me), the subject, and the camera all agreed to stop and wait while the light painted a picture on the film emulsion. The rest of the world carried on as normal but right here in front of the camera we all paused as if for a moment of prayer and waited 45 seconds for the light to do its work.

This is one of the really cool things about film (or photographic paper etc.). It’s a chemical thing. Each emulsion allows this process to occur over time in a unique way that cannot quite be duplicated by digital sensors, at least not yet.