The photographs in this series were made using a wooden pinhole camera and medium format black and white film. The only “control” on the camera is a small wooden slide that covers and uncovers the pinhole. This wooden box is so simple, in fact, that there is not even a viewfinder with which to compose the image. All framing decisions are made based on prior experience with the camera, which provides me with a general knowledge of the approximate field of view that this wide-angle pinhole produces.

The length of time that the pinhole is uncovered, letting light through the tiny aperture (f/235) and exposing the image onto the film becomes the “shutter speed”. The exposure times for the photographs in this series range from 2 seconds up to 45 seconds. Taking the photograph becomes a passage through a short interval of time, time that can be experienced and counted.

With such long exposure times, any motion in the scene, such as falling snow, branches swaying in the breeze, or moving water, is either not recorded at all, or rendered as a blur. The most obvious traces of motion can be found in those images where moving water is a part of the scene. In one image, “The Clocks”, it was snowing heavily when the image was exposed, but the lengthy exposure time of 10 or 15 seconds did not record the falling snowflakes. Motion in pinhole photography is always intriguing and the element of moving water appears several times in the series. The silken blur represents a sight that we cannot experience. It is a visible record of the movement during the seconds the small window was opened. Since this is very much a landscape series, the smooth tendrils of motion blur, especially in water, in addition to the visual qualities of the pinhole images, recall for me similar characteristics that can be seen the earliest landscape photographs.

These images are not digital collages. They are photographs of the artifacts in the landscape. I am not opposed to collage techniques, but I feel it is important to know the origin of these images in terms of how they were created. After scanning the black and white negatives the primary Photoshop work on these images is tonal and contrast modifications as well as uneven sepia toning.

I was once asked before why I go to the trouble of using a wooden pinhole camera and that antiquated medium of film to make these photographs. Wouldn’t it be easier to photograph these images using a digital SLR and then use Photoshop to create the pinhole look? In some respects in might be easier, but in other aspects it would be more difficult, require more work in Photoshop, and the view would not be quite the same as that made with a wide-angle pinhole camera. Besides, the whole reason to photograph them the way I do is that using a pinhole camera is a very different photographic experience from using a digital SLR (which I use for other bodies of work). And that experience is a key part of my enjoyment of this series. Being out in the landscape with these artifacts and using a wooden camera with the same level of technological sophistication as the cameras used by the pioneers of photography in the mid 1800s (not to mention a fundamental technology that was recognized by Chinese writers and philosophers back in the 5^th century BC) is an experience that cannot be achieved using a modern camera.

As I write this, the Artifacts series is still very much an active series. I have ideas for artifacts and landscapes, and more photographs to make before I can call it a completed body of work. The series requires travel to different landscapes and the very nature of the photographs, like pinhole photography itself, requires a slower, more contemplative contemplative approach.  But I am enjoying the journey very much, both the act of photographing and the gentle swirl of ideas that precedes it. The creative muse still speaks to me through this channel. And when the creative muse rings your doorbell, it's always a good idea to keep inviting her in!