July 12

"I can decapitate myself through the world of photography."
- One of the workshop kids.

Today was my first day helping out at the Gallery of Photography. I'll be spending the week here assisting in their Pinhole Photography workshop for kids. Today we spent the day getting to know the kids a little bit and making our cameras. A little pinhole information for those who don't know, you make your own camera like this:
- Cut a piece of mailing tube (anything works, but that's what we did.)
- Drill a hole in the middle of the tube.
- Spray paint the entire inside of the tube black.
- Cut a piece of tin (we used coke cans) to cover the hole.
- Carefully push a safety pin through the middle of the tin.
- Tape the tin over the hole.
- Put a piece of removable tape over the tin, as your shutter.
- Use lightproof photo-paper bags to create a top and bottom for the camera.
- The top should be secured with a few rubber bands while the bottom should be taped on.
- Then when you put photographic paper inside the tube, and put the lid on, you can remove the tape from the tin and the pinhole effect will take place- light will shine through the pinhole and an image that is reversed and flipped back-to-front will be shined onto the paper. Develop as normal and there ya go.

The most exciting part about the day was being back in the darkroom. It's weird- I didn't think the darkroom would be a big deal, and after Alternative Processes and Techniques class last semester, I couldn't wait for a darkroom break. But I was surprisingly happy to be back. It's probably because these kids had only done digital photography. It was great to hear the reactions of kids experiencing the magic of wet process photography for the first time. It was a lot of fun, today.

(Since I get to sleep in an hour longer, I get to walk to the bus with Maggie and Hannah.)

(The kids making their cameras. From the left, we have Dale, Sean, Katie, and Donal.)

(Aoife, another "tutor" and I worked on making a GIANT pinhole camera, while the kids made theirs.)

(Spray painting the insides.)

(Their decorated cameras drying outside.)

(While the cameras dried, we looked down into the square and this was going on?)

(Out doing our first test exposures on a bridge over the River Liffey.)

(If the cameras move at all during the exposures, which last anywhere from like 5 seconds to 5 minutes, then the image is completely out of focus. So they tape them to poles, surfaces, etc to make sure they don't move.)

(The group and the "leader" as Donal called him, Darragh, on the right)

(We started taking little field trips around the area to collect cool images. Thankfully, we went to places I had never been. So I got the Dublin tour by true Dubliners while making artwork. This is Dublin Castle.)

(The Leader.)

(Pretty)

(Making an exposure with the giant camera.)

(The castle again.)

(We got shooed away from this statue quickly by the Garda, the Dublin police.)

(Katie, being the only girl, had to control the other boys. They all came into this program as friends from school, so there was no first-day-awkwardness. They jumped right into the next stage: loudness.)

(After class today, Darragh, Aoife, and I stayed for a little bit to practice some more with an artichoke still life.)


After work today, Megan made dinner with Hannah's help. Taco Nighttttt.

(Letter from my grandmother.)

(The girlssss.)

(These pictures from dinner tend to blend together, haha.)