Collage

The Pumpkin & His Hat

The first step with the coffee camera is to place a blank white test strip and tape it on the inside while you're in the darkroom to make sure there is no light exposure. Once you have done this, you need to go outside and just stand with the coffee can in your hand for a few seconds and then you have to run the test strip through the chemical process and what you're looking for is a blank very white test strip (this is the top skinny piece of paper in the picture above). Then after you do this you have to place another test strip inside of the coffee can to now test if the picture you are trying to capture will in fact work. I placed two stools outside and placed a pumpkin onto one stool and placed the coffee can on the other stool. I then lifted the black tape that covered the hole (aperture - which is what lets in the light) and I held it open for five seconds and then I closed it and went back into the dark room to run it through the chemical process again, this time looking for a piece of the image I was going to capture. After the chemical process was done, I taped a 4 X 6 piece of photo paper inside of the coffee camera and went back outside and placed the coffee can in the same spot as before on the stool and let the light in for five seconds yet again. I went inside with all of my materials and ran my piece of paper through all of the chemicals and I was looking for the full image this time - which is exactly what I had.
The strongest technical aspect of my work was getting the light from the sun to hit just right and to be able to capture the shadow of the pumpkin on the stool. Unlike other pictures that came form the same coffee camera wasn't able to capture the same light index as I was able to do. The technical aspect of my work that can be improved on is the placement of the stool that had the coffee camera on it. I could place the stool closer to the opposite stool that was holding the pumpkin itself to make the pumpkin more visible to the eye.
The easiest aspect of this art activity was developing the pictures with the chemical process. This was the easiest because I have developed so many different things throughout the year that this just becomes second nature to me and now I know what to do and I don't even second guess myself like I had done at the beginning of the year. The most difficult aspect of this art activity was trying to figure out how many seconds I needed to let the light in through the pin hole for. This was the hardest part because I could've done too much or too little time and would've had to redo the coffee camera process all over again.
I demonstrated the objective in this art activity because I had first made sure that there was no light leaking through the pinhole on the coffee camera and then I was able to make the picture of the pumpkin on the stool. If I could do this art activity again, I would only change the placement of the second stool that was holding the coffee camera because I would place it closer to the stool with the pumpkin on it to make the pumpkin more visible to other that don't know what I was capturing the image of.