Tdot magazine - Jon Isaak interview

We interviewed local pinhole photographer Jon Isaak via email not too long ago. He shared some of the secrets behind his art, and we have the results here for your perusal. Enjoy...

What got you into these pinhole camera's?
A bunch of things. I was working on an assignment for school and remembered seeing a pinhole photo that my brother had made. I thought the concept and aesthetic would work well for the project I was doing, so after some research I built my first camera. Once I realized the pinhole's potential for making totally unique images, I was hooked. An interesting side note though: There's a great local artist named Diane Bos who works primarily with pinhole photography. About two years ago, when I was already right into the process, I saw her speak at an exhibit of her work at the Lonsdale Gallery. A couple of weeks later I realized that she had taught art lessons to me when I was seven or eight years old (as I recall, she was also in the band "Martha and the Muffins"). I thought it was a freaky coincidence that we both happened to be working in the same obscure process 20 years later. Then again, I guess things like that are never a coincidence.

Describe how they work exactly...
A traditional camera uses a lens to gather loads of light information from the environment and focus it on a piece of film. A pinhole camera is simply an inclosed space with film at one end and a small hole at the other end. Light passes in straight lines from points in the environment through the hole to points on the film. Because less light passes through a tiny hole than through a lens, longer exposure times are required. This causes anything in the environment which is moving to be blurred or to not appear in the final image. So pinhole images often take on a surreal quality. There's no viewfinder on a pinhole camera, so the compositions are usually more "loose". You can't be sure what you're getting until you see the final image. I think this is a good thing because it makes you photograph more intuitively, and lets all sorts of surprises come into play. Light leaks, tilted horizons, unbalanced compositions, blurry subjects: all the things you're supposed to avoid are the things a pinhole camera wants to do. Was it difficult to build one? Not at all. You can make one out of a cardboard box or a can. Power up with some Alphaghettis, then use the can to make a wicked photo. That's how alot of people get started. From there, you can get as complex as you want. The beauty of it is that you can make a camera for $5 in materials and make images that you would otherwise need a $1500 camera to make. It definitely takes some research and alot of tinkering to be able to make something fancier, but who needs fancy? If cardboard and duct tape were good enough to save Apollo 13, then they're good enough for me.