The Constant Driver

[miamijuggler]

Perhaps this is something more specific to Miami, where the public transit system isn't as developed as in cities like New York, London, or Chicago, but most of the people here tend to spend a lot of time behind the wheel.

Like most of my projects, this one centers around transportation, and more specifically, who we are while we're driving. We spend all of this time inhabiting a space that is deliberately designed to be transparent as we focus on the task of driving, and we don't pay attention to the ways in which we interact with this space.

That's basically what this project was designed to investigate.

The photos were taken on 4x5" color negatives using a homemade pinhole camera constructed entirely of Legos, electrical tape, and piece of aluminum from a cherry coke can. Exposure times are roughly five to seven minutes.

Okay, so that's my spiel; here are the images:

Let me know what you think.

 

[bigred90gt]

Pretty good pictures for a McGuyver camera.

 

[WhosYerBob]

Those are great images for a pinhole camera - I like!

 

[thunderball]

Interesting stuff. Did you say that exposure times were five to seven minutes?

 

[miamijuggler]

Did you say that exposure times were five to seven minutes?

Correct.

With a pinhole camera, your aperture can be as small as f/360 (or smaller!). Add that on top of the fact that as you extend your exposure time beyond about 10 seconds, the exposures do not scale the same way they do for shorter shutter speeds. The majority of the silver particles "activate" in the first few seconds of exposure, and the rest take longer.

Hence, you end up with an exposure time of a couple minutes.

Admittedly, these negatives were probably overexposed a bit, and I pulled down the exposure and levels once I scanned them into Photoshop.

 

[thunderball]

Correct.

With a pinhole camera, your aperture can be as small as f/360 (or smaller!). Add that on top of the fact that as you extend your exposure time beyond about 10 seconds, the exposures do not scale the same way they do for shorter shutter speeds. The majority of the silver particles "activate" in the first few seconds of exposure, and the rest take longer.

Hence, you end up with an exposure time of a couple minutes.

Admittedly, these negatives were probably overexposed a bit, and I pulled down the exposure and levels once I scanned them into Photoshop.

Interesting stuff! Does that mean that the subject has to remain still for the entire exposure time?　　

 

[bigred90gt]

Interesting stuff! Does that mean that the subject has to remain still for the entire exposure time?　　

I would guess not, which is why the hand and face on the female in the first pic appears transparent, and you see a ghost image of the sleeve on the guy in the last pic.

speaking of the sleeve ghost image in the last pic, it appears to be a different color. Was there a change of drivers during that particular shot?

 

[Monkeydad]

VERY impressive!

 

[miamijuggler]

Each exposure was done over the course of a given route around my neighborhood. I actually did two photos of each driver: one "long" route and one "short" route, and then selected the best one for each driver.

This was because the photos were done on a day with scattered clouds, it was difficult to predict how much light was going to be available on a given exposure.

So what you see is these people actually driving, in traffic, under real driving condition.

The green streaks are actually my fault, as I didn't seal certain parts of the camera correctly, the green legos created... you guessed it: green light streaks.

I'll try with better light sealing next time.