Mark C Rupert
Camp Caldera Boat House Pinhole Camera
In 2015, I was fortunate to have been invited to Camp Caldera in the Central Cascade Mountains of Oregon to work with a two groups of high school seniors from various underserved communities in Portland, central, and southern Oregon who had come to enjoy a week of camping and art making activities with professional artists from all over the country.
As the culmination of our week of fun and experimental photography, we converted the camp boat house into a giant walk-in pinhole camera that overlooked the lake and mountains beyond by making the building light tight, installing darkroom safelights, and taping a camera lens magnifying filter in place over the window.
Once the camera was completed and tested, the students from each of two classes tiled 20 sheets of 11x14 RC photo paper together edge to edge on a standard 4'x8' sheet of plywood, exposed it to the scene outside by briefly uncovering the "lens", and took the photo paper to the darkroom for processing.
Finally, the resulting prints from the morning and afternoon classes were again tiled together on the wall to display the negative view of the landscape that lay before the boathouse camera.
