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November 7, 2009 |
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Created and Maintained by: The Photoimaging Information Council |
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by Sarah Coleman |
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Click here for Craig Barber's Ten Tips for Better Landscape Photography TakeGreatPictures.com (TGP): How did you get interested in photography? Craig Barber (CB): I was living in Canada, in Saskatchewan, in 1975, and I took an adult education class in photography for $2. I was so excited by it that I went home that night and looked in the local paper to see if anyone was selling used camera equipment. There was an advertisement for an old Vivitar enlarger and darkroom trays, and I bought them. I started processing film in my bathroom. That was the beginning.  © Craig Barber
TGP: What drew you to pinhole cameras? CB: I’d taken a class in school that covered the technique, but I didn’t actively embrace it until the mid 1980s, when I was living in Seattle. I was working on a project on gardens, and I decided I wanted to approach it differently. Gardens are very important in Seattle: they’re little man-made landscapes that represent people’s hopes and dreams. The pinhole technique seemed well suited to the subject matter. I thought I’d just be doing it for a year or so, then I’d go back to “real” photography. But I got hooked.  © Craig Barber
TGP: What was it about pinhole photography that captured you? CB: I just liked the way it saw the world and translated it into images. And it forced me to work in a different way. The way you photograph is completely different than if you’re looking through a viewfinder. TGP: How so? CB: You have to pre-visualize the image you want, because you can’t just frame it through the viewfinder – there isn’t one! There’s guesswork to determine the exposure time. And the exposures are long – mine run anywhere from a minute to an hour or more. All in all, it forces you to slow down and become much more contemplative.  © Craig Barber
TGP: How do you make your cameras? CB: I use cardboard boxes with black electrical tape to seal the edges. To make the pinhole, I use a jeweler’s drill bit measuring 12/1000ths or 18/1000ths of an inch, and I drill a tiny hole into a piece of aluminum taken from a disposable cookie sheet. Foil is too thin, but those cookie sheets work well – or, for some cameras, I use a very thin sheet of brass that I bought in Burma. Once the hole is drilled, I have to clean it out very well to make sure there are no burrs hanging into it. That would completely ruin the image. Then I fit it into the camera, and on the other side I put a film holder. TGP: People have made pinhole cameras out of very unusual objects. What are some of the weirder ones you’ve heard of? CB: There’s a guy named Jo Babcock who’s made pinhole cameras from a Volkswagen bus, a top hat and a guitar case. A British photographer called Justin Quinnell took pinhole photographs from inside his mouth. Luckily he didn’t have rotten teeth!  © Craig Barber
TGP: Are those things gimmicks, or are they producing good work? CB: I think they’re great. Pinhole photography lends itself to doing crazy things. It’s a big world, there’s room for all of us. We’re living in a time when things are becoming more and more automated, and that’s inspiring some photographers to embrace low-tech and handmade ways of doing things. Personally, I like the combination of new and old. I’m using an antiquated method, but I like to think that I’m bringing a 21st-century sensibility to it. TGP: What makes your sensibility contemporary? CB: Mostly just the fact that I live in the 21st century, and that a lot of my work is politically motivated. I’m interested in capturing parts of the world that are in danger of disappearing as everything becomes homogenized.  © Craig Barber
TGP: Speaking of the 21st century, the rise of digital photography has had a big impact on companies that make traditional film and printing paper. Do you worry about getting supplies? CB: I do. Film is hanging in a perilous situation these days. A few years ago, I took on a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of debt to buy a cache of film that I put in the freezer. So I’m good for a while. But probably, if the big companies go out of business there will still be smaller companies making sheet film. TGP: What other changes have affected you? CB: Airport security is a nightmare these days. It’s become much harder to move sheet film around internationally. That might drive a lot of us to digital capture.  © Craig Barber
TGP: Do you ever use a digital point-and-shoot, just for a change? CB: I do actually own a digital point-and-shoot. I finally gave in to it. I use it for snapshots. Or I might take a photo of my work and use it for a show announcement. TGP: What’s it like to shoot that way after doing your meticulous pinhole work? CB: In some ways, it’s liberating. There’s something very free and easy about taking snapshots. You can be random, you don’t have to plan everything out. I don’t pretend to know a lot about digital photography, but I’d like to learn more.  © Craig Barber
TGP: What inspires you? CB: The landscape work of John Paul Caponigro and Edward Weston is very important to me, even though they approach landscape very differently from the way I do. I love Weston’s Point Lobos images. I love the density of Frederick Sommer’s imagery, and Lois Conner’s work from China. I admire the way that Sally Mann’s landscape work isn’t about being pretty. And I love looking at paintings by Edward Hopper and Thomas Hart Benton. Then, just generally, I’m inspired by waking up every day. Even on the bad days, it’s good to wake up – because bad days are better than no days at all.
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