One of the interesting things about Druidry is its connection with the natural world, and very recently, after uncovering countless cameras (and by that I mean “I’m still finding more,” not that there are literally too many to count; I just don’t know how many more there are) in my basement, that interplay between light and silver halide has become something deeply exploratory for me.
Some of this has to do with remembering our Ancestors: nearly all of these cameras belonged to my father, who has passed. The process of inventorying them, caring for them, and understanding them helps me to touch a part of him I never really experienced, in a very tangible way.
But also, that light: something so closely connected to life on earth, so brightly influential on our planet and ecosystem, so brilliant and terrifying when unfiltered by our home atmosphere… there is something about it that speaks to the Druid within me, that calls to me to understand it, to connect with it. Light, striking silver, and creating change: it’s an alchemy that is thunderous in possibility.
Starting Out
Photography has always been a particularly digital hobby of mine until very recently; while I grew up (obviously, at my age) shooting on film and developing that film at the local drugstore, that stopped entirely in 2005 when I got my first digital camera. I know, because there are no more negatives in shoeboxes after that year.
Finding all these cameras, learning about them, and rediscovering the artistic aspects of film and the exposure triangle, has led me down a fascinating rabbit hole (and left me with a lot of half-used rolls from the 1990’s to finish and develop; a treasure trove of memories on its own). The cameras are all in very good condition, well-kept and little used. The parts and repairs have been small and inexpensive, and I’ve started carrying a film camera everywhere I take a digital one.
Though there have been no pinhole cameras in the things I have found, interest in exposure and analog processes have taken me down a new road in an old format. Pinhole photography has particularly caught my interest, and so I’ve embarked on a bit of a project to actually create sacred art. If you saw my “Priestly Year in Review” from 2003, you may have noticed a change in the “Sacred Art” category: my opinions on it have changed, and I have found a new outlet for that sort of work. That project involves pinhole photography rather specifically.
The First Work
Every project has a “first work,” or takes a first step. At the April 8, 2024, Solar Eclipse, I intentionally worked that First Work, and it came in this form:
Using a SolarCan Puck, I exposed a circle of photographic paper during the April 8th, 2024, Total Solar Eclipse. It’s an 8-hour exposure, charting the course of the sun through the sky, until it dims so much that it disappears around 3 PM, and then reappears a few minutes later.
The original image was a negative impression: where the light was strongest, the paper darkened the most. Where there was less light (or more dark colors), the paper was less exposed, meaning it stayed lighter.
The process of turning the “negative” into a positive is fairly simple: you scan in the original from the photo paper, rotate it, invert it in a program like Photoshop, and muck about with the contrast and color until it looks right. Honestly, it doesn’t take much work to create something recognizable.
The tree I set it at the base of was dominant in the image, and I didn’t set the camera out in a boring field, either, but among the trees.
The best part, of course, about this is that I was able to leave the project on “autopilot” while I walked away and actually watched the celestial event unfold. I didn’t have to care if it worked, or worry if it was doing its job: I could leave all that in the care of nature, and throw myself into the moment. I had no idea if I had a usable image until I got home and scanned it in last night.
(Of course, any first work is prone to mistakes: mine was that I didn’t tell my wife exactly what I was doing, so she picked the can up about halfway through the day, thinking it was trash; understandable, and it accounts for the slightly double-exposed tree. But the best part is that she set it right back where she found it as soon as she learned what it was, and she did it perfectly: the sun line shows a slightly sharp bend at the 11 o’clock position, but otherwise is perfect, and that’s what I really cared about. Note to future self: be more communicative to your wife… advice we can all use, really.)
Where I Go From Here
I have the tools I need to do weird stuff with light now, and my hope is that after a year, I’ll have a small body of work to show for it. It will, of course, end up here on Patreon first from now on. I’ve got tools to work with light through pinholes on film, paper, and even digital. If I can manage it, I am hoping to have a full year of High Days with a piece of art for each.
Moving into something called “sacred art” is a bit strange for me, given my experiences and past opinions on art, generally, but my hope is that I can deepen my spiritual work and come to an understanding, on some level, of the alchemy others have created through artwork within themselves.
And, if I’m lucky, find something that brings joy and alchemy to others, as well.
