Small Nature in its Full Glory

It’s springtime! Nature is showing in its full glory! Time to open the windows, step outside, and start blogging again. But where have I been all this time? It’s a long story, but I will keep it short. My side activities kept me busy, such as being an educator at Noorderlicht, an international platform for photography and teaching pinhole photography in various workshops. The last one gave me the idea for this blog post.

A Different Way of Seeing

I always encourage my students to look at the world differently. A pinhole camera is the perfect tool for that because the camera’s small hole is already looking at the world in another way than our eyes or a camera lens.

📸 Experimenting with perspective:

• Using a wide-angle pinhole camera helps students explore how perspective changes an image.
• Shooting everyday objects from unusual angles makes them interesting again.
• Placing the camera very close to the subject creates a surreal effect.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

So that’s what I had in mind on the 29th of April, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. This day is held each year on the last Sunday in April. It’s an international event created to promote and celebrate the art of pinhole photography. On this special day, people worldwide are encouraged to take some time to participate in the simple act of making a pinhole photograph. People share their visions and help spread the unusual beauty of this photographic process.

I mounted a pinhole camera in my backyard’s magnolia tree to capture the last blooming flowers up close. I left it there for exactly one week. I imagined the result to resemble some flower images I made years ago. Images from series like Sowing Seeds and Floral Focus. Especially the Sowing Seeds series, which I created when I was pre-eminently interested in small matters in nature. Small details in a larger whole.

Whenever I took a closer look at the beauty of such flowers, small nature in its full glory, I just wondered:

This curiosity has always driven me, mainly when I worked on earlier projects like Sowing Seeds and Floral Focus. By placing the camera just centimetres away from the flowers, I explored how small nature can appear monumental, just like the wonder flowers I used to draw as a child.

Rediscovering Old Work

Looking back at my Sowing Seeds series, I found only five final photos. But today, inspired by my magnolia experiment, I went digging for my old contact prints. To my surprise, I rediscovered images I hadn’t seen in years, some of which I now appreciate in a whole new way.

During the week of my last exposure, there were thunderstorms, heavy rain showers, cold weather, wind, and, at last, a few sunny days. All of this made the result quite unpredictable. The photo is shown at the top of this blog post.

🌱 Lessons from revisiting old work:

• Sometimes, images need time to grow on you.
• Weather conditions, like thunderstorms, rain, and sun, create unpredictable results.
• The unexpected often leads to the most exciting discoveries.

What’s Next?

I’m currently scanning these old negatives, and I’m ready to dive into them again. Who knows what I’ll uncover?

Stay tuned! Follow my socials for updates to see the results!

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