TOPSHAM — Photographer and artist Rose Marasco of Portland will speak about her New York City Pinhole Photography Project for First Light Camera Club on Thursday, Nov. 17.

 

The program is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Topsham Medical Building, 4 Horton Place. It is free for members of the club; $10 for guests. 

 

Marasco has lived in Maine since 1979. She has been photographing for over 40 years and is newly retired from teaching photography at University of Southern Maine. In addition to teaching black-and-white film photography, color film photography, ektacolor printing, darkroom techniques and digital photography, she favors using large- and medium-format cameras, and works most regularly with a Rolleiflex camera.

 

A pinhole camera is a simple camera — often just a lightproof box — without a lens but with a tiny aperture, the “pinhole.” Whereas modern digital cameras may have a maximum f-stop (or aperture) of f/22, pinhole cameras have f-stops numbering above f/200. Light from a scene passes through this aperture and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box, where it is captured on film.

Pinhole photographs have nearly infinite depth of field and everything appears in focus, however, everything appears soft because the camera does not have the sharpness of a lens.

 

According to Marasco, “The pinhole camera renders the colors correctly, but it has its own palette.” Also, exposure times are lengthy, ranging from 25 seconds to several minutes.

 

Marasco started her New York City Pinhole Photography Project in 2009. S

Her lecture for First Light Camera Club will focus on this body of pinhole-captured work. Her talk will cover how the pinhole project evolved, how the camera works, how to make a print, her own artistic process and a comparison of the qualities of different types of paper. She will also bring one print produced in several sizes.

 

To learn more, visit www.firstlightcc.com, email [email protected].