Pinhole Views

A pinhole camera is the most primitive photographic instrument imaginable: a light-tight box with a pinprick-size hole in the front and some light-sensitive material in the back. The hole casts a soft image unlike anything produced by a lens, an image in which all objects are defined (or undefined) to the same degree, irrespective of their distance from the camera. Playing with a pinhole camera is a pleasant reprieve from the exigencies of sharpness and technological sophistication that reign otherwise in the large format and digital worlds. The armored critters in this little collection are suicidal horseshoe crabs.