TITLE: Self Portrait in Freezing Cold

January 2021 brought us some freezing cold sunny days. As temperature dropped well below minus 25 degrees, photography became challenging. Warm clothes were essential. But also a camera that would work in such coldness. For that, I selected a Lerouge 45 large format pinhole camera. It has no moving parts and no lens, so little can go wrong.

I stretched my hand forward, pointed the camera to my face, opened the pinhole, and made half a rotation while counting slowly to three. Such rotation in bright sunlight creates a halo around the picture, blurs the background, but keeps my face reasonably sharp. Definitely sharp enough for a model such as myself.

AUTHOR: Ari Jaaksi (Finland)

I'm an analogue photographer. I shoot mostly black and white medium format film. I love the entire process from the film selection through composition all the way to lightroom manipulation and printing. I actually believe analogue printing is an integral part of black and white film photography, and it is only then when the images finally come to life.