Photography & Printing Styles

Over a year ago, I did a deep-dive into all things photography with AI. I will begin this exploration afresh with the latest in AI - looking at terminology and techniques you can explore on your own!

Pinhole Photography: Simplicity and Wonder

Pinhole photography represents one of photography's most fundamental forms. It works through a remarkably simple mechanism: a light-proof container with a tiny aperture that projects an inverted image onto its interior surface. The resulting photographs exhibit soft focus and unlimited depth of field, creating dreamlike images with an ethereal, timeless quality.

Beyond its historical use in early cameras and optical education, pinhole photography's aesthetic principles offer valuable inspiration for modern generative AI applications. These distinctive visual characteristics could enhance immersive virtual environments, providing atmospheric backgrounds for video games and VR experiences where dimensional depth is essential. Additionally, the technique's nostalgic and abstract qualities make pinhole-inspired AI generation particularly valuable for artists seeking unique creative expression. How you decide to use it - is up to your imagination!

Midjourney V7 & the pinhole prompt

Let me start super basic - and then share how to improve the prompt for a more specific look.

a pinhole photographic print of wildflowers --ar 4:5 --raw --stylize 150 --v 7

a pinhole photographic print of wildflowers --ar 4:5 --v 7

A couple of things to note in comparing the first 2 render sets:
• RAW + STYLIZE 150 does have an effect, but in my perspective - they actually over-produce the images, adding focus deeper than it should be.

• Though not exclusively, but often pinhole is done with black/white film and developed in a darkroom.

So, let’s move towards MORE realism in the reproduction of a pinhole photograph. I will do this by making the images black and white, adjusting the depth-of-field, and adding more details to refine the results. I will do this in steps, so you can see the difference more clearly.

a pinhole photographic print of wildflowers, black-and-white --ar 4:5 --v 7