I thought it appropriate that on the day of the mid-summer solstice to take a photo that shows the ancient times of photography in action today. Of course, relative to stone circles and such like, this is the blink of an eye historically speaking but in photographic terms it’s old indeed.

That Ikea-matic that DM has been building is now in commission – you can see some of his shots from it here! In fact, the very shot he was taking was this shot of the Wheal Jenkin mine building....an old tin mine that had two short lives in the 19th century!

It’s a cheap Ikea wooden plant holder, which has been doctored to be a pinhole camera – back made and fitted with the catches you can see, light-proofed with matt black paint, a cardboard baffle and something akin to fuzzy felt. A pinhole made from an old coke can that was cadged off Annie, our neighbour and a shutter that’s basically a rubber washer thingy.

It takes sheet film (5x4 classic pan 200 if you’re interested) and so can only be loaded with a single shot’s worth at a time. We took some spare film and one of those lightproof bags you use to get the film from the camera and into a developing tank normally. He took two shots!

Here you can see the lowest-tech of all cameras with an exposure being timed in seconds and the camera’s tripod is a few bits of granite!

This was the start of an expedition that led us to the pub....and back again!

I think you can describe DM as many things, perverse is one that springs to my mind…..but that’s why I love him!

Last year, I was also photographing nutty stuff!