These German garbagemen, also photography enthusiasts, decided to make their jobs a little more interesting by turning their garbage cans into pinhole cameras. Calling it the Trashcam Project, the men are creating some amazing black and white photography around the city of Hamburg. According to the project website, Christoph Blaschke, Mirko Derpmann, Scholz & Friends Berlin, and the Hamburg sanitation department developed the project to “show the beauty and changes of the world they keep clean every day.”
In collaboration with photographer Matthias Hewing, the Trashcam Project says the process goes like this: “Put the box in the right place. Measure the light (we used an old gossen lightmeter). Calculate the right time according to the diameter of the hole and the ASA of your paper. Open the hole. Get a coffee and wait. Development is a bit tricky. We did it at the place and with the help of Hamburg based photographer Matthias Hewing who learned all the chemical stuff a few decades ago.”
The exposure of each photograph ranges. On bright days the photo paper needs 5-6 minutes but, on more dreary days, the exposures can take up to 90 minutes. The project is filled with a lot of pleasant surprises–based on light metering, educated guessing, and a lot of patience–since the photographers cannot even see how the shot is composed until it appears on the paper in the development process.
