PHOTO: M HODGSONMy friend Alex spotted this laundrette near Russell Square tube and suggested I take a photo. A 20 second exposure did the trick with the lighting, but I hadn't expected the old woman sitting on the bench to be in the photo at all. If I'm honest, I barely noticed her when I took the shot. The strange blurring lends her an ethereal quality that might lead a more superstitious photographer to believe she was never really there at all.
This taught me an invaluable trick: a panoramic camera without a lens captures much more of its surroundings than the casual observer might expect. If we spy a photographer pointing a camera, we assume quite reasonably it has a lens and is focused on a particular point at some distance. I've discovered that it's easy to stand right next to a stationary subject with a pinhole camera - feigning to shoot past them without offending their perceived personal space - when in fact the whole scene is exposed to the film, their curious or oblivious face included.
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