THE sights may be familiar, but something is different.

That is because an artist's images of Oxford’s back streets and waterways have been taken using a foil takeaway carton, a chocolate box, and a biscuit tin.

Photographer Mary Foulkes, from Headington, will be showcasing her weird but wonderful pictures at the O3 Gallery at Oxford Castle next Friday.

The 33-year-old transforms old sweet tins, food containers and has even tried turning a whole seaside cave into pin hole cameras, a type of camera works by using a light-proof box with a small hole in one side to let the light in.

Miss Foukes said she often creeps out under the cover of dusk to capture her subject while it is bathed in just the right light. She said: “I started experimenting with light at art school.

“Then someone suggested I use panoramic images which is when I started to use the pinhole cameras.

“I tried to use a cave once to capture the seaside, and although it didn’t quite work it is something I am still interested in doing.

“I really enjoy not knowing how the images are going to turn out, and knowing it is going to be very different from what you have seen when you first take the picture.”

Among the places to be snapped by Miss Foulkes using her unusual method is Magdalen Street, in East Oxford, which she captured with a Quality Street tin, and the Debtors Tower, at Oxford Castle, taken with a take away tin. Queen Lane, the River Cherwell and the canal also feature.

Miss Foulkes uses different methods for each camera, but exposure times vary between 30 seconds and one hour.

She said: “The crudeness of the cameras and the lack of technical wizardry in my approach to photography, I am not a trained photographer and rely on trial and error, resulting in images that seem quite random – almost accidental.

“It is this element of chance that excites me and drives me to continue creeping around at twilight, putting out perforated biscuit tins and gathering them up after dark to see what they’ve caught!”

* Miss Foulkes’ work will be displayed at the O3 Gallery, at the Oxford Castle, between Saturday October 15 and Sunday November 13.