Solargraphy Project

As I've mentioned here before, I'm a fan of pinhole photography. About a year ago I learned of an aspect of pinhole photography that I had never heard of before. It's called Solargraphy. It has all the regular aspects of pinhole photography, but the exposure time is way longer. Instead of measuring exposure times in seconds, with solargraphy, it's measured in hours, days, and even months. It took me a while to get going on starting my own solargraphy project, but I'm underway now. In fact, as I type this, I'm making two solargraphs. That's kind of cool. But let me go back to the start. I did a lot of research on this to get an idea of what I needed to get going on this project. One website, Solagraphy.com, gave me lots of info. It's pretty simple. Make a pinhole camera out of some sort of container, fill it with black and white photopaper, secure camera to an object, start exposure. I wanted to start with something a little bigger than a film canister, so I went with an old coffee can.

I painted the inside of the can to cut down on any chance of reflective light.

I then drilled a large hole in the can. I made the actual pinhole with an old pin and a bit of an old soda can and taped that over the drilled hole. Then it was lights out as I loaded the can with a sheet of black and white photopaper. Put the lid on the can. Turned the lights back on and sealed up the top of the can with lots of electrical tape. My cameras were now ready to be mounted.

I found a spot in the rear of my place that faces the rising sun.

They've been up for a week now. I'm planning on keeping one of them up until around the summer solstice. One I'll take down earlier to get an idea of how it's working. I look forward to seeing the results and I'll post them here. If you can't wait until that long to see a solargraph, check out this group on the flickr.