Pinhole Solargraphy “Can Assistant”

I got another email yesterday, from Tarja Trygg in Finland, discussing her Solargraphy project. It had these wonderful images of multiple arcs of the sun. I found it all very fascinating and wrote to Tarja to learn more. That resulted in a brief news story on the Pinhole Visions website, plus I became one of her “can assistants”.

Tarja’s email was kicking off the next equinox – summer. And that starts June 21, today. So this morning I made 2 film can cameras and loaded them with paper. Then, this afternoon I located 2 places to mount them for the next 3 months.

The first location is the College of the Albemarle Dare County campus. I found a light pole with a view of the marshes and lots of sky. Unfortunately, there are a few new houses in the view, but that should be OK.

The second one I mounted on the Creef Boathouse, a local museum. The curator helped me find a spot (in red, below).

boat house

Here’s the view from the boat house:
boat house view

I did a couple of test exposures in the early afternoon, to get a better idea of what might come out. Here is one of the tests and I was pleased with the results. I mean, you can see the path of the sun in it. I can’t imagine what 90 days of this will look like in the negative though. That’s for Tarja to know…

test photo
test photo on June 20, 1 pm to 5pm

Only time will tell what comes of the 90 day exposures. Stay tuned…

3 thoughts on “Pinhole Solargraphy “Can Assistant””

  1. dear Gregg
    How cool that you did a test print!
    It reminded me of the time I accidentally left my pinhole camera on a ledge for a weekend. I thought I saw the path of the moon.
    It never occurred to me until today that it might have been the sun.

    -daisy

  2. Hi. You said “loaded them with paper”, and I don’t quite understand, what paper? I always thought it was film, and I was always afraid whether a 90-day exposure would cause an over-exposured film, too. Waiting for your reply, thank you.

Comments are closed.