About solargraphy

A solargraph is an image created by an extended exposure, showing the sun’s path across the sky. It is created with a simple pinhole camera, often made from a cylindrical can equipped with a tiny pinhole, through which the exposure is made on a piece of black and white photographic paper.

If you would aim a lens camera towards the sun and open the shutter, you would definitely risk putting the light-sensitive material inside the camera on fire (a fact used by Chris McCaw to create the most beautiful photographic art); the lens becomes a burning glass. But the opening of the pinhole camera does not focus as sharply, and instead this easy camera can record the sun’s path across the sky for extended periods of time.

If the solargraph camera is placed outdoors for a long time – solargraphs are often the result of several months’ exposure – it sometimes happens that the elements, or indeed animals, interfere with the camera and influence the result of the final image. Everything that is moving during the exposure becomes blurry or disappears entirely from the image. Except for the sun, which instead kind of etches its traces across the photographic paper.