Anyone who’s know me for a while knows that I am flaming pit of technical info.  Mostly stuff that you don’t use everyday.  I have spent summers coating emulsions on paper and making cyanotypes, or fabricating a fuming box and making daguerreotypes.  I spend a fair amount of time reading up on things to try out when I have time.  One of which was solarography.  I found out about it on www.alternativephotography.com.  There is whole site and project devoted to the process at www.solargraphy.com.

I duct-taped two paint can pinhole cameras to the mast of my TV antennae on February 18th.  I was taking down Christmas lights on a nice 40 degree day and figured I might as well take advantage of having the ladder out.  The images are on sheets of black and white photo paper.  The long exposure creates a visible image on the paper. No developing, just an invert and some curve adjustments in Photoshop.  They have to be scanned right away as there is no way to fix the image.  The landscape itself in not that interesting, but the images face east and west.  The path of the sunrise and sunset can be seen in the sky. In the eastern image, the path of the moon can also be seen.  Pretty slick.  So now I have another use for the stacks of past date paper I have accumulated.

It’s good to branch out and play a little.  I am not convinced I need to make a project with this technique, but it’s pretty easy to do and you basically ignore it for most of the duration.  I might do another around the time of the summer equinox.