Solargraphy

The element of time has run throught this body of work, alongside viewing our surroundings in a different way. Alongside the pieces below I have also been tryign my hand at Solargraphy, inspired by Justin Quinell, an artist I have admired since I took part in a workshop with him a few years ago in College.

Solargraphs are a fascinating type of photo created in homemade pinhole cameras. They are ultra long exposures which capture the movement of the sun across the sky each day..showing trails which we obviously could never see with the human eye. Created on B&W photographic paper they are developed without the use of chemicals (which would destroy the exposure) but instead with a scanner..it blows my mind that the resulting images are coloured! I love the way this is a manual process but a direct physical print is never be created..

The first of these images show my intitial tests of two weeks in Somerset (to check my pinhole size)

The image on the left shows the suntrail of afternoons, where the trend was cloudier weather, shown by the break in the trails..and right shows the clearer mornings. This visual narrative is quite interesting..



These second images are another set of exposures, this time 3 weeks in Bournemouth.. I wanted to test how the curve of the paper in my homemade cams changed the distortion on the image depending on its orientation..I decidedly prefer the landscape image. The colour difference between this and the first set is curious..maybe the light pollution in Bournemouth compared to back home in Somerset has something to do with it.. I liked this compositon so have set up another 2 cameras which have been exposing for 4 months so far..once I move back I will process these, I hope they show more detail..excited! I'l obviously post the results up here!


This final piece was an exposure from the roof of my house..I set up the camera so that the sun's route would fall directly above, the shape created is wonderful, although I cant quite work out why it has this specific form! I'm also unsure what the marks in the centre of the image are?!