Photography - solarcan

The solarcan is a camera designed to produce a long exposure of the sun’s path across the sky. It can be left out for one sunny day (which would only leave the thinnest of lines, probably hardly visible) to a year (any longer the lines would just be duplicated however would grow lighter and some of the previous dark areas due to non sunny weather, might lightern with sunny weather the second year). The camera would reflect the rise and fall of the sun (in our perspective, in reality the earth just spinning on its tilted axis with the sun staying still), the highest arc would be at the time of the summer solstice (21st June) and the lowest arc would be at the time of the winter solstice (21st December).
The solarcan is made up of a can with a half millimetre pinhole in it and a piece of light sensitive photo paper. The camera is placed in a suitable south facing location with a good view of the sky and horizon.
How it works is that once the paper is exposed to the light (the sun via the tiny pinhole) a chemical reaction begins to happen which makes the paper change colour. Normally photographic paper needs processing with chemicals to allow the image that has been taken to be visible, however the sun is so strong that it can darken the paper visibly so no chemicals are required to darken the solarcan image.
The pinhole has been made in the side of the can and this is the camera lens. As the sunlight only travels one way and it doesn’t scatter when it goes into the can, it forms a clear line of the sun's route.

When the solarcan is opened the photographic paper looks like this.. 


 
.. and requires inverting and a lot of photoshop adjustments to look like these. This camera was put out in September then taken in in January, then I sealed it up again and put it out upside down until late May.
I love the results of a solarcan camera as they are unusual and can be very dramatic especially if a lot of thought has gone into the placing of the camera. They can be effectively landscape photographs. They benefit from a lot of colour manipulation which is something I only do slightly as a general rule so I enjoy the freedom of altering them in any way I want to.  You can be creative using the solarcan by moving the can partway through the time period.


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