NHS Solargraphy Project
December 2010 - What do you get when you combine a very small hole and a shed? The NHS Solargraphy project! Needham High School students Jeff Fitzgerald and Sam Daives applied for their NEF grant in the fall of 2009, requesting funds to build a walk-in pinhole camera capable of producing a solargraph, a long continuous photographic exposure. With the support of NHS science teacher Peter Keifer, and the NHS Engineering Club, these students set forth to produce the first large scale solargraph.
The large-scale camera demonstrates properties of waves and light in a new way. Students can walk in and observe how thousands of hours of continuous movement and growth get compressed into a single 10 ft x 6 ft photograph.
NEF spoke with Jeff Fitzgerald, NHS Class of 2010, the grant manager and driving force behind the completion of the shed and solargraph, to find out what inspires a student to apply for a Needham Education Foundation grant and about his overall experience of seeing a project through from conception to completion. When asked what prompted the idea to build a walk-in pinhole camera to produce a large scale solargraph, Jeff replied, “At the time I had been reading articles about camera obscuras and then read another about crazy long exposures made with small pinhole cameras to show the sun (a solargraph) and just put 2 and 2 together!”
Jeff also discussed the many obstacles he didn’t anticipate when planning his project. From purchase order procedures and delivery delays, to leaking light and an image projection that required an interior angled wall to be built, and through foam tiles falling off the wall, Jeff persevered and began the solar exposure in June 2010. Jeff had his doubts about whether his project would be successful, but six months later, he returned to the shed, removed the photo papers and digitally stitched them together to produce this image. His final reaction: “And yet, despite all of these problems, the resulting image I got was much more than expected. It looks exactly as I thought it would in my head, except ten times cooler! … the grant let me produce something I thought I would never be able to!”
“The 10×6 foot paper negative has been exposed to light through a tiny 2 millimeter hole continuously, day and night, for the last six months. Tonight I finally took down the paper tiles too see what I got. This is the resulting image. Each of the sheets of paper you see are 11×14 inches. The original uncropped negative had about 50 sheets. The bands of light you see across the sky are actually the sun, each day. The dark streaks between them represent days where it was overcast and the sun wasn’t directly in view.” Excerpt from Jeff’s blog at http://swedishfishing.com/solargraphy-project/
Some Facebook comments from student peers:
Katie P, “awesomeee!”
Laura T, “this is incredible fitzy. I’m so glad it finally worked!”
Joe O, “Far Out! I love the ghost images of the cars and the sun streaks in the sky”
Scott G, “this is amazing man, im glad ik what camera obscura is from taking photo 1”
NHS Art teacher Linda Burke affirms, "This is a great testament to what creative students can do with encouragement and funding." She also adds that a 30” x 40” print is on public display in the Needham High School and encourages visitors to stop by to take a look.