The Results of Solarcan #368

Remember these guys?

Last year, I installed five “Solarcans” – a Kickstarter-funded aluminum beverage can / photography paper pinhole photo project, piercing a particularly precise puncture, for a pleasantly powerful passive panorama.

With only the light of the traveling sun in the sky illuminating the project, I set these cans at various locations in Albany, with the hope of creating an awesome photo over an extended period of time.

I’ve garnered two successful Solarcan images already – Solarcan #367 soaked for a few weeks, while I pulled a six-month soak out of Solarcan #370.

That’s Solarcan 367 above.

And this is a six-month blaze from Solarcan 370.

Solarcan #368 was stored on a signpost in St. Agnes Cemetery in Albany; I installed it last July, and harvested it yesterday.  That’s a ten-month bake.

Okay.  Dead of night.  Cracked open the can.  Placed the photography paper on my flatbed scanner, and…

Now that’s impressive.

But you know that’s just the inverse.  Now I have to flip the negative into a positive, and use some enhancement techniques to really bring out the details in a ten-month exposure.

And after a little fiddling and foddling…

Here’s what came out.

Ooh baby.

Baby baby baby.

That is the strongest Solarcan image I’ve been able to pull!

And I’ve got two more Solarcans out there …

One that I’m going to open at the end of June, for a solstice-to-solstice bake…

And one that I’m opening in July, for a one-year exposure.

This is some seriously abstract stuff here.

And for now … it’s going in the short pile for Competition Season 2018.

Because if I can pull this one …

I can only imagine what the other two Solarcans have inside them.

Man oh man, I want to crack them open right now and take a peek.

No, Chuck, you can’t do that.  You gotta wait.  You can’t open your Christmas presents on December 1st.

Besides, isn’t it true that good things come to all those who wait?