A UK observatory has shared what is believed to be the longest exposure image ever made and lasting more than eight years.
But the image, filmed at the Bayfordbury Observatory at the University of Hertfordshire, was not taken with any high-tech photographic equipment.
Regina Valkenborgh, a graduate art student at the university at the time, had just used a simple pinhole camera made with an empty beer can and photographic paper.
It shows 2,953 arched trails as the sun rose and set for 97 months between August 2012 and September 2020.
The dome of Bayfordbury’s oldest telescope is visible to the left of the photo while an atmospheric portico can be seen to the right, a structure built in the middle of the exposure process.
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Regina Valkenborgh’s pinhole camera remained intact at the Bayfordbury Observatory at the University of Hertfordshire for eight years and a month. Each of the 2,953 trails in his photo represents the rainbow as it came out and set
Valkenborgh had been experimenting with pinhole camera techniques while earning his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Hertfordshire.
A pinhole camera, in essence, is just a light-proof box with a small hole on one side that allows sunlight to enter.
Due to a natural phenomenon called the darkroom effect, light from outside passes through the small “hole” and projects an inverted image of what is outside on the opposite side of the box.
The effect has been known for over 1,000 years, having been described by the Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham in the 10th century.
Due to the “darkroom” effect, light passing through a small “hole” in a light-proof box will project an inverted image of what is on the outside on the opposite side of the box.
Telescopes at the Bayfordbury Observatory at the University of Hertfordshire. The dome of Bayfordbury’s oldest telescope is visible in the Valkenborgh photo
When photographic paper was developed in the 19th century, images captured with a darkroom could be converted into photographs.
“For me the most exciting thing is that this rudimentary way of photographing in this age driven by technology still has value,” Valkenborgh told Motherboard.
“Yet, in all its simplicity, it has the ability to ‘capture’ a photograph far beyond the lowest shutter speed you can set on any digital camera.”
“The images are also totally unique, the photons of light travel through the real hole and touch the paper inside the can.”
In 2012, Valkenborgh placed a can of beer lined with photo paper on one of the observatory’s telescopes.
The effort was largely forgotten until this September, when observatory staff David Campbell rediscovered it.
“It was lucky that the image was left intact, which David saved after all these years,” said Valkenbourgh, now a photography technician at Barnet and Southgate College.
Most of his attempts at pinhole photography were ruined by the dampness that caused the photographic paper to roll.
“I had no intention of capturing an exhibit during that time and, to my surprise, I had survived,” he said. “It could be one of the longest exhibitions there is, if not.”
Super long exposure photography is an art form: in 2011, retired physicist Greg Parker used a pinhole camera made from an old tea box to capture the June 21 sky, the summer solstice, until December 22, the winter solstice.
Valkenborgh did the same to record the sky over the observatory during the same 2011 time period.
“Dark gaps in daily arcs are caused by cloud cover, while bright, continuous tracks record glorious periods of sunny weather,” he explained of the image, called a solargraph. “Of course, in June, the Sun’s trails begin higher at the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The roads sink lower into the sky as the December winter solstice approaches.
The fall of 2011 was one of the sunniest in the history of the UK, he added, as evidenced by the numerous bright arches at the bottom of his image.
In 2011, Valkenborgh used a pinhole camera to record the sky over the observatory for six months, from the summer solstice to the winter solstice. “Dark gaps in daily arcs are caused by cloud cover, while continuous bright tracks record glorious periods of sunny weather,” he said.
According to the university, German artist Michael Wesely is the previous holder of the record for the longest exhibition image, with a photo taken over four years and eight months.
Valkenborgh’s record may not last forever: in 2015, concept artist Jonathon Keats announced plans to take a photograph with a 1,000-year exposure to chronicle a millennium of climate change in the Holyoke Range , in western Massachusetts.
Small enough to hold in the palm of your hand, Keats’ “millennium camera” is made of copper to survive the ravages of time.
He hopes the project will encourage people to think beyond their own human lives at what geologists call “deep time,” the long periods in which the world changes on a large scale.
His camera was placed on Stearns Steeple at Amherst College and the university has agreed to exhibit the resulting image at the Mead Art Museum in 3015.