Interesting Photo of The Day: 3 Year Long Exposure

You’ve probably seen a lot of long exposure photos. Chances are that you’ve even taken a bunch of them yourself. If so, what’s the longest exposure that you’ve shot or come across? I’m guessing a few minutes or maybe hours, right? Today, we’re sharing the following interesting image that was shot by photographer Gianluca Belgrado in Rome. He used a DIY pinhole camera and exposed it for 3 years to come up with this image:

3 year long exposure using a pin hole camera

“3 Year Long Exposure with a Pin Hole Camera” by Gianluca Belgrado (Via Reddit. Click image to see full size.)

Belgardo made a custom pinhole camera using a can and placed a Kodak photo paper inside it for the recording medium. He made the pinhole, which was 0.2mm in diameter, using a sewing needle. As you can see in the image, it shows a lot of rainwater damage. Although this may show his lack of experience with this type of photography, the rainwater damage does add quite a bit of character to the image. It really feels like looking back in time.

“Unfortunately it was one of the first pinhole cameras I built, and I didn’t have much experience.”

In case you’re wondering, the white trails that you see is that of the sun and this kind of image is referred to as a solar graph. Now you might think that an image exposed for 3 whole years should’ve been completely overexposed. However, with film photography, you need to understand that as the sensitive paper is impressed, it becomes less and less sensitive to light over time. This is how such a long exposure is possible.

Have you ever tried your hand at pinhole photography? We’d love to hear about your experience.

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