Photographer Chris McCaw Burns Through Photo Paper — Literally

Photographer Chris McCaw was making long exposures of the night sky during a camping trip when he forgot to cap his camera lens before going to sleep. When he woke up, he discovered that the sun had burned a hole through his negative. After processing the film, he found that it had solarized, or reversed in tone. What started as an accident McCaw now does intentionally for his “Sunburn” series of photographs.

Using homemade large format cameras, McCaw exposes silver gelatin paper for extended periods of time, burning through the paper and inverting the image.

Here are some more photographs from the series:

To see more photographs from this series, visit McCaw’s website here. photo-eye also has a great interview with McCaw here.


Image credits: Photographs by Chris McCaw and used with permission

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