Using a DIY photography technique, instructor Chris Caselli ’82 and his students are recording the sun’s path across campus during this historic 75th year.

There are specific spots on the St. Stephen’s campus where one can witness striking sunrises and sunsets. Photography instructor Chris Caselli ’82 wondered if he could capture and catalog a year’s worth of nature’s movement and compress it into a single image.

The answer was yes, so he set out to teach his Upper School darkroom students that smartphones and film cameras aren’t the only photography tools available. He’s showing them there is a way to capture nature and the sun’s movement using recycled materials with a technique called solarigraphy — a long-exposure photography method that captures the sun's path across the sky over days, months or years using a simple DIY pinhole camera loaded with photographic paper.  

Caselli and his students create dozens of handmade pinhole cameras from repurposed soup cans, bean cans and even breath mint tins. The cameras are simple but thoughtfully engineered. Inside each light-tight metal container is a sheet of photographic paper, carefully curved to shape the image. A tiny pinhole allows light to enter. 

With the cans and tins loaded in his car, Caselli drives through campus pinpointing promising installation spots where interesting architectural angles, landscaping and sunlight collide. They are sealed and secured with metal zip ties restricting even the slightest movement influenced by mother nature or animals.

“I can leave it up for a week,” Caselli said while on a ladder securing a pinhole camera to a tree trunk behind Temple. “But if you do the full year, you see the full arc.”

Caselli has identified nearly 20 installation sites: near the library, by the Chapel, outside Brewster Hall and down in the Gulch. Each spot offers a distinct composition and perspective of the sky.

“It’s all about finding your composition,” said Caselli. “You have to think about where the sun will track, where it will reach its apex, and where it will drop.”

A Year in One Frame

When the time comes, students retrieve the cameras, remove the paper and scan the images.

The results can be striking: layered ribbons of light sweeping over buildings and landscapes, revealing patterns that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye. 

Although the project is part of Caselli’s Upper School darkroom course it has become a favorite Earth Day initiative in past years. Sometimes students install cameras for shorter four-month exposures to ensure strong results. Other times, they commit to the full year — allowing one class to install the cameras and another to experience the reveal.

They also learn the risks involved. Cameras can fall and weather can interfere but that unpredictability is part of the lesson.

As the school celebrates its 75th anniversary, this year’s installations carry special meaning. The cameras will quietly record the sun’s journey throughout this milestone year, with the reveal coming next school year — a fitting tribute to time, memory and the enduring light on The Hill.

Interested in learning more photography techniques, tips and tricks from St. Stephen’s Campus Photographer and Photography Instructor Chris Caselli ’82? Check out his June Photography Camp that’s part of Spartan Summer Camp 2026.