Deep Winter

It had been gloomy and overcast for months but it was totally clear on the night of the total lunar eclipse in January. With all the hype leading up to it which I contributed to myself, something a little different was called for. I got out the 120 Stereo Populist with it's pair of 6cm long 6x6cm chambers and loaded it with Portra 400. The exposure was from 6:30 pm until 6:30 the next morning.

These pictures are all set up for viewing with crossed eyes, scanned and inverted just as they came out of the camera.  Here's a link to an exercise to learn how to view them, and once again, you probably can do it.

Unlike other pinhole images I've seen of the event, this did manage to record the trail of the moon while it was fully eclipsed, although it's not "blood" red. This was a very thin negative and there was some fogging in the right hand frame and some odd flare which I burned in and used the clone tool to miminize. The trail in this picture is almost entirely of the partially eclipsed moon. You can see at the beginning and end how overexposed and blown out the trail is when the moon is full so later, when the moon got at the right angle it caused flare just like the sun would. There's not another complete total lunar eclipse visible from my house until 2022, but that one's in March so it won't be so high in the sky and may have better opportunities for an interesting foreground.

This was before the Polar Vortex event, but it was still pretty cold in Wisconsin, so the rest of the pictures are in the house. There's a relationship between the angle of view of the camera and how close you can get for a successful stereo image and these are kind of pushing the limit.

A self-portrait cutting out the parts for the shutters of the 6x9 Variable Cuboid.

Doesn't it look like I have a full beard?

A little further on in the construction without so much of me in it.

This bouquet seemed like a good 3D target.

My favorite stereo photo of all time is of a harvest of habeneros on the countertop, a scene that doesn't have much depth. When the temperature dropped to -25°F (and this was before the Polar Vortex), we decided to console ourselves with Beef Bourguignon and the chunks of meat in the bowl reminded me of the hot pepper photo. The knife was lying sideways in the bowl with the edge exposed but it slipped into this position just after the shutter was opened.

 Stay tuned for more lunacy and stereo but not at the same time.